Bad Bios on DVT4 Xbox

So I'm an idiot. A few years ago I picked up a DVT4 for around $25. Didn't work. Thanks to help on here, I finally (6 years later) replaced the hard drive, ran a recovery disc, and got it all running. Yesterday, after not touching it for a few months, I decided to put in a larger hard drive. I was only seeing 120/500 GB of the drive, read that I should flash certain bios to it, completely forgetting that you can't flash non-debug bios to a debug system, and that of course screwed up my system.

It turns on, flashes red and green with no video, and that's it. It doesn't power cycle or anything like that. Any ideas? If I can just get my recovery disc booted to I'm sure that would work. I still can't believe I did this.

 

afaik running a disc based recovery should flash the bios.

 

Worse case you can install a modchip with a debug bios to get her working again.

 

The BIOS controls the system on startup to read the recovery disk which won't work right now. FRAG'ing as the decryption of a RETAIL vs DEBUG Kernel is different.

To recover full functionality, I think, the TSOP flash memory chip needs to be removed/unsoldered and flashed with the DEBUG BIOS using an external programmer and re-installed/soldered to the motherboard.

Max size HDD accessible by the DEBUG BIOS is the unformatted capacity of 137GB or ~128GB's formatted - 120GB for partition 6 / F drive and the remaining 8GBs allocated to the other standard Xbox partitions/drive letters - C, E, X, Y, and Z.

 

That's my hope, but first I have to get the DVD to even boot the disc in the first place.

 

This is my current plan. I'm still pretty new to this though. How can I flash debug bios onto a mod chip? I bought an Aladdin XT+, will that work?

 

I'd imagine you would need to flash it in a retail console.

Or flash the plcc flash chip externally. Or buy one from someone like me and ask them to preflash it for you.

 

If I end up going this route, is there an external programmer you recommend? Is there software that does the flashing?

 

If you are capable of removing and refitting the flash chip, I can also program that for you.

I doubt it's worth spending the money required just to flash an xbox. Tsop adapters alone (not including the programmer) would be more than sending back and forth to me.

 

How much would you want for that? I haven't heard of plcc flash chips. Is that just another mod chip?

 

It's the form factor of the flash chip on the aladdin XT. It's the chip that's in the socket. This chip holds the bios.

My aladdins are £6 + shipping. Flashing the chip with a dev bios is no extra charge (this is all assuming the debug bios is 256kb).

If the debug bios is over 256kb, you need an upgraded aladdin, which is £15 + shipping.

Or you can send the orignal tsop chip for reflashing. But again, involves some delicate soldering.

 

I believe they are 1mb bios. I'll have to double check. I would definitely like to go that route before trying to desolder the tsop chip.

If anyone is interesting in repairing it for me, let me know what you would charge and maybe we can work something out. I'm in the US. Or if it comes down to it, I might just sell it, though not sure how much interest there is in a DVT4 that won't boot.

 

So if I install an Aladdin XT with debug bios, can I then put in my XDK Disc and flash new bios/kernel, and then take off the chip? Or will the chip always need to be on?

 

If you ran the recovery while the chip is in place then wouldn't that just flash the modchip?
afaik all the dev TSOP are 1mb since they are almost all older boards? IMHO just get a 1MB modchip and have bad_ad flash any dev BIOS to it, once installed on the kit it should always function as normal even when flashed with another recovery.

 

The TL866CS or A with TSOP40/48adapter socket. These programmers are sold by lots of resellers on eBay and come with Windows software. They connect to the PC via a USB port.

But as Bad_Ad84 says if you only need to do one, quite an expense. The Aladdin XBlast he sells may be able to be used to recover your TSOP with a debug BIOS. I say may as I've never tried such a procedure to restore a DVT4 (never actually seen one in person).

I say the TSOP needs to be restored as I don't think the MS recovery software's flashing algorithm can flash a modchip's LPC connected flash device but only can reflash the on-board TSOP via its 8-bit wide parallel connection. Once the modchip boots, access to the on-board TSOP is disabled. Therefore, you'd not be able to use a debug recovery disc to restore the system with the LPC attached modchip installed. At some time, the TSOP needs to be reflashed with the DEBUG BIOS. The Aladdin XBlast booting a special TSOP recovery BIOS may be able to without needing to unsolder the TSOP from the motherboard.

What part number is the TSOP flash memory chip in your DVT4?

 

He can't have an xblast, the OS takes up 256kb of the chip.

It would be an aladdin, reflashed to work with 1mb chips

 

True, very true. Nice catch.

Looks like this original Debug BIOS is only 512KB even though it's distributed as a 1024MB dot bin.

The MD5 hash of each 1/2 match - 3DDE2F4A0B772F6619F30C151339B8B7.

 

That's better then, I'd go with the xblast. It has 256kb and 512kb banks

 

ctclements just needs to verify that the Debug BIOS's 1MB dot bin is, in fact, a 2x resized duplication of a 512KB BIOS - X2BM showed me that it was a duplicated 512KB BIOS. I verified it by saving the two BIOS images and checking the MD5 hashes of the two files I'd saved.

X2BM can be used to split the file in half by saving one of the two BIOS banks displayed.

 

I've already mentioned this in my other thread but if you're looking to sell feel free to hit me up