I had an xbox back in the day, but traded it in for a gamecube in 2002. Now, almost 12 years later, I'm started to get interested in all the possibilities of the xbox as a media/emulation box, and the original xbox games themselves. I'm getting interested in taking the plunge and buying a used system. That said, I don't have intimate knowledge of the hardware, different revisions, and what tends to go wrong with it. I've heard that some models of the xbox have a dvd drive that is prone to breaking? Like the dreamcast, are some models better or more durable than others? And if so, are there model numbers, physical indications, or years of production I can look out for? I also heard there are particular capacitors that are prone to blowing and damaging the motherboard (clock cap?)? How about the stock harddrives - how do they fair after being 10 years old? Basically, many xboxs are now 10 years old, is there a checklist of common concerns that can help me shop for a good quality used console? And/or keep my eye on mods or common repairs (ie: replace/remove caps) so that my prospective system is in good condition?
DVD drives can be hit or miss as you said, but are easily replaced anyway. The clock capacitors do seem to blow, so just keep an eye on it or replace it entirely, one of the easier things you can do prior to exploding anyway. The other thing to watch out for is loose connections on the power supply, the soldering on some of them were not so good.
Out of the box I'd suggest US region (like you specified) near the middle of production. Though not difficult to hack, PAL consoles need it for 480p or greater, and JPN has a much smaller game library. 1.0 is louder with its additional fan. While 1.6 has compatibility issues. It broke 480p mode for certain games.
Plus, a 1.6 can't be TSOP modded. You either have to do the less desirable "soft mod" or pony up for a chip. If you get a 1.0-1.5 motherboard you can TSOP mod with minimal effort and then you'll have the benefits of a chip without the expense.
You've picked the wrong time to ask about the original XBox, as the http://xbox-scene.com/ forums are currently down, and that's the best place by far for all information related to the XBox. No doubt it will be up again shortly though. Until then, have a look at their FAQs at; http://xbox-scene.com/xbox-tutorials.php?p=0|191|192|520|#192 Anyway, as others have said, avoid v1.6 XBoxes, and probably best to avoid Crystal XBoxes (even though they look nice) as many of those are 1.6 too, as 1.6 XBoxes have problems displaying a few (though not many, from what I've read) commercial games and also somehombrew. v1.0 to 1.5 are fine though. There is the problem of the DVD drive, in that Microsoft used drives from three different manufacturers, and these had different tolerances for home burnt discs, although that shouldn't be a problem for you, as you're much better using FTP between the XBox and PC to transfer XBox games, emulator and other programs, roms, etc. There's a great guide here; http://dwl.xbox-scene.com/~xbox/xbox-scene/tutorials/Networking_the_xbox.pdf that I use to transfer from PC to XBox, and vice versa. You might get lucky and be able to buy an XBox that's already modded, either softmodded, or with a modchip attached. I'd recommend the latter, as it's much easier to reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything if the XBox has a mod chip fitted, as that way it will always boot from home burnt DVDs, such as the Slayers disc (http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1173&p=10651 , http://www.epforums.org/showthread.php?73130-Slayers-Evo-X-Auto-Installer-v2-7-(INSTALL-DISC)* , http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/xbox/tools/slayers-evox-auto-installer-27/ , http://www.elgen.net/evoxinstall.pdf), but some people say a softmodded XBox is good enough. Since you want to run emulators (for which the XBox is fantastic) and presumably also want to run all XBox games from the hard drive, then you'll want to change the hard drive for a large one. Most IDE drives work (mine is a 500GB off the shelve model), though a few don't, and if you want to use a larger than 130GB drive then you have to alter the cluster size or the format spec. or something (sorry, I can't remember, I got the information on XBox-scene's forums, when the forums are fixed then you can find the information there, or someone in this forum might already know), plus it depends on the BIOS of the XBox (some mod chips don't allow more than 137GB or so) or on the softmod. You can use some SATA drives, but you need the right converter, as some converters and some drives don't work on the XBox. Sorry I can't advise you on anything hard drive related, but the information is feely available on the 'net. Anyway, if you look around, you might well find a modded XBox with a larger hard drive for sale (and if so, it probably comes with a lot of emulators, games, homebrew stuff, etc, already on the hard drive). Aside from that, I don't think you need to know anything else. Some mod chips used to have a switch, to disable them for when you were playing online (as XBox Live! could detect if your XBox was modded, and if so then ban your XBox, but since XBox Live! no longer supports the original XBox, that's no longer a consideration.
Just found an old post of mine about a modded XBox, so I've copied and pasted it here as it will hopefully be helpful to you; Regarding emulators, the most powerful machines the XBox can emulate are the N64, Playstation, and Atari Jaguar, but the XBox can't emulate all N64 games properly. Some work fine (such as Super Mario 64), some have glitches (such as Perfect Dark), and some won't work at all (very few, such as Indiana Jones). This is partly because the XBox isn't fast enough to properly emulate the N64, but also because N64 emulation is still far from perfect, even on the PC. As regards PSX emulation, I've played Silent Hill all the way through on the XBox's PSX emulator, but I don't know about other PSX games. The Atari Jaguar has variable compatibility and performance, but it is under constant improvement by it's author. Emulation of less powerful machines, such as the SNES/NES/Megadrive (Genesis)/Atari ST/ZX Spectrum/C64/Amstrad CPC/Atari 2600/MAME/etc, is more or less perfect, though. And there is a DOS emulator, which is apparently very good, but only runs at the speed of a fast 386. And there are ports of freeware-released games, such as Doom 1 and 2, Quake 1, 2 and 3, Duke Nukem 3D (great game), Shadow Warrior, Descent 1 and 2 and others. Quake 3 runs too slowly to be playable on later levels, but is fine on the simpler ones, but all of the other games are great (and mostly look better than the original PC versions did!). All emulators and ROMs can be run from the XBox hard drive, as can *every* single XBox game (yep, Halo, Unreal Tournament 2, every one of them) runs from the hard disc and doesn't need the DVD at all. Every emulator, every ROM (game) for the emulator, etc - you can even copy your DVDs to the hard drive and watch them that way if you like. To make any real use of this you really need a large hard drive, but most internal IDEs will do (I put a 500GB drive in mine, and it now contains all of my XBox games, all of my emulators and roms, all of my music files, and several DVDs, and still has a load of free space - brilliant). And it's all menu driven, using the XBox controller (you don't even need the XBox DVD kit and remote control), plus you can reset any game or program at any time (by pressing both triggers, BACK and START at the same time). You can even turn the XBox off at the main menu! Basically you only have to touch the XBox once, when you turn it on, and after that you can ignore it totally, and just control everything via the controller (joypad), with no need to insert game or film DVDs, or to press RESET on the XBox or anything. Luxury! Also, you know how some PC games can be modded (not in the sense of a mod chip, but in the sense that they support modifications like new levels, different graphics etc), like Doom, Quake, Half-Life etc? Well a modded PC allows you to run mods on the XBox games that support them. No XBox game was designed to support mods, as the XBox isn't supposed to support user added stuff, but some XBox games contain large sections of code taken from the PC version of that same game, and are compatible with mods. There aren't many, but the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and Grand Theft Auto III are, to name just two. Also, a lot of the user ported freeware games support mods and new levels, such as Doom 1 and 2, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior. You can no doubt find XBoxes that re being sold with mod chips (or soft mods) installed, and with emulators and roms on their hard drives, but you're unlikely to find them listed as such, since it's a legal grey area. I think ebay, for example, don't allow consoles to be listed as being modded? You might see something like "XBox, modded, with 250GB hard drive, for sale" listed in your local newspaper, but most places won't allow console mods to be mentioned in the description. Some XBoxes have a switch under the main power on switch, to turn the mod chip on or off, which means that this way you can see if the XBox is modded, but lots of mod chips (and all software mods, of course) don't have this. You can advertise that you want to buy a modded XBox, but you'll probably have to pay more to buy it, as if you find one by chance then it's much more likely to be sold cheaply. You can ask at xbox-scene.com on their XBox forums (not their XBox 360 forums, of course) if anyone knows where to buy a modded XBox for a reasonable price (be sure to specify where you live, so they can work out the cost of postage when they reply to you), that's the best place I know for XBox technical information, and lots of XBox users post there. The alternative is to get an XBox, mod it yourself, install the software, and (if you wish) add a larger hard drive. All of the information and help is at xbox-scene.com's forums, at http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?c=103,107,109,112,110,104,111,113 you should make a post in the 'Newbie Chat' section asking for advice, as they are very helpful and knowledgeable. Good luck, and even if you have to put some work in, it's incredible when it's done, as a modded XBox with a decent sized hard drive is amazing - being able to play all of the XBox games from hard drive is great, but having all of the emulators and roms (games) on there, plus the ports of Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, etc is fantastic.
Look out of a v1.1 system, they seem to be the best out of all of them personally, after owning every version. Keep a note what Borman said pretty much nails it too.
Thanks a lot for the informative responses! I need to take some time to digest the info. Hope the xbox-scene forums are put up again soon, I checked there (and they were down) before i posted here - I didn't know how long they have been down/inactive though (whether it was a recent glitch, or if they've been gone for years). This sounds silly, but for no other reason than I like to collect games and enjoy the console experience of putting the disc into the drive - I'm not really planning on ripping commercial xbox games or dvds to the hdd. So I think I can get away with a much smaller drive for emulation purposes. I suppose I'll bite my tongue on this if my drive goes kaput not long after I buy an xbox
The Xbox Scene forum has been down for the better part of a month. I know because I've been trying to go there for that long to get some info and build ideas... I can understand you wanting to play from the disk but let me tell you why I rip mine. I have 3 consoles and 3 of the Samsung SDG605B drives in them. All 3 drives quit working around the same time. Thankfully I ripped all my games to my main console before the drives died so I'm not blowed up. That is the exact reason I like to rip my own disks. Don't want to download disk images if I can help it. Only exception to the rule is the few Chihiro games that play on 128MB RAM modded systems (Virtua Cop 3 and Outrun 2 Beta) and unreleased games like Kameo: Elements of Power Beta. Had to download those. The Kameo one is worth the 128MB upgrade to prevent the few problems it has playing on 64MB systems. (My main console is 128MB RAM modded if you are wondering.) The 2 Chihiro games won't play without 128MB mod so I'd suggest that too. Totally worth it for those games, Linux, MAMEoX, and anything else out there I don't know of that uses the 128MB RAM mod. Word. I was able to score a 1.1 on eBay that came with a Samsung DVD drive for $19 shipped all because the drive tray was sticking. Before asking, no, it wasn't modded. The drive came stock. Date is December 2002 so it has to be among the last of the 1.1 models before production went to the 1.2 revision.
Really, I had no idea? Ripping does have many benefits, even for drives that seem okay. One drive I have tends to work for while before crapping out at inopportune times.
