Hey guys I scored an original xbox for nothing today. I was surprised by the amazing condition it was in, no scratches or even dust. Powered it up and got the error 12 screen. So I know thats related to the dvdrom. Followed some guides and did as much as I could, changing ide cable, tried bridging connections on the yellow cable to fool it etc but nothing worked. I'm not fussed about the dvd not working anyway as I'd like to try and get coinops and xbmc on it. Every mod seems to require the drive to be working or access to the consoles settings to get the kernel and dash serial numbers. What are my options? At the moment I'm leaning towards tsop flash and remove the dvd drive check option using something like XBTool, is this possible with the xbox in its current state? thx guys .
It's probably the power cables to the DVD-ROM, I have spares somewhere if you really want them. I had this error on a junk XBOX before, all I did was change the DVD-ROM power cable and it was solved. There could be a bad trace on the DVD-ROM board too, so I suggest disassembling it and closely look at the board. Even reseating the board might help Anyhow, the best solution I can give you here is; Get a modchip, and hopefully the default bios has the No DVD-ROM hack enabled. Otherwise, you'll have to get another DVD-ROM power cable. Bad_Ad84 sells XBOX modchips, so he might be able to preprogram the hack on there for you.
^^ yeah, possibly the dvd drive logic board is f*cked! ... @ op. advice above is right.... aside a sound logic board on the dvd drive, hardmods are the only option! (doesn't have to read disks after soft/hardmod) ... if you're not comfortable soldering, get a replacement dvd drive, even if it doesn't read disks at all, as long as it's logic controller is fine, so are you! :friendly_wink:
Thanks for the replies guys, sorry for the slow response I felt like I was getting somewhere and couldn't stop fiddling till I had some results . While waiting for replies I kept swapping spare IDE DVDROM's around on the IDE cable and one of them evetually worked and finally I was able to get to the menu screen on the xbox (So yellow cable in original dvd drive, molex splitter and ide into my dvdrom). I managed to get the kernel and dash versions: K: 1.00.5101.01 D: 1.00.4920.01 Running what appears to be a pretty old dash so I'll take that as confirmation the xbox has never been used and has just been in storage since 2003 :O. Now that I had the kernel numbers I could make a ndure/xboxhdm disc. Unfortunately after trying many things I could not get the hdd to unlock, including producing error 12 etc etc. I ended up making the serial cable and pulling the EEPROM off the chip. With the EEPROM and xboxhdm finally I was able to unlock the drive and install ndure and unleashx. My plan now was to do a TSOP flash and install the X-ecuter 2 4981 BIOS as its supposed to load quickly? I'll use XBTool to disable the dvd drive check the gut the dvd drive and see if theres an obvious reason it has failed (jammed/pico fuses etc). I want to run XBMC as the primary dash and then use chimp to clone to a larger drive and install coinops 6. Does everything sound reasonable/proper sequence (have't done this before, so many dead links and outdated information on the web), thanks .
Might be possible for you to follow my method of Softmod, instead of hotswapping. http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?46169-TUTORIAL-Softmod Then install EvoX and flash your Bios, Install a larger hard disk and set it up with AID with XBMC as your main dash. Done.
Finally all sorted...I think . So how to overcome dead dvd drive and outdated dash on virgin xbox console. I made a disc with Ndure 3.1 and xboxhdm. Installed that on the xbox hdd using a spare computer, no hotswapping just built as new xbox drive from scratch (The drive apparently didn't have a partition on it anyway so no choice). Setup FTP and copied across the EvoX dash to run as an app and TSOP flash from there. Bridged two points on the motherboard (v1.2 or 1.3 not sure but same bridging points). I spent ages trying to copy the ind5003.cfg file to the C: on the xbox but FTP'ing and everything failed. I didn't realise it was some sort of virtual C drive and eventually found a document that explained. However instead I ended up remaking the original xboxhdm disk but with the ind.cfg file already on it as well, so it would be installed when the disk was built from scratch (took me hours to get to this point :'( ). Once that finally worked I went to flash and got a failed message, quick google gave me some lines of code to add to the evox.ini file and success! System booted fine however I got a blank screen when I disconnected the DVD drive (the main reason for wanting to update atm). After hours of googling wondering what you guys were doing to get it working on that BIOS without a dvd I gave up. I was looking for editing options for the ind.cfg file and everything and anything to tell me how to do it. Eventually I though maybe the drive needed to be master and not CS and went to switch it, and omg the issue reveals itself. Hidden next to the jumper for the CS was the other jumper I had on when I was using it in the pc for master with a non ata compatible slave. EXCEPT I had pulled that jumper off days ago, or so I thought, apparently the plastic part of the jumper came off, the pins were still sitting in the drive, mocking me :'(. So finally no DVDROM to worry about, new BIOS that seemed well recommended (I'm aware of the IGR issues, will see how I go with it), I have a spare 2TB drive (other reason for BIOS update), just waiting to IDE to sata converter off ebay. And running UnleashX dash atm, copied over some of my game backups and there running well. Last step will be to clone the drive and we should be sweet . Modding this thing has been so rewarding and so frustrating all at the same time. All the tools and the information are out there but accessing them is so much harder than it should be, really microsoft, the xbox one, yeah that name made all my google searching heaps easier :/
