I picked up a clear Xbox original for a nice price of $10, w/ remote. Best thing, it's chipped! I'm not liking the 4GB HDD though, so I'm just trying to figure out if there's a really easy way to re-install XBMC (it's already installed) onto the new HDD. I was hoping there is some kind of a live CD, but so far I've come up with nothing. Even a standard Xbox dashboard live CD would be nice too- I can upgrade from there. Oh yeah, and my PC has no IDE ports, so using some PC related software is out of the question too. Thanks.
4GB? It should be 8... In any case, if it's chipped right you can take basically any HDD, plug it in, and you'll be able to read/write to it. With a properly installed/configured modchip, you don't need to prep or lock a HDD prior to using it in your Xbox. Depending on the BIOS of your chip it should attempt to run default.xbe on the DVD drive first. So I would do this: Replace 4GB HDD with a bigger one Burn XBMC Installer Deluxe to a DVD Boot Xbox with XBMC Installer Deluxe in drive Follow the XBMC Installer Deluxe manual Here's a link: http://www.aideluxe.com/index.php?title=XBMC_Installer_Deluxe
I'd personally take the XBOXHDM route and then install XBMC, just so you have more flexibility or using Chimp.
What would this "flexibility" allow me to do? I'm not looking to do anything fancy, just games, movies and maybe an emulator or two. I was amazed that the Xbox can handle N64 games so well. Just gobsmacked when I saw them running perfectly (nearly) EDIT- Oh hold on, I'm not sure if this one's chipped- all the warranty stickers are still intact on the bottom. Is there a way to remove those without ruining the stickers? Is there a good way to tell if it's been chipped, or should I just open it up?
If all the warranty stickers are intact, then it's probably just been soft modded. With just a soft mod, from what I remember it's quite a bit harder to swap hard drives, but it's been many years since I did that.
Arg, so I got sold a regular Xbox. Oh well, it's still a Crystal Xbox, and it was damn cheap. I suppose I'm going to grab XboxHDM and work with that. Thanks for the help.
Yep, with a softmod it's quite a bit harder to upgrade the HDD and you'll need a way to connect the HDD to your computer... You could just chip it yourself though.
Can't be bothered to do a full chip mod as it is, I'm not going to use this all the time. I'll just use Chimp and swap the HDD for a larger one that way, considering the Xbox already has XBMC installed and a couple emulators too.
It's easy to upgrade even if it's softmodded, just make sure when you do softmod backup the EEPROM and FTP it to your PC. It COULD be chipped just the labels have been pealed back possibly... If you have a bigger HDD it's just easier to use for games and emulators plus you'd be able to install every homebrew app as well.
It's not terribly difficult to swap a softmodded one. Just a bit more trickier. I've done it http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/203286 This guide may help!
Don't worry, I've got it going with Chimp. I re-used a 320GB HDD that I pulled from my PS2, so I should be able to put on a larger load of stuff. Just had to FTP the game on to the 8GB, then run it and swap the HDD's. It partitioned and fully copied everything for me, so I've kept all the emulators and stuff it had before, including XBMC.
make sure its lockable. ive tried 4 different hdd's i have and only one was able to lock (which was the smallest unfortunately :/ ) and chimp does work well for softmod hdd swapping. but like everyone else said xboxhdm is better