Xbox 2tb harddrive upgrade, bios problem? xbox gurus needed

Discussion in 'Modding and Hacking - Consoles and Electronics' started by citrus3000psi, Feb 18, 2014.

  1. citrus3000psi

    citrus3000psi Housekeeping, you want towel?

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    I've had my original xbox sitting in my backroom for some time; it was the console I used in college etc. Its been modified with a x-chip that looks something like this:

    X-Chip_Complete_Set400.jpg

    I recently pulled it out for some nostalgia and at the same time decided to upgrade the hard drive. I did some research and found a nice tutorial here: http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=649 In the tutorial he recommends a disc called Auto-Installer Deluxe or slayers evo x. I got both of these discs (newest versions), an sata hd adapter and a 2tb hard drive. Now for the fun part!

    Upon booting, I hop into the evolution dashboard and throw on some spiderman 2, just to check things out. Everything seems great. I get the new hard drive connected and throw in the AID disc.. I can't get this disc to boot, seems like its having a little trouble reading. I try the slayer disc next; it boots! but doesn't do shit. When trying to format the hard drive it acts like its doing something but this procedure is done in less then 10 secs. And the partition information doesn't show anything after its completed. So I jump online and start researching large hard drive xbox's... After reading it could be the bios. The bios that was originally installed on the x-xhip is an evo m7.. Not knowing much about bios's for xboxs I got the newest evo bios. Which is evo m8+. I threw that on with no problems. But slayers disc still does the same thing. Now I'm coming here looking for help.

    These are some questions I'm asking myself...

    Do I need a newer bios? I did some more reading it looks like I should be using a bios called x2 5035? Or is the bios even an issue?
    Even with the m8 bios I figured the harddrive would partition to at most 137gb? (But all the partitions just show 0 bytes in slayer after formating.)

    Is slayer install the problem? should I be trying to get aid to boot?


    Any help would be greatly appreciated.
    Thanks
     
  2. sonicdude10

    sonicdude10 So long AG and thanks for all the fish!

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    What IDE to SATA adapter are you using? There are very few models that work on the Xbox and the rest that don't give the errors you are having. Also be sure the BIOS has LBA48 on it. A lot of BIOS files only have LBA28 and that tops out in HDD capacity at 137GB. Don't remember if the M8+ has LBA48 or if it's only LBA28. Been forever since I used that one as I stick to IND-BIOS 5003 or Xecuter X2 5035 as my consoles are 128MB RAM modded.
     
  3. citrus3000psi

    citrus3000psi Housekeeping, you want towel?

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  4. APE

    APE Site Supporter 2015

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    Sure why not? The X2 BIOS line was originally intended for the X2 chip line rather than TSOP or any other chip but it works just fine across the board. I've got the 5035 running on a bank of a SmartXX on a stock XBox just fine.

    As for adapters, I pulled a SATA->IDE adapter out of an AT&T U-Verse DVR some time ago and found it works great. Good luck finding U-Verse receivers though as AT&T considers them stolen property if not returned; I'd also imagine they may have modified the mobo in the thing to do SATA natively rather than having to install an add-in board. But if you can find a 250gb model go nuts. The only problem with the U-Verse adapter was that the PCB was too wide on both ends so I had to cut up the plastic tray to get it to fit. Cutting up the PCB would've worked but I wasn't interested in relocating a voltage regulator and a handful of traces.

    The other thing I've found is that a LOT of SATA->IDE adapters will happily work when you boot up something like Slayer's X to format the drive and FTP over XBMC or whatever you want to use but as soon as you go to boot up the XBox for the first time it hangs at the X and spits out an error relating to the kernel (I've forgotten which, it doesn't matter). Best I can tell whatever the XBox does during bootup command wise isn't exactly the same as whatever Slayer's X is doing. Either that or by booting Slayer's X instead of going direct it gives the HDD and adapter more time to spin up and get to a position of being ready to work. I've been tempted to power the drive separately and in advance but I really don't want to bother with building some sort of staggered power system similar to that used to do dual HDDs in old Tivos whose PSUs couldn't handle spinning two drives up at once.
     
  5. citrus3000psi

    citrus3000psi Housekeeping, you want towel?

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    Thanks for the info. I'll try a new bios tonight. I also ordered a 2tb wd green and a new pata adapter, the sabernet one this time. So we'll see what happens.
     
  6. citrus3000psi

    citrus3000psi Housekeeping, you want towel?

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  7. sonicdude10

    sonicdude10 So long AG and thanks for all the fish!

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    Congrats man. I have the Kingwin one. Works perfectly. Now I need a 2TB drive. I'm thinking WD Red. They seem best suited for this sort of thing with high IO operations.
     
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