installed a xbox modchip today

i may be about 5 years late but hey, good practice with soldering.

i received my modchip + replacement tip for my iron (mine was getting very worn out) on 6/5.
i got the xbox later that day around 10pm, by that time i had prepared the pinheader (soldering the female slot onto the chip itself, and bridging the bt point, because i always turn it on with eject and quite frankly itd just be annoying.
anyways, i took apart the box and much to my surprise i did not have a 1.6 (which i was actually thinking id get), and i thought, hey less solder points.
i put in the pinheader, soldered that in, and soldered the male pins to the board. i tested the board to make sure i did everything good. booted to main bios, and went ahead and soldered the d0 point on the bottom of the board to the chip. plugged in, started to frag. i thought oh great, i must of fucked up the d0. by this time it was about 11ish pm.
so i redid that point, and frag. i wasted almost 2 hours trying to do this. i gave up and unplugged my iron.

you know what happned after that? i noticed it was FRAGining because i did solder the point correctly (it frags because it looks for the bios and cant find it), so i plugged in my iron again so i can redo the pinheader (which i noticed some points were a little off). the damn iron wasn't heating up anymore. so i thought it may work in the morning, and i went to bed. tried plugging it in, no heat. i took it apart (BIG mistake), electrocuted myself by touching a component (thought it would just be hot, silly me) but atleast i knew it was getting electricity. i guess the iron had a warrenty and the company i got it from shipped me a new one for free (which i got today).

after rushing down to get the mail, i came back to my 'soldering station' (my desk), and soldered some of the pinheader on the board better (only 2, wasnt bad) and added a lil solder on 2 on the chip too, resoldered the d0 point (it came off earlier today hah), but finally got it installed :D

unfortunately the controller my bf gave me with it does not work in flashbios or cromwell so i couldnt flash it and set up the new dash and all that, but hot damn i cant wait for tomorrow when he gives me an original m$ controller and the dvd remote so i can flash and set everything up.

im excited :D

Comments

Rabbi Nevins
nice, strange coincidence. I just got an old xbox and was about to mod it. I was thinking I must be the only one around still modding those old things hah! So how hard was the soldering? Thats what im concerned about. I dont have very much experience :/
 
MFDC12
[quote name='Rabbi Nevins' post='2901374' date='Jun 9 2010, 08:44 PM']nice, strange coincidence. I just got an old xbox and was about to mod it. I was thinking I must be the only one around still modding those old things hah! So how hard was the soldering? Thats what im concerned about. I dont have very much experience :/[/quote]

it was actually really easy, even though the size of the point threw me off (i was actually thinking they would be 3x as large, pictures are misleading) but it was easy. its the second (soldered) modchip (first was a wasabi zero wireless, but if im bored it may just become wired soon haha) i ever installed (first being a ps1, which was actually harder than the xbox). the hardest was the d0, be sure to use the bottom d0 point because that is sooo much easier and you wont need to mess with the top one which is smaller and youd need to scrape.

http://www.dynatron.org/howto/XBOX/hackit/.../Duo/index.html
i used that as a reference, thats the chip i have. should be the same for all duo chips though, not sure what chip you got
 
431unknown
What chip did you use? I have 4 I'd like to mod but it's been awhile since I did one and I know the chip I originally used ain't around any more( xenium ice). Also where did you buy it from?
 
MFDC12
i used a duox2 gs
i got it from: http://www.dynatron.org/store/
if you are a xbox-scene member, email him afterwards, you get a discount and he will refund you. you can just register and not post anything (i had 0 posts and still got it)
 
431unknown
Yeah I frequent the XS don't post too much there tho just mostly read the scene news. I think that's the chip I'm going to end up gettin all the others are way over priced no or no longer in stock. I was thinking of getting it from here http://www.eurasia.nu/shop/product_info.ph...products_id=270


Hell I'll just buy 4 of them from that site you linked to there are only 14$ and free shipping.
 
YayMii
You guys used modchips? Why? There are easier (and cheaper) ways of modding your Xbox. I opened my Xbox, grabbed an IDE cable, and I transferred the hacked Splinter Cell save to my HDD using the 'hotswap trick'.
I did this 2 months ago.
 
MFDC12
to me a modchip would be easier than finding an ar (i also wouldnt prob be able to do the hotswap method, i dont have a desktop), and a game that works with it (they made versions that prevented the method iirc). with a modchip you just go in solder get out (the reason why that didnt happen to me was because i didnt check all the solder points, which is a no-no :P).

in the long run:
ar: ~25 bucks +3.99 shipping used
splinter cell: 1.40 + 3.99 shipping used
thats more than twice what the modchip cost me, which was $13 shipped.

anyways, wouldn't it be dangerous to flash the bios with no fallback anyways? with a modchip atleast you get 2 banks to use incase you fuck an install up. if you screw up a softmod, chances are youll need a modchip anyways to fix it.
 
431unknown
I did a soft mod once ,actually two. The one went great the other not so well and i don't want to repeat the pain in the ass bs again even more so since they aren't my XBOX. Putting in a chip such as a DUO2 is pretty easy and I'm not the one paying for them any way. If you don't have the proper tools ( ar and an exploitable game and a realy good tut) soft mod can be rather difficult. I'm with MFDC12 on a mod chip atleast on the original XBOX, but soft mod rules on Wii and PS2.
 
George Dawes
Congrats.

Surprised you found soldering a 12c508 to a PSX harder - they are the easiest mods I ever did; could do 100 in a few hours.

I just softmod xboxen these days, quicker and offers pretty much the same functionality. No need to buy an AR btw, just solder a standard USB cable to a pad. Takes 2mins and is good practice. Splinter Cell is readily available here for £0.49p (free shipping, just pick it up from the shop =] ). It is always fun to solder a chip into a console however.
 
MFDC12
well its not that it wasnt easy - it was very easy. the thing that gave me the trouble was soldering the wires onto the legs of the chip,i kept screwing up (but im also better at that now, ive been practicing alot since december when i installed it)
 
George Dawes
I suppose it depends what model psx you have too, the 100x series was a walk in the park, as was the 7xxx series. Some of the others were a little harder.
 
hankchill
Way too much work to hack an Xbox.

Crack it open, hotswap the IDE cable to a PC with the XboxHDM, and install Ndure with UnleashX to the drive. No hacked saves, nothing needed. I've done like 10 of them in the past month.
 
George Dawes
If you are going to the bother of opening it up to hotswap, I'd rather put a chip in anyway.

I like the softmod because I just need to copy a file to HD, run game, once I have ftp access it's as good as done. Taking the case apart is the longest bit (not that it takes that long), so whilst that is done may as well stick a chip in.
 
MFDC12
[quote name='George Dawes' post='2902759' date='Jun 10 2010, 12:59 PM']I suppose it depends what model psx you have too, the 100x series was a walk in the park, as was the 7xxx series. Some of the others were a little harder.[/quote]

i had a 5501, the actual points on the mobo were easy (i soldered the wires on the mobo easy, maybe 6 min), what i had trouble with was soldering it onto the chip, i wasnt adding enough solder and my having trouble positioning the wire onto the chip.

@hankchill

i also agree with george dawes, if you are just going to open the console you might as well just solder in a chip.
 

Blog entry information

Author
MFDC12
Views
227
Comments
28
Last update

More entries in Personal Blogs

More entries from MFDC12

Share this entry

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • BakerMan
    I rather enjoy a life of taking it easy. I haven't reached that life yet though.
  • AncientBoi
    BakerMan @ BakerMan: