x-box mod for my McLaren temple

I have an X-box that I got modded last night. This involves a lot of soldering and plugging in of new chips and boards--get a nerdy friend to do this if you're not handy with a soldering iron. After all was said and done, it now is a windows media center PC as well as an Xbox game console. With wireless networking, I can now stream all the media in my PC directly to my plasma screen--all my music, all my pictures, all my download videos, etc., etc. Plus, when I wake up in the morning, it tells me the weather, etc.

Basically, instead of having to look at VCDs and downloaded media on my computer screens while sitting at my desk, I can access them from my TV while in bed.

That video that was posted here a couple of days ago looks fabulous on a TV screen.

The whole thing only cost $60 bucks, and I highly recommed you do it if you have an Xbox. Apparently you can buy modded Xboxes, and they often come loaded with 50 or more games on the bigger hard drive that the sellers put inside.

I hate those "towers" full of audio/video components that people end up with. This allows me to keep things nice and simple and still have additional high-tech capabilities. And it's cheap too.

I highly recommend you guys do this. You can download shows in HD using bittorrent and stream them to your PC. Oh yeah, I have heard that there's a mod that gives you TIVO capabilities too--when I get a bigger hard drive I will download and install that as well. Imagine 200 GB of McLaren vids--on demand. :)

Cool.

DONT PLAY HALO 2 ONLINE OR WITH YOU XBOX HOOKED UP.

Why? Because halo 2 automatically updates everytime u play the game with it hooked up. By purchasing the game and playing it you agree to allow microsfot to do this. But while in the process they have a program that checks for modded xboxs. Even if you don't have another set of bios loaded there is still a history of them on your xbox. And if it finds them u will be PERMENTLY banned from xbox live. As you cna't change your xbox ip adress *as of now ppl are working on it*. Little info i though i'd share with yah most of my friends with modded xboxs have a seconds one.

Yeah, thanks for the warning, I knew about that. There's two theories on the X-box mod detection. One is as you say. But a lot of people think Microsoft takes an image the first time you log in, and then compares it to the image it takes the next time you log in.

So if you log in for the first time after modding your Xbox, then MS should not be able to figure this out. But then, who knows?

To be honest, I don't have too much interest in games and online gaming. I just don't have the time to master them so I get frustrated easily. I was pretty good at the last version of Gran Turismon on PS2 but that's it. I prefer racing sims...got my eye on this little number-- www.forcedynamics.com. Problem is, buying it would take a hefty chunk out of my McLaren fund. I am trying to talk a friend into buying it, though :D

http://img177.echo.cx/img177/4028/dsc000042tp.th.jpg (http://img177.echo.cx/my.php?image=dsc000042tp.jpg)


That problem is really easy to solve!
Just install a mod switch and you can swap between modified and regular Xbox layout.
The switch is located on the bottom left on my Xbox and you can see it as a blueish thing.
Mine has a 250GB HD and a universal dvd player who is capable of any kind of data files.
I also have a HD modded PS2 with a 100GB HD.

And BTW, you can change your Xbox IP adress.

did the finally come out with a tool to change your ip. As for the switch microsoft was nialing some with switches also. I've thought bout modding mine alot. But one of the main reasons i wanted to was to use it like a media center. but if i can get my damn radeon to get the tv out to work i don't have to worry bout that.

How was the d0 point? ;) I've been there, back when you had to de-solder the 1.0's LPC.

Glad to hear you got it working well. I'm just curious about which chip and software package you are using.

Good luck with the TIVO mod.

Well, the D0 was a real bitch, for sure :). It took my friend about 6 hours to solder and de-solder and re-solder everything...! Finally it worked right. I knew better than to waste my time like this, so I chilled out and did other stuff. I hate dealing with frustrating problems and I am sure this would have driven me mad. I have the latest X-box so it was the most complicated version. Which meant lots of extra soldering! Anyways, it got done, and all I had to do was buy him a plane ticket to Vegas in exchange. I had a coupon lying around (which I would not have used) so it cost me virtually nothing!

I got the kit which allows me to switch BIOS and reboot so Microsoft will never find out mine is modded. I don't play online anyways. And yes, you can switch IP address on your X-box, but that would never help for two reasons:

1. The IP address that counts is the one on your firewall. Everything behind it is irrelevant. No matter how much you change it, the firewall address will not change. If you change this, then yes, you will appear as a different IP address on the internet. Depending on your ISP's addressing scheme, this may or may not be even possible. With file and folder synchronizing software, it's not hard to also keep the Xbox's hard drive updated as you download more songs into your PC.

2. I am very sure Microsoft uses the Xbox's network cards MAC identifier, which is permanent and cannot be changed. MS must use this, as several Xboxes can be on the same subnet behind one firewall. If only external (firewall) IP addresses were to be used, then they would all show up as the same IP address. If only internal IP addresses were to be used by MS (the ones on the Xboxes), then many, many Xboxes around the world would show up with identical addresses, as most people use the same 192.168.x.y subnetting scheme.

If all this went over your head, I salute you. It's honestly not worth knowing this crap. The only thing to understand is, MS knows your Xbox, and if you mod it, get a mod chip that can disable the mod chip BIOS. Simply disable your mod chip BIOS when you go online, and MS won't know your Xbox is modded.

I like the Xbox media player but it's a very basic set of software utilities. I will look around for better software to run with the mod chip, as there's a lot of other features that I would like. Ultimately, I suppose I will get a media center PC because I would like to run scripts and have it play various media at set times. I really hate adding to the clutter of audio/video components, though, so I hope to find good software for the Xbox.

Also, it takes quite a while to build the list of over 16,000 songs that I have as mp3s, if I browse the directory over the network. If you want to play music with the Xbox, copy your songs over to its hard drive--it will be able to access and catalog that far quicker.

M$ refers to your xbox through its EEPROM. You are correct in that the internal IP address of the Xbox is irrelevant, and the important one is your gateway's external IP. I have found it (through a packet sniffer) interesting that the Xbox transmits its internal IP to Live when you sign in.

In case you haven't been here already: http://xbox-scene.com/tutorials.php

Check out the media players and file managers. Xbox-Scene is a great site. Good luck!

Yeah, I know about xbox-scene...I find it somewhat useless in that there's too much info there. For instance, there's over 3,000 pages in the newbie section. Do they really expect people to wade through 3,000 threads before hitting the main forums and going through tens of thousands more? Bah.

I get the feeling we might be boring everyone here...I will PM you with questions if that's ok. You seem very knowledgeable :ylsuper: