Remnantmods

Hey Guys!

Okay, so I've been thinking. My modded xbox has a modchip, and that thing is a v1.0 and was purchased in 2001. It's well over 10 years old. It makes weird noises, creaks, croaks, and sputters. The end may be near for that old dog. *knocks on wood*

I am looking to preserve some of the great things we have done over the years through Halo 2, and it got me thinking that since I have 3 other xboxes at home, maybe I should consider modding one and create a backup of my v1.0--and possibly, if the modifications works well, mod all 3 of the xboxes...just for kicks since XBL is of no issue.

Now, I did not mod my original xbox--my bro did. And I tried to softmod an xbox many years ago, and I messed it up very badly. I later found out that I should not have used a 3rd party memory stick and that I used an old slayers installation disc, both of which were incompatible and left me with Error 13 or 16. In my naivety, I did not swiftly repair the problem, and the box became scrap parts.

I don't like having failures in my life portfolio, so I am thinking about softmodding my xbox, but I have some questions. This time, if I softmod, I will do it the right way--following youtube videos and multiple instructions. (Youtube sadly wasn't created when I first attempted to softmod.)

Here is where my good friends come into the picture. I'll list my simple questions out numerically, and it would be great if you guys could help in answering them.

1. How did you mod your xbox: softmod or hardmod? Any regrets or thoughts in doing it this certain way?
2. Are there any major differences b/w softmodding and hardmodding that I should know about that may affect my desired goal?
3. If softmodding is so easy to do, why did people even both buying a modchip?

Thanks in advance for your answers. I'm trying to educate myself on this mysterious process, and every word you type will likely be beneficial to me.
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Also, I recently purchased an xbox controller plug with a female usb port. This will help me in transferring potential softmodding installers. $2.99 on ebay...let me know if y'all want the link.
I would like to do some map and vehicle skinning for Halo 2. If this turns out successful, I suspect I will be investing some time into mini creative projects like that.

I hard modded mine, which went pretty smoothly since it came preloaded with a BIOS. Xecuter CE I think it is. No problems with it at all so far.

Oh okay, I saw those when doing some research. I have never soldered before, so I am a little hesitant to start. Did you solder it yourself?

yes

I've only ever softmodded and its really easy.
All you need to do is boot a save game and it'll install a dashboard for you.
Then if you replace your dashboard with XDK (the only dashboard worth having) and you'll be able to use RTH =)

The only thing I don't know, is if you can upgrade your HDD etc but I think it is possible.

XZodia wrote:I've only ever softmodded and its really easy.
All you need to do is boot a save game and it'll install a dashboard for you.
Then if you replace your dashboard with XDK (the only dashboard worth having) and you'll be able to use RTH =)

The only thing I don't know, is if you can upgrade your HDD etc but I think it is possible.

Awesome! So glad to hear RTH works with softmod. I may use XDK as a separate dashboard to load up instead of the primary one. And yeah! I think softmods allow HDD upgrades. I found some tutorials online, but I dont think Ill do that for a while.

I softmodded mine and then 2-3 others. After the first, it took all of about 7 minutes for each of the others. Very easy to do if you follow the step-by-step instructions.
As for HDD upgrades, now that I think back I believe you could only use certain drives that the xbox would allow, but I could be wrong on this.
I did it with the original "Mech Assault" (no special editions) and a savegame. I think I still have the savegame file and the disc somewhere, but I'm sure it would cost next to nothing for a copy if you can find one. There were three other games that also allowed the exploit (One of the James bond ones I think was one of them).

Mech Assault
Splinter Cell
Agent Under Fire (James Bond)

I believe.

XZodia and Troy, how fragile is your C drive and is your modded dashboard on your E drive?

When I ask how fragile, I mean, do y'all even touch your C drive? I was told by some guy that I shouldnt even touch the C drive because it is fragile in that it will likely give me an error if I move anything around in there. Have you guys found this to be true?

Yea, I never touch the C drive with the exception of installing XDK, but you shouldn't have any other reason to.
The C drive is basically the operating system and the E drive is mostly save data.

IMO softmodding is the easiest and safest way to go, as you don't have to mess anything on your xbox hardware-related.
Some years ago, there was a mexican forum called ZXBinstaller, which hosted an autoinstaller called "ZXBInstaller" (lol) which includes lots of stuff, tools to format your HDD, install UXE exploit (softmod), install hacked gamesaves (to later copy them to a memory unit and install the exploit using MechAssault, 007 AUF or Splinter Cell game (although this is the oldest method and those games are very hard to find, as you need the ORIGINAL games, platinum hits versions won't work)), emulators, tools like Enigmah and ConfigMagic, among others.

I've softmodded 7 xboxes including the one I have now, some years ago I used to do xbox-xbox hotswap to install the exploit but this last time I used pc-xbox Hotswap, running a small linux distro with a modified xboxhdm tool which you can install a larger HDD (I have a 250 GB one) + the exploit, so after the process you just plug and play.

On the other hand, a wide variety of HDD's work for softmodded xboxes, there are still a small bunch of uncompatible drives. There is a website with a list of tested HDD's with their models and all things.

I bought a modchip because I wanted to use a custom BIOS and be able to play on XBL. I have two modchips, an Xecuter3CE (X3) and a DuoX V2 GS. I have a softmod on a 3rd console and I can do pretty much everything on that console that I can on the others, it just takes longer, like installing a new HDD or using the XDK.

The X3 is an awesome chip. It as tons of BIOS features that can be changed directly on the console. You can flash up to 6 BIOSs on it, and it supports 1MB BIOS files. It has LCD display output, although its somewhat proprietary. I'm not sure if this was an intended feature or a bug, but when I installed the XDK and launcher all I had to do was delete the dashboard config file and I had debug support strait from the BIOS menu, no need to use the XDK launcher.

The DuoX has dual bios, 2x512MB. It has basic features like enable/disable at boot, and you can flash the BIOS to something else if the default one doesn't work right.

I have had 3 xbox, 2 hardmod and 1 softmod, I'd say go for softmod, since installing the chip can be a tiny bit risky and maybe today its harder to get the hands on an xbox.

I have messed up some of these xbox a few times, once I accidentally deleted part of the softmod files, so the dash would no longer load, nor the softmod's bios.
Luckily I had a copy of the HDD key/eeprom, so I could plug the HDD to my pc, unlock it, access files and restore the softmod and dash (with the "xboxhdm" tool)

So if you are going for a softmod, definitely make a backup of your eeprom in case you ever need it.
If you have a softmod and want to use the debug Bios and XDK dash, you can too, though you need to be careful when installing the bios loader and the debug dash, or just in general, to not overwrite/delete the softmod files.