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[rmathiot]

Here's the steps to get the console version working properly:
1) Follow the steps to get the files on the flash drive and write the mbr for grub4dos
1b) Download MHDD and copy the files from the downloaded zip file to /MHDD directory in the root of the flash drive.
2) If using Ndure 3.1, prepare it as you would normally and copy the files to the /hdm/ndure directory on the flash drive
2b) Download and copy ndure2 (modified ndure 3.1 script just for xboxhdm2) to the /hdm/ndure directory on the flash drive.
3) Put the eeprom.bin file in the /eeprom directory from the xbox you want to build a hard drive for.
4) Eject the flash drive properly, insert it into the computer you're going to lock/unlock the hd with while the computer is off.
5) Connect a power molex connector from your computer to the xbox hard drive, do not connect the ide cable just yet.
6) Make sure that no other devices are on the IDE channels and make sure the xbox hd's jumper is set to master.
7) Start up the computer, go into the BIOS by pressing a specific key when the computer brand logo shows up.
Disable automatic mode for the primary ide channel, and change the boot order to boot to the flash drive.
9) Save and Exit the BIOS
10) When the computer boots to the lime green boot menu, press the down or up arrow key to cancel the countdown.
11) Connect the IDE cable to the xbox hard drive.
12) Select Slax ... and press Enter
13) Login to slax using username, "root" , and password, "toor"
14) Type xboxhd2 and press Enter.
15) Using the unlock or lock option, allow the system to determine the HDD Key to lock or unlock the hard drive. This key is based on more than these three things: eeprom.bin, Model number, and Serial number. So each hard drive will have a unique key depending on the eeprom file. Keep that in mind and watch what you write down. The HDD Key is a 20 byte key given in hex. Record this hex number.
16) Exit the unlock or lock option by typing "no".
17) Type poweroff and press Enter. If your computer doesn't shutdown completely, press the power button and it will initiate the shutdown sequence.
18) Unhook the IDE cable from the xbox hard drive (Leave the molex power connector connected) when it shuts off.
19) Power the computer back on, press up or down at the menu to cancel the countdown, connect the ide cable to the xbox hard drive.
20) Select FREEDOS and press Enter
21) Type cd MHDD, and then type MHDD and press Enter.
22) MHDD will load. This tool is extremely powerful. It bypasses the BIOS programming and communicates directly with the IDE channel. We are going to use it to lock or unlock the hard drive. Type PORT and press enter
23) Type the number of the xbox drive and press enter.
24) Using another computer google the extended ascii table and use it to convert the hex hd key you wrote down to dec or decimal numbers and write the individual decimal number down.
25) If you are unlocking the xbox hd, type UNLOCK and press enter.
25b) Type 0 and press enter
25c) Now this is the fun part. Grab the decimal numbers you wrote down and type them one by one by holding down the ALT key while you type the number on the Numeric pad. When you finish typing one number release the ALT key and a character will appear on the screen. One character represents a byte in hex, or 8 bits. Continue entering all the decimal numbers in this way. When you finish count the number of characters on the line and verify that there is 20 characters. Press Enter.
25d) If you entered the hex bytes in properly, it will say "Done." in green. Type DISPWD and press enter. Repeat step 25b-25c.
25e) It should say "Done" in green. This means the password is disabled until we choose to reenable it. Verify this is true by typing EID and press enter. Under security it should say high, OFF.
25f) Type Exit, and press enter. Turn off the computer. Unplug the ide cable from the xbox hard drive.
26) Turn on the computer, press up or down once you reach the lime green menu to cancel the countdown. Plug the ide cable into the xbox hard drive.
27) Select Slax ... and press Enter.
28) Type xboxhd2 and press Enter.
29) Type yes and press Enter.
30) Type 2 and press Enter to enter into xboxhdm
31) At this point, QEMU is loaded which mounts the flash drive as type msdos. A type of MSDOS is an issue because we will be copying files that have more than 8 characters in their filenames. We need to unmount the flash drive and remount it as type vfat so that the flash drive's files can be read with more than 8 characters. Assuming that /dev/hdc is your flash drive, type the commands below, pressing Enter after each line:

CODE

umount /dev/hdc1
umount /xboxhdm
mount -t vfat /dev/hdc1 /xbox
mount --bind /xbox/hdm /xboxhdm

If this completes successfully, we can see that the file names are now as they should be. This will prevent error 21 from showing up and freezing on the xbox logo at startup.
32) Type xboxhd and press Enter
33) Build the xbox drive by following the options on the screen. You should be familiar with xboxhdm; rtfm. Once you are finished press 8 and enter to Quit xboxhdm.
34) Type xbrowser and press enter to verify the file structure of the xbox hard drive or to launch the modified ndure script for ndure 3.1. You should know how to install ndure; rtfm.
35) Press F10 to Quit xbrowser (Midnight Commander)
36) Type poweroff to initiate the shutdown sequence. If it doesn't shutdown fully, press the power button on the computer to start the shutdown sequence for sure. Wait until the computer is off.
37) Unplug the ide cable to the xbox hdd.
38) Turn on the computer, at the lime green menu hit an up or down key to cancel the countdown. Plug the ide cable into the xbox hard drive.
39) Select FREEDOS and press enter.
40) Type cd MHDD and press enter
41) Type MHDD and press enter
42) In MHDD, type PORT and press enter.
43) Press the number corresponding to the xbox hard drive and press enter.
44) Type PWD, press enter.
45) Type 0, press enter.
46) CAREFULLY type the 20 character hdd code generated for that specific hard drive by using the method in step 25c. DOUBLE CHECK your number. Ensure that there's twenty characters on the line. Press enter to lock the hard drive.
47) Type EID to verify that it's locked.
48) Type EXIT to quit MHDD. Turn off the computer.
49) Moment of Truth... Unplug the xbox hard drive from your computer (molex connector and ide cable) and plug it back into the xbox. It should load up UnleashX perfectly without errors if you used Ndure 3.1. If you used M$ Dash files, it should load up the M$ Dash just fine.
50) DONE!

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(rmathiot @ Feb 2 2010, 05:11 PM)

40) Type cd MHDD and press enter
41) Type MHDD and press enter
42) In MHDD, type PORT and press enter.
43) Press the number corresponding to the xbox hard drive and press enter.
44) Type PWD, press enter.
45) Type 0, press enter.
46) CAREFULLY type the 20 character hdd code generated for that specific hard drive by using the method in step 25c. DOUBLE CHECK your number. Ensure that there's twenty characters on the line. Press enter to lock the hard drive.
47) Type EID to verify that it's locked.

Good work   but why do we need MHDD (and switch to FreeDOS) ? Doesn't lockhd and unlockhd commands work in linux console mode? Typing in password manually is error-prone   I also made hdparm available.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, what changes were made to ndure script?

[rmathiot]

HARD DRIVE ISSUES
With my particular hard drive (Seagate ST9100824A 100GB 2.5"), no other tools (Linux and/or Dos) could lock it properly.
- ATAPWD doesn't allow extended ascii characters so I couldn't enter in decimal numbers past 127.
- LOCKHD said "Device Not Ready" (I made the properly changes to my BIOS and put it on the ide cable at boot menu).
- LOCKHD (linux) said "Done!" but the drive status said the drive wasn't locked and I verified that indeed it wasn't locked.
- I tried all of these on multiple machines... same errors received and the different computers had different chipsets.
- I spent a week of free time trying to lock my hard drive

+ MHDD was the only tool that could lock my hard drive successfully, because it doesn't have to go through the BIOS to access the Hard drive.
+ MHDD supports extended ascii code, which allowed me to enter in the hex numbers to ascii up to decimal 255.
+ I used it to lock my hard drive on a PC with the Intel 875 Express chipset, a chipset that has been reported to have trouble locking hard drives.
+ UNLOCK (linux) was able to unlock my Xbox retail hard drive with the Intel 875 Express chipset PC.

NDURE SCRIPT CHANGES
1. Deleted the checks for the xbox hard drive and the cdrom at the top (XboxHDM 2.1 already checks for us).
2. Replaced every instance of the directory "xbox" with "xbox2" so it wouldn't interfere with the Flash drive mount to the "xbox" directory. In other words, I found that it was installing the ndure files to my flash drive because of the "xbox" mount point.
3. Replaced every instance of the directory "CD" with "xboxhdm" so that it would point to the correct mount point.

HARD DRIVE BACKUP
+ Used XboxHDM 2.1 to backup the files from my Hard drive to my Flash Drive (16GB) using Midnight Commander (xbrowser). It froze part of the way through, because there were some errors in copying certain files.
+ Used Xplorer360 in Windows Vista with Administrator Privileges. Froze on the same files that xbrowser did, but worked great otherwise.
+ Instead of using xbrowser, I tried using the linux copy program, "cp" with:

CODE

umount /dev/hdc1
umount /xboxhdm
mkdir /flash
mkdir /E
mount -t vfat /dev/hdc1 /flash
mount -t fatx /dev/hda50 /E
mkdir /flash/backupE
cp -Rp /E /flash/backupE

Froze on the same files, but worked nonetheless for the rest of the files.

- dynebolic 1.4.1 (LiveCD) distro didn't work, because it couldn't find the fatx type
- xUbuntu (LiveCD) could've possibly worked, but didn't with my computer setup.

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(rmathiot @ Feb 4 2010, 09:52 AM)

NDURE SCRIPT CHANGES
1. Deleted the checks for the xbox hard drive and the cdrom at the top (XboxHDM 2.1 already checks for us).
2. Replaced every instance of the directory "xbox" with "xbox2" so it wouldn't interfere with the Flash drive mount to the "xbox" directory. In other words, I found that it was installing the ndure files to my flash drive because of the "xbox" mount point.
3. Replaced every instance of the directory "CD" with "xboxhdm" so that it would point to the correct mount point.

I hope you don't mind, I've uploaded your ndure script to xboxhdm2.1 sourceforge. I'll take it down if you do mind and drop me a PM.

It's obvious you know what you are doing and it's always good for the scene to have an alternative way of locking and unlocking the xbox hdd.  

I'm still dreaming of the day the equivalent of Textbook's tutorial of softmodding with hotswapping and xboxhdm2.1 comes along  

[rmathiot]

QUOTE(ldotsfan @ Feb 4 2010, 03:37 AM)

I'm still dreaming of the day the equivalent of Textbook's tutorial of softmodding with hotswapping and xboxhdm2.1 comes along  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif)

I'm sure it will. I love xboxhdm 2.1, and you did a great job making it. Floppy discs are not found in new pcs and cd-roms are becoming obsolete. That makes it difficult to use the older version on xboxhdm (v1.9). Also, it's harder to use because of the different kernel versions (with Ndure). You have to reburn the cd for every different kernel version. With xboxhdm 2.1, you don't have to waste cds and you can use a flash drive and just switch out the kernel versions (in Ndure). Thanks for the great work!

You're free to upload my ndure script to sourceforge. I took two semesters worth learning the history of unix/linux and I'm familiar with the basic linux commands. I was somewhat disappointed to find that the linux copy command, "cp," doesn't include the v switch, or verbose switch. In the newer versions of the cp command it's included and it allows you to see the files being transferred on the command line.

+ I'd like to request that the flash drive be properly mounted as "vfat" instead of "msdos" on startup in qemu so that the user doesn't have to unmount and remount everytime. (If you want me to do this, I can).
+ Secondly, a more flexible way to switch from slax, qemu, and FreeDOS for those that wish to use MHDD so that you don't have to restart the computer so much during the process. (One way to do this is to be able to launch any of the tools (Dos or Linux) from slax and be able to exit those to return back to the slax login.
+ Thirdly, a linux program that generates an mhdd script (to lock or unlock) based on the key to lock the hard drive from the eeprom analysis done in "lockhd", to avoid mistyping the lock and unlock keys and also to save time.
+ Fourth, a choice between grub4dos, syslinux, and the modifications to add to a flash drive that has other bootable programs on it with grub4dos or syslinux installed.
+ Finally, a one-click program to automatically generate the bootable flash drive (For Windows and Linux).

I could do these modifications myself if I had access to the algorithm that generates the hdd key based on the eeprom (ie. "lockhd" from linux). I would also like the source code for fatx mount type. Let me know if you're interested.

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(rmathiot @ Feb 7 2010, 06:46 AM)

I'm sure it will. I love xboxhdm 2.1, and you did a great job making it.

I didn't do it alone. scullc and fwz came in with critical pieces to solve the puzzle together and we had to rely on many others along the way.
 

QUOTE(rmathiot @ Feb 7 2010, 06:46 AM)

I could do these modifications myself if I had access to the algorithm that generates the hdd key based on the eeprom (ie. "lockhd" from linux). I would also like the source code for fatx mount type. Let me know if you're interested.

Please feel free to make modifications as you see fit. The development thread documented my thought processes and source code is available on sourceforge. AFAIK ldots never released his modifications to hdtool (I gathered he made changes for the xbox 1.6/1.6b eeprom based on his posts). However the hdtool source is available. I also attempted to modify hdparm source to accept hexadecimal passwords but never completed the modifications as I realized I could simply reuse the hdtool binary from ldots's xboxhdm.

Xbox linux documented the algorithm for the xbox hdd locking mechanism.

At this stage of the xbox life cycle, I think it will be a challenge to find testers for your proposed modifications but nevertheless good luck for your endeavours    xboxhdm2.1 actually took more than a year to complete and today I still don't own a rig with the necessary requirements to test it myself but that didn't deter me at all from attempting    

[rmathiot]

QUOTE(ldotsfan @ Feb 6 2010, 08:47 PM)

I didn't do it alone. scullc and fwz came in with critical pieces to solve the puzzle together and we had to rely on many others along the way.

 
Well, tell them thank you as well, and send them free beer for me! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

QUOTE

Xbox linux documented the algorithm for the xbox hdd locking mechanism.

Thanks for the link!

I learned about grub4dos and syslinux when I participated in UBCD4Win. I learned so much about USB booting. I should be able to whip something up. Thanks for your help everyone.

[skypnd]

Hello, I have spent the last couple of nights reading up on how to correctly setup and test.
Due to my current (and only) desktop hardware, I can not use xboxhdm 1.9 because isolinux complains about my bios at the very beginning  and then fails to detect the cdrom drive after completely booting(the very one it booted from   ).

So I decided to give 2.1 a shot, the GUI was giving me errors trying to run rmathiot's modified ndure script ( something about cp couldn't stat. This is most likely from me incorrectly populating C & E), So I tried the command line version which worked for me, kinda, after step 2 , cp errors and says cannot copy because there is no more disk space, and then mkdir errors (I don't recall which files or directories but I mounted the drive and the /C was only 499MB?). I now have unleashx running as my dashboard, but I believe I need to be running evox? From all the tutorials I assumed it came with ndure, but it is no where to be found and I'm thinking it is because I ran out of space when running the modified ndure script. (It was a virgin Xbox I had laying in the corner of my room for who knows how long, XBOX 1.0, K:4032 I believe if that matters.)

I'm kinda stumped as to what to do right now. My goals were to get at the EEPROM so I could put in a bigger HDD. From reading, It appears that I can do that by making a installer disk for evox or maybe even FTPing it. But I would like to get this process down with out any kinks.
 
I have a bunch of music and old save games, I'm thinking of nuking those and then trying again.

Any ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated!

Also, I must apologize if I have missed anything in the tutorials or F.A.Q.'s. This community has an impressive amount of information that I've barely begun to digest, many Thank Yous to all those who have contributed their time and efforts over the years!

[rmathiot]

UnleashX is the default dashboard that comes with Ndure. Just download the latest Evox dashboard from the usual places. Extract it and ftp it over to your box in Binary mode. Run it as an app from UnleashX. One more thing. Rename the evoxdash.xbe to default.xbe. Once Evox is up, you can backup your eeprom.

[Heimdall]

For clarity, you only need to rename evoxdash.xbe to default.xbe if you want it to appear in your applications menu. You can just ftp it across as-is, and run it from UnleashX file explorer without renaming it.

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(skypnd @ Feb 11 2010, 03:33 PM)

I'm kinda stumped as to what to do right now. My goals were to get at the EEPROM so I could put in a bigger HDD. From reading, It appears that I can do that by making a installer disk for evox or maybe even FTPing it. But I would like to get this process down with out any kinks.

Disable virtual eeprom with e:\ndts\default.xbe before making an eeprom backup. My sig has the details on the various methods for softmod hdd upgrades. xboxhdm2.1 can be used for that purpose as well.

[skydra]

I built my flash drive fine but and got this to boot fine also. The problem I have is after I open the terminal and run xboxhd2. I get to the select drive option but my mounted drive is on sda1. And it does not let me manually type in the location. So how would i change mount location or how would i fix it to allow a manual location to be typed in.

Thanks guys!

[skydra]

I wonder if i can get around this problem by using the lite version.  Oh i can not use 1.9 because it is a sata hard drive(1tb) and from what I have read this is the best way to go about formatting it since it is a virgin drive and my xbox is soft modded not chipped.

I have a laptop but i have access to some desktops at work so I will try messing with it more later today and post my results. If anyone has any suggestions they would help alot.

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(skydra @ Feb 12 2010, 09:42 AM)

 The problem I have is after I open the terminal and run xboxhd2. I get to the select drive option but my mounted drive is on sda1.

Are you referring to the select drive option for the various possible IDE connections that the xbox hdd is attached to? It has nothing to do with the location of your mounted usb drive.   Or am I missing something here?

[skydra]

Yes and No
Yes I am referring to when xboxhd2 asks where your hard drive is located that needs to be formatted and than asks you to select a number 1-5. ex. hda1

Now where my usb drive is mounted does not matter, I understand that. But my hard drive i wish to format is mounted on sda1, and this is not an option(referring to the 1-5 options in the selection). I have tried to change where the hard drive is mounted by using the terminal and mount commands but that does not seem to be working and i can not put in a manual location.

Thanks for the quick reply idotsfan.