IMPORTANT - The points E/P are for modchip control in mode 4, they may looks like just the same as a15 and d0 but they are infact far more tricky. If you are NOT A GOOD SOLDERER DO NOT attempt to solder it when first installing the modchip, it can heat up the solder and disconnect the resistor, meaning your xbox will not stay on for more than 30seconds. WARNING!!!!THIS is a the best way to do it and involves no soldering and is totally reversible
Out of the three ways to install your chameleon, there are some things that will help you in installation
1) Pin header - when installing the d0, a15, p and e wires it is often good to put a header pin onto the chip itself and then to push the wire into it - however header pins can sometimes be very sticky and thus when pulling them out it may be possible to pull the wire out of the motherboard by accident. Thus an easier way of connecting the points is to install a soldered wire with a couple of centimeters of extra wire between so it is slack. Then cut it, ideally fairly close to the chip and you can twist the wires together:it is secure enough - connects the point and much easier than mounting header pins and going to the shop to find the perfect adapter. Further to this it is a good idea to put a thin sheet of sellotape of a couple of cm's long on the bottom of the motherboard - after soldering the header pins. This way you can be sure that nomatter what gets into your xbox (for example a small drop of solder), it will never prevent the xbox from booting the chip
2) Quick solder - This is the only install I havnt tried yet and thus all I can say about this method of install is becareful not too heat the chip or xbox board up too much. Also watch for any short circuits and make sure none of the components on the chameleon touch any other live parts of the xbox motherboard.
3) Matrix Add-on - This was a bit of a pain as it required cutting lines on my matrix however I have now repaired this, a little messily for another install in future. The key thing to watch out for here is that when running the matrix on its own, before installing chameleon, check the exact positioning and try pressing parts of the chip to see where pressure needs to be applied. Once you have done this you can remove it, cut the wires, reinstall (applying pressure where you noted it and checking underneath the chip for contact positions), add on the chameleon and boot. If your lucky you should see the chameleon blue led come on, if not then just power off, wbble the matrix a bit and retry. Hopefully it wont take too much of this before it boots fine. If you are really having problems, only have one chameleon and one matrix, suspect that your chameleon may not be flashed corectly (however 4/4 worked with me), do not dispair. The last choice is the possibility that you can install the matrix normally again, and reconnect the wires which you may have already cut by using small strips of wire between the onboard components, boot, then switch and attempt to program the chameleon this way - however this is only for desperation and if you are fine with easybuy2000's return time then probably better to just do this.
Once installed, the chameleon should boot and without any flash logo should boot to chameleon cromwell bios (installed on all 4 banks out of four). From here it will automatically eject the cd tray and ask you to insert a LINUXBIO.BIN (note the caps lock!!!!) now you can follow the instructions on www.xodus-chip.com in the userguide for burning a cdrw with a blank file. If you would like to install linux you can continue from the cromwell screen and boot mandrake (or whatever takes your fancy). However, if like me you wanted Evox on your cromwell your best bet is to find a totally fresh copy of "evox d.6.bin", rename this to LINUXBIO.BIN - burn on the cd with the dummy file and when the xbox finishes loading just insert this cdrw. Now the xecuter bioses are better as they are newer and have more modifications. At the time of this edit (7th September 2003) the x2 4977 bios was best for me as it was 256k and had all the features i wanted. so you should instead rename the x2 4977 bios to LINUXBIO.BIN and put it on the cd with the dummy file. You can get nice colourmod bioses from xecuter now and they help you tell if the chameleon flashed correctly. When booting after the power off the x and xbox at the startup will be a different colour and thus that your xbox is ready to boot an evox disk or similar.
It will flash the chip in bank 0 and then power off- upon restarting it will boot evox and you can then ftp accross the new evox.ini to allow control of the flash banks (written also in chameleon userguide).
I hope this helps, it was a fairly stressful install but even so I still think the header pin is the best install, because, apart from d0, the points are not too hard. Good luck and message me with any problems/queries. Chris
Added: At the present time I am pretty sure it is impossible to flash the chameleon from pc (using matrix adapter), however it is not too complicated a program so we shall see how long it will take. Hope you enjoy your now working chameleon
Further EDIT: Dont know whether it has been said already but if you chameleon does not boot - try changing the memory location before messing around and cutting wires... etc Just a simple solution i forgot to say as the chances of all banks being bad is very low (in my opinion)
7/9/2003 EDIT: updated a little info about flashing bioses, will update further soon when i have more time
