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[ChrisF]

1) With Evox M7 you have no idea if your chip is actually installed correctly as it looks exactly like the MS bios (meaning that your very first media and burn may have been fine and it's getting rejected cause the MS bios won't run it).  You need a bios that looks visibly different (like all Xecuter bioses which say Xecuter instead of MS under the green X).  Either use Xecuter or download XbTool, color the M7 bios, and reflash.  So many people have been burned by this and wasted a shitload of time.

2) If after that you still have an issue - I have a boot disc tips tutorial in my sig. Give it a read.  If goes into the point above and how to logically test your burning issues.  A few common issues: not renaming the evoxdash.xbe to default.xbe so it boots from the DVD drive, burning a data cd instead of the XISO image (if your computer reads it and you see a file it is a data CD), not properly creating an XISO image etc...

It's much easier to test this stuff in isolation after confirming the others are correct - my tutorial will take you through steps.

[ChrisF]

QUOTE

HOW A MODCHIP WORKS: Turning the chip 'on' only serves to ground D0. When D0 is grounded the Xbox looks for a bios on the LPC points instead of the usual TSOP location on the motherboard. If the Xbox can't find a bios on the LPC it frags (turns itself on/off and flashes lights). With the chip off it never looks to the LPC so there is no problem. It's literally that simple. All a modchip really does is hold a bios for you.

If you see the MS bios and have your chip enabled - your chip does not have a good connection to D0.  If it did there is no way you'd see that bios since that bios does not exist on your LPC mounted chip - it's on the TSOP chip on the motherboard.  You'd either load the bios from the LPC chip (XBIT) or frag (no bios or chip not on the LPC properly).

Reinstall/reseat your chip - pay particular attention to D0.  If that fails after a try or two, you can scrape D0 a bit to try to remove some of the coating around the ring.  Be very careful.

EDIT FOR COMPLETENESS: there is also an incredibly small outside chance that something is wrong with the grounding mechanism on the chip (I have never seen a single report of this happening BTW so assume install error if you don't want to bet against lottery style odds).

[ChrisF]

You should read the Basic Installation Tutorial in my sig, it explains all the symptoms and solutions (this is why it's linked in the Complete Newbies Guide that's stickied in the newbie forum).  A frag means that your D0 is correct but either:

a) your chip is unflashed, bios bad, or in the case of Xbit your bios size must equal the bank size or it's considered a bad bios (ie 256K bios need s 256K bank)

b ) your LPC points aren't lined up properly so reseat your chip again (ignore those damn indicator lights - they are worthless when things go wrong).

c) in rare cases you can have localized damage to the LPC area of the motherboard.  Xbox will function fine with chip uninstalled or disabled but broken LPC will prevent any/all bioses from loading from a chip.