**Disclaimer: This description relates to previously unmodified xboxes, ver. 1.0-1.3, it could possibly also work to repair a failed or incorrect tsop flash, but I have not yet needed to try. When dealing with a ver 1.0 or 1.1, try the 3 wire trick before doing this. The "Focus" video encoder in versions 1.4-1.5 is not supported by this bios, so this method will not boot on those versions. If dealing with a ver 1.6, this will not help you at all as they do not contain a flashable bios. This is my own personal experience, your experience may vary.**
As you may know, if you repair xboxes, or are unlucky enough to have it happen to you, it is possible for a completely stock/unopened box to do the 3 boot frag. You press the power button, eject LED goes green for half a second then box turns off, light goes green again(possibly even flashes green a couple times), then box turns off again, when it powers back up a third time it flashes red and green....NICE. If a visual inspection of the motherboard shows nothing obviously wrong (un-modded, no burst capacitors, no burnt traces), then it is possible you have a corrupt bios on the TSOP. How does this happen?? I really dont know, could be due to lightning, static discharge...not sure, but anyway, there is a problem and it needs to be fixed.
In order to flash the tsop or a modchip, you must boot from the device you are flashing. So if you want to flash an LPC mounted modchip, you boot from the LPC bus, likewise if you want to flash the tsop - you must boot from the tsop. So how do you do this if the tsop is corrupt? You cant boot from the tsop, if you could you wouldnt even be fixing it.... Commonly it is stated that the only way to fix this is with a 29 wire modchip, like an Xray, which basically piggybacks/overrides the tsop to load a substitute bios in the same fashion as the original tsop would. Well 29 wires is a lot to hook up, just to have to cut out again in order to flash. I will explain how to do this with a Doux2 lpc modchip. Ya I know I already said that you must boot from the tsop to flash the tsop, but i will expalin in a bit, how/why this works (if I can, it may just be some crazy voodoo shit)
Ok, so you have a ver 1.0-1.3 motherboard that FRAGs. Install a pinheader and d0 wire. I use a Duox2 because of the 2 switchable bios banks(and its easy to hold). Make sure you leave your d0 wire a little long.... about 4" to give you a bit of room. Boot the box with x2 4981(or whatever your preferred bios is, really doesnt matter but we want to just get the box to work). Make sure that your hdd has all the files required to operate normally, make sure hdd is locked etc, we dont want any error codes when we get it to boot. I do a format/m$ dash rebuild from an auto-installer disk to be sure all the required files are on the hdd. Now if you have an exploitable game like mechassault, then you should now install your game saves, like mecheurasia. I installed a soft mod at this point (krazies ndure) because when we get it to boot we really dont wanna risk having to eject and potentially reset the box, where we would need to start over again, but the choice is yours. Boot your box with the modchip a couple times to make sure every thing seems cool.
Now you need to locate a special bios to flash to your other bios bank on the duox2. It is an old bios by evox called "tsop_d6.bin", it was packed with an older version of evolutionx dash 3921. Xbins no longer hosts evox stuff, for reasons that are none of my business, so you will have to do some hunting to find it, DONT PM ME FOR IT!!! So put "tsop d6" on your duox2's other bank(figure out how to do that yourself) *Edit file is available on xbins once again.*
Make a Eurasia flash disk and a bios disk if you are using a soft mod, or make sure you have the right bios in your mecheurasia folder to flash to your tsop. I soldered a wire on my duox2 from the bt pad to pin 9 so the chip will always be enabled. Solder your tsop write enable points now as well if you havent already.
Basically what you now need to do is boot with d6. Put your exploitable game or eurasia flash disk in the drive(you wont be able to do this with the d6 bios as you cannot eject the tray so make sure you have it in before you switch bios banks). If you power on you will note that nothing happens, eject LED flashes green, harddrive clicks, dvd revs up and down....all sorts of weird stuff. What you try to accomplish is after about, 1 to 1.5 seconds, after you press the power button, you wanna pull the chip off the pinheader... it'll take you quite a few tries to get the timing right. A few things can happen, either it will continue to 3 boot frag-no good, you may get just a solid green LED with no audio/video-no good, you may get a flubber with a yellow X, or you may get just the regular M$ boot up. I am not sure if it will work when you get the yellow x as the time i got it to do that, I didnt have my flash enable points soldered on the motherboard, so not sure if the tsop or the chip would been flashed(eurasia said flash not writeable, well of course not the chip wasnt even on the pinheader, and the write points were disconnected) If you get the regular green x with M i c r o s o f t under the x, and your soft mod loads, or exploitable game loads(which you should have in the tray), you may now flash your tsop. I would advise you to flash it with x2 4981, even if you are just returning to retail (now you can reflash whatever you want back onto the tsop after this as it should always boot now without chip)
Why does it work, we booted from the lpc?? Well, not really sure, there is something special about the bios, and the fact that you interrupt the loading process of the bios, by pulling it off the pinheader... I guess a part of the hacked bios remains in ram, and it picks up the rest of it from the tsop, or it just delays the boot process to retry the bios load more times?? Maybe the code in the bios tells it to ignore the first # of kb and substitute its own. I dont have the answer....contact the evox team as they made the bios.
I have done this now on 3 different mobos with success, all were ver 1.2/1.3 Hope this helps someone fix a tsop, or at least gives them false hope....hahahah
Thanks to Lordvader129 for making me aware of this bios(I read it in one of his posts) And thanks to team evox for making such a thing.
*edit* clarification of versions, other updated info..
This post has been edited by StrictPuppet: Jan 29 2007, 10:20 AM
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Topic: Fix A Corrupt Tsop With A Duox2 (Read 287 times)