i'd like to add my props to rmenhal! great work!
i think most of the unexpected reboots i got when testing this stuff was due to disc reading problems. because of this, i recommend the following when anyone is making a hulk boot disc. fill the disc all the way up! use a big dummy file. i used a dvd movie ripped into a 3gb .iso renamed into 0dummy (no extension). make an xbox iso and burn that dvd. if i were to make another disc, i'd use a 4g dummy file.
i've never looked at the hacked st.db files before. would it be fairly straight forward to hex it into loading d:\abackup.xbe? this would be what PedrosPad had in mind i think. this would also be very useful in a future when MS forces hdd dash upgrades from every xbe they make (like the SW bonus disc). let's hope that doesn't become the norm, but if they do, soft-modders can survive thanks to this. unless they start 'repairing' st.db when they do a dashupdate...

EDIT: um, nevermind that d:\abackup.xbe non-sense. it's best to go ahead and load a pbl or something...and it's best to do that from hdd...