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[s00pcan]

It took me 4 days of reading at xbox scene to gather the knowledge to mod my xbox, then I went out and bought one and had it done in about 10 minutes. I wrote this so all the info is in one place, and to give something back. I'm going to add more sections on gamesave exploits, networking, using ftp clients, and whatever else is needed. Ask me if you have any questions, because I know what I'm doing now.

- What does a softmod do? -

A softmod lets you run a hacked bios on your xbox, exactly the same as a modchip does. It is free and can be installed with or without opening your xbox, but it will take more tools to do it without opening. One method is the hard drive hotswap trick. A second would be using a gamesave exploit to trick a game into loading hacked files stored in a gamesave. Either way you go, you will be installing the same softmod package. The best one known is UDE (Ultimate Dashboard Exploit). This will install the hacked files needed to use a modchip bios and it will change your dashboard to a homebrew one that will allow you to play backed up games, ftp to transfer files to/from your computer to your xbox, and more. Once this is installed the hacked bios and new dashboard will load every time you start your xbox, acting as if you had a modchip.

- Softmod methods -

So how do you do it? Well, first decide which method you want to use. The gamesave exploit requires an original disc of one of these games: 007: Agent Under Fire, Splinter Cell, or Mech Assault (original versions, not platinum hits). You could probably get them for under $10 at a store, or just rent one. To get the hacked gamesave onto your xbox you will need a memory card that can connect to a computer, like action replay, or a xbox usb cable/adapter and a usb thumbdrive. If you don't have all this extra hardware, the other option is to hotswap your xbox hard drive to your pc and use a program called xbhdm to install the hacked files. It requires no additional hardware but you do have to open your xbox and pc to do it.

- Hard drive hotswap -

I used the hard drive hotswap trick on my xbox, so I'll go over that first. http://www.stonespnl...=showpage&pid=1 I followed this tutorial exactly and had my xbox modded within 10 minutes of getting it home. You need to download the UDE_v1.4.zip and xboxhdm_v1.9.zip from xbins or wherever. You might as well read there for info on burning the cd, but I'll explain it here too. Extract UDE_v1.4.zip and put the UDE folder from it into the linux folder of xbhdm, after you extract that too. Open up make-iso-win.bat in a text editor and add "mkisofs -allow-lowercase" in the first line. Then run the make iso win batch file and burn your iso. Turn your computer off and disconnect the cable going to your pc hard drive so it doesn't boot to that. It should boot to the new cd you made when you turn your pc. Open your xbox with a torx 20 screwdriver and just take the cover off. You'll see the hard drive on the right. Put your xbox next to your pc. Put the xbhdm cd in the disc drive and turn your pc on. It should boot the cd and go to the menu.

Now you have to turn your xbox on with the cover off. The reason you can't simply connect it to your pc and start it there is because the xbox locks the hard drive down and only it knows the code to unlock it (at least at the moment). After it loads to the original green dashboard the hard drive will be unlocked, now disconnect the grey IDE cable from your xbox hard drive and quickly plug it in the one that was attached to your pc's hard drive. Pick option 1 on xbhdm and it should detect your xbox hard drive. When you get to the command prompt type UDE -UDE2 to start installing the UDE softmod package. It will make a backup of your c drive to revert to if anything goes wrong, that will take a while. Then it will ask you a bunch of questions. If you want to know which answers are best, here you go:
UDE? y
Bios patcher? y
Which bios patcher? 3, pbl metoo
Bios? 2, Evox M8
Dashboard? 2, Evox, for now
Patch original dash? y
Linux is picky, don't type Y or yes, type simply y. Follow the onscreen instructions from here on until it says you're done, it will be safe to turn off your xbox and pc at this time. Then reconnect the xbox's IDE cable to the xbox hard drive and restart it. It should load Evox or MXM as the dashboard - congrats. Now you can load homebrew, games burned onto cd/dvds, and copy games to the hard drive. Make backups of everything just in case something bad happens. If anything goes wrong with your dashboard (configured wrong or something) just start your xbox with the disc tray out to load ltools, which can reinstall UDE or uninstall it.

- Gamesave exploit -

I have modded one xbox using splinter cell to load evox and install a softmod over the ftp server, but I'm going to wait until I mod my next one to finish this section. Ltools would not work for me, some script error at first, then once I got past that somehow it said the hard drive was read only. Whatever.

- Upgrading your hard drive -

Upgrading your hard drive is easy. First, use Evox's backup tool to get your hard drive lock code (it saves it to E:/Dashboard/Backup, or wherever you have evox installed). Copy the eeprom backup files to /xboxhdm/linux/eeprom. Next copy everything on your xbox's C and E drives besides backed up games to your pc and put them in the correct folders in xbhdm. Burn the cd with those files on it and connect your new hard drive to your computer. Boot to the cd and select option 1. At the command prompt type xboxhd, then option 1 to make the new hard drive from scratch. a new hard drive from scratch. Say yes to anything it tells you (ie: Copy C drive from cd) and it will format your new hard drive and install everything you had before.

Once the hard drive has been made from scratch you can finish the last setup step, locking the hard drive. This is where the Evox eeprom backup is used. Make sure you know your hard drive lock code in case you need to unlock it again and somehow lose the backup files. You should also know that your hard drive lock code is unique to your xbox. Reboot xbhdm and get to the main menu. Select option 3 - boot with hd locking tools. Wait for linux to load then type lockhd -a into the command prompt. After it is locked down the drive should work in your xbox, so shut off your pc and disconnect the hard drive, it's ready to be installed.

The next step is to open your xbox with a torx 20. Once it is open, disconnect the IDE cable and power cord attached to the hard drive. Then find and unscrew the orange torx 10 screw inbetween the hard drive and dvd drive (it's under the IDE cable). Once taken out you will be able to lift the hard drive tray out. Unscrew the torx 15 (well they were 15 for me) screws on the side of the hard drive tray so you can remove the original drive. Then screw your new drive in and repeat what you just did to get it back together. Start it up and it should work fine.

If you are not seeing new free space, then you need to format your F or G drives. Evox can do this by editing the menu. Open up evox.ini in a text editor and put this is in there:

Section "System Utils"
{
   Item "Format F and G",@220
   Item "Settings",ID_Settings
   Item "Flash BIOS",ID_Flash_Bios
   Item "Install Font Exploit",@212
   Item "Uninstall Font Exploit",@213
   Item "Backup",ID_Backup
   Item "Skins",ID_Skins
}

[Action_20]

Info "Format Large Hard Drive"
Progress "Formatting Large Hard Drive"
ConfigSector "\disk.bin"
Format f:
Format g:

Upload evox.ini and run evox. Go to system utils and you should see a new menu item that formats the F and G drives.