Print

[blowbox]

hi people,

i purposely flashed iND-BiOS 5004 BETA (from xbins) on the TSOP of my yet not hard- but sofmodded xbox which was previously working fine with iND-BiOS 5003 on TSOP. well, i know i'm a momo testing beta bioses on a TSOP, thanks

the box comes up with eject led green static, starting to blink after some seconds and finally FRAGs after a lot more seconds. no a/v at all.

tried the "3-wire trick" on a kinda esoteric approach with no positive result, BUT after removing the "3-wire-trick" the xbox suddenly came up with video showing the familiar "loading iND-BiOS" logo but stayed there forever. it's not reproducable, but from time to time, especially when the xbox was cold before it's happening. tried with harddisk and stuff connected, but still no positive result.

well, i went out to buy a SmartXX LT OPX and did some routined soldering job using the pinheader installation method on my good'ol'xbox. surprinsingly the box FRAGs whenever turned on with the LT OPX plugged in. so i checked my soldering job, measured traces (carefully), tried alternative D0 on topside, read the forums, ... but it's all just fine. removing the LT OPX renders the xbox just as before.

next day i asked the technican at the shop i bought the LT OPX in to review my situation. he soon told me that the LT OPX would not be able to boot on a system without a working BIOS on TSOP, more specifically without a M$ retail BIOS. according to him a SmartXX V2 or even a cheap Aladdin XT would boot without a working BIOS on TSOP. in addition, he suggested to do another pinheader install on a yet unmodded xbox 1.0, plug the LT OPX on and flash some BIOSes to it. putting the LT OPX back in my xbox would make it boot, even without re-flashing the BIOS on TSOP - just because the LT OPX is shipped with a legal BIOS on it.

dear sceners, i kindly ask for assistance!

1) is the LT OPX expected to boot on systems with non-working BIOS on TSOP?
2) and is a retail BIOS needed on TSOP?
3) does flashing the LT OPX in another xbox help me out?
4) does a SmartXX V2 work in any case?
5) did i miss something?

thanks a LOT for any help!!


This post has been edited by blowbox: Mar 22 2005, 03:01 AM

[LabMaster]

QUOTE(blowbox @ Mar 22 2005, 02:55 AM)

hi people,

i purposely flashed iND-BiOS 5004 BETA (from xbins) on the TSOP of my yet not hard- but sofmodded xbox which was previously working fine with iND-BiOS 5003 on TSOP. well, i know i'm a momo testing beta bioses on a TSOP, thanks

the box comes up with eject led green static, starting to blink after some seconds and finally FRAGs after a lot more seconds. no a/v at all.

tried the "3-wire trick" on a kinda esoteric approach with no positive result, BUT after removing the "3-wire-trick" the xbox suddenly came up with video showing the familiar "loading iND-BiOS" logo but stayed there forever. it's not reproducable, but from time to time, especially when the xbox was cold before it's happening. tried with harddisk and stuff connected, but still no positive result.

well, i went out to buy a SmartXX LT OPX and did some routined soldering job using the pinheader installation method on my good'ol'xbox. surprinsingly the box FRAGs whenever turned on with the LT OPX plugged in. so i checked my soldering job, measured traces (carefully), tried alternative D0 on topside, read the forums, ... but it's all just fine. removing the LT OPX renders the xbox just as before.

next day i asked the technican at the shop i bought the LT OPX in to review my situation. he soon told me that the LT OPX would not be able to boot on a system without a working BIOS on TSOP, more specifically without a M$ retail BIOS. according to him a SmartXX V2 or even a cheap Aladdin XT would boot without a working BIOS on TSOP. in addition, he suggested to do another pinheader install on a yet unmodded xbox 1.0, plug the LT OPX on and flash some BIOSes to it. putting the LT OPX back in my xbox would make it boot, even without re-flashing the BIOS on TSOP - just because the LT OPX is shipped with a legal BIOS on it.

dear sceners, i kindly ask for assistance!

1) is the LT OPX expected to boot on systems with non-working BIOS on TSOP?
2) and is a retail BIOS needed on TSOP?
3) does flashing the LT OPX in another xbox help me out?
4) does a SmartXX V2 work in any case?
5) did i miss something?

thanks a LOT for any help!!

QUOTE

1) is the LT OPX expected to boot on systems with non-working BIOS on TSOP?

Yep, no problem, there is even no difference at this compared to smartxx v2

QUOTE

2) and is a retail BIOS needed on TSOP?

No

QUOTE

3) does flashing the LT OPX in another xbox help me out?

No, first of all you've to get the smartxx OS to popup on the screen then you could
flash a bios to it.

QUOTE

4) does a SmartXX V2 work in any case?

Would works the same as LT OPX, exepting the other limitation not existing on V2 (like memory ..)

QUOTE

5) did i miss something?

Yep it seem so otherwise it would have worked out

If you've installed the smartxx LT OPX by using a pinheader (thats the normal way if xbox Version is < 1.6) you also have to make sure that you've soldered the D0 wire correctly. One end goes to the Xbox Mobo "D0" point (same as on SmartXX v2 install) and the other end to SmartXX LT OPX "D0" pad  (between "GND" and "LAD3" PAd)

Check you other solder points

regards,
Walter

This post has been edited by LabMaster: Mar 22 2005, 12:54 PM

[madfenris]

Check if your board is a v1.5 or v1.6 would be my guess.  They're the only two setups that don't work with the default pinheader install.
Barring that check your solder job...

Mad Fenris

[blowbox]

first of all, thanks for the replies!

i wonder what the guy from the shop told me. he was so convinced of the fact that the LT OPX won't be able to boot without a working TSOP....

as i traced all LPC connections as well as D0 twice the chances of a bad solder job are quite low. i'm not overrating my soldering skills, but i'm quite good. i'd be happy to have a bad point, but tracing looks good.

could a corrupt EEPROM lead to this kind of problem? a V2 is meant to fix EEPROM problems, isn't it?

well, i have to take a defective LT OPX into consideration, but i'm going to have another (yet unmodded) xbox 1.0 here tomorrow - another pinheader install to test things out.

[blowbox]

QUOTE(madfenris @ Mar 22 2005, 01:53 PM)

Check if your board is a v1.5 or v1.6 would be my guess.  They're the only two setups that don't work with the default pinheader install.

ah it has a controller daughterboard, too

[blowbox]

QUOTE(madfenris @ Mar 22 2005, 01:53 PM)

Check if your board is a v1.5 or v1.6 would be my guess.  They're the only two setups that don't work with the default pinheader install.

have you ever seen a 1.5 or 1.6 with a fan on the GPU?
it's definately a 1.0.

[STICKY_BUD]

since you were messing with it intentionally, i would assume it was a 1mb bios file, but just in case, maybe i should ask you what size ind-5004 bios did you flash to your v1.0 tsop? in the case that it was only a 256kb bios file, you might have a try at adding a switch to your tsop points and try booting from only half instead of trying the 3 wire trick. find and look at lordvader's signature to find the link to the 4-way tsop switch which will let you boot from any of the 256kb portions of the 1mb tsop.

as you must have already found out through reading, a frag usually will indicate a bad lcp connection or possibly a bad d0(i got a frag the other day when i installed my first solderless chip and it was because i popped the hardwire into the wrong d0). it could also be caused by solder splash, but if you are any good with the iron like you say, then it is still most likely the lpc connection since with any skill at all, you are less likely to burn the mobo.

labmaster definitely knows what he is talking about so you can absolutely trust his answers.

[blowbox]

QUOTE(STICKY_BUD @ Mar 23 2005, 12:13 AM)

since you were messing with it intentionally, i would assume it was a 1mb bios file, but just in case, maybe i should ask you what size ind-5004 bios did you flash to your v1.0 tsop? in the case that it was only a 256kb bios file, you might have a try at adding a switch to your tsop points and try booting from only half instead of trying the 3 wire trick. find and look at lordvader's signature to find the link to the 4-way tsop switch which will let you boot from any of the 256kb portions of the 1mb tsop.

yes, it was 256kb in size. i'm used to flash 256kb BIOSes on my TSOP using Evolution X. Normally Evolution X autosizes the BIOS before flashing it, but the hash of iND-BiOS 5004 was naturally not know.

at a first glance i assumed the 3-wire-trick might help me out, but even the 4-way switch i applied (with measuring the traces) didn't make the xbox boot again except the strange behaviour of the xbox coming up _sometimes_, just showing the 'booting iND-BiOS' logo as i described earlier.... strange.

QUOTE(STICKY_BUD @ Mar 23 2005, 12:13 AM)

as you must have already found out through reading, a frag usually will indicate a bad lcp connection or possibly a bad d0(i got a frag the other day when i installed my first solderless chip and it was because i popped the hardwire into the wrong d0). it could also be caused by solder splash, but if you are any good with the iron like you say, then it is still most likely the lpc connection since with any skill at all, you are less likely to burn the mobo.

if i measure the traces and everything looks fine, no shorts, no missing contacts - what the heck is wrong with this xbox. well, i'm going to measure LPC voltages, need to replace my broken digital multimeter first

QUOTE(STICKY_BUD @ Mar 23 2005, 12:13 AM)

labmaster definitely knows what he is talking about so you can absolutely trust his answers.

i'm trusting him, he sounds quite logical

thanks for all the hints!

[MaD_mAnIaC]

Just a suggestion, since you believe your soldering is fine, look for solder splashes on the motherboard. maybe your soldering is good and you have a short somewhere else on the board.

[madfenris]

Sorry about earlier post was reading quickly missed your comment about console being 1.0

Have a box the went coma console, TSOP is totally corrupt and was unresponsive to even TSOP repair/reprogramming attempts.  Installed an LT OPX and it worked fine.  Now I'll admit this was a 1.4 and not a 1.0 but otherwise there were no troubles.

Mad Fenris

EDIT - Silly question but did you remove the added connections for your original TSOP mod?

This post has been edited by madfenris: Mar 30 2005, 01:12 AM

[blowbox]

thanks for confirming a LT OPX working with a messed up TSOP!

QUOTE(madfenris @ Mar 30 2005, 01:06 AM)

EDIT - Silly question but did you remove the added connections for your original TSOP mod?

not at a first glance, but i removed the two bridges applied for making the TSOP writable without any effect.

well, i haven't touched the xbox for about a week now to cool down.
going to recheck everything soon, as well as trying to get a replacement LT OPX, just to be sure

thanks a lot for all the replies!

[blowbox]

another idea: maybe the iND-BiOS 5004 BETA messed my EEPROM up.

is the LT OPX expected to boot with a messed up EEPROM?

[LabMaster]

yes, smartxx (v1, v2 and LT OPX) should boot up even with NO EEprom installed

[ydgmms]

just so ya know; it may be the bios. I tried flashing it on my XeniumICE and it did the same thing. it just wouldn't boot. So I went back to 5003. *shrug*

[blowbox]

QUOTE(ydgmms @ Mar 31 2005, 10:34 PM)

just so ya know; it may be the bios. I tried flashing it on my XeniumICE and it did the same thing. it just wouldn't boot. So I went back to 5003. *shrug*

very interesting, this confirms one of my first thoughts.

but still the chip won't boot.....

thank your very much!