Topic: Usb Hard Drive (i'm Serious) (Read 265 times)

RIPDOTCOM · « **on:** December 07, 2002, 05:11:00 AM »

I should have the USB to Xbox adapter anyday now and I will have a 13 Gig Buslink HDD to test. I will post the results as soon as I get it. Also, does anyone know any cheap sources for external USB drive's and/or Enclosures?

h4tr3d · « **Reply #1 on:** December 07, 2002, 05:29:00 AM »

im interested in your results rip...as for drives and enclosures im sure you can do a search on pricewatch and find a site that sells them fairly cheap.

Potenza · « **Reply #2 on:** December 09, 2002, 04:51:00 AM »

Be sure to let us all know if this works...

testerx · « **Reply #3 on:** December 11, 2002, 03:54:00 PM »

lots of peps waiting on it huh...sounds soo much better than cracking open the box...

blueoasis · « **Reply #4 on:** December 11, 2002, 04:11:00 PM »

Well bummer, I've got the xbox usb adapter already... but no usb drives to test against, just a keyboard and pc controller. I could however try connecting a device like a digital camera or mp3 player that has an internal drive in it.... hmm.

RIPDOTCOM · « **Reply #5 on:** December 12, 2002, 04:20:00 PM »

I have a Matrox Hooked up to it right now but MSdash says it is invalid or damaged. Any Ideas?

The memory unit you inserted isnt functioning it may be damaged.

blueoasis · « **Reply #6 on:** December 12, 2002, 04:31:00 PM »

Rip, you may want to check in on some of the other threads about this. It will probably take some considerable effort in reverse engineering the existing device drivers before this will work. That's what I gathered anyway.

h4tr3d · « **Reply #7 on:** December 13, 2002, 02:53:00 AM »

QUOTE

Plug and Play is a technology developed for the PCI bus, so that devices on the bus get their memory regions, I/O ports and IRQ lines assigned dynamically. This way, there will most probably be no I/O resource conflicts, no matter what you plug into the PCI slots.

On a Plug and Play enabled IBM-PC, either the BIOS or the PnP OS (such as Windows 95/98/ME or Windows 2000/XP, but not Linux) assigns the I/O resources to the PCI devices. In case of Linux, the BIOS does all the work, and Linux can then query the assigned addresses from the PCI bus.

The Xbox makes use of the PCI bus, too, but the Xbox kernel, unlike the Windows 2000 kernel it is derived from, is not Plug and Play aware. It expects certain hardware at predefined addresses, for instance the SMBus controller can always be accessed through the I/O port addresses beginning at 0xC000. So unlike Linux, it does not query the PCI hardware to get the correct resources, but it expects the code that has been run before the Xbox kernel to assign constant addresses and I/O lines for the different devices.

For Linux on the Xbox, this has two implications:

If we run the Linux kernel from within the Xbox kernel environment, we can read the resource allocation from the PCI configuration, just as on a PC, because the Xbox kernel bootloader has already assigned the resources of all devices.
Our clean-room ROM replacement will either have to assign the same resources to the PCI devices as the original initialization code, or contain real Plug and Play resource assignment code. Any way, there will have to be some hardware initialization code.
The PCI bus on the Xbox can be accessed as on any PC/AT through the ports at 0xCF8/0xCFC. Look at arch/i386/kernel/pci-pc.c in the Linux kernel for details.

also

QUOTE

OHCI USB Controller, IDE Controller
These devices are compatible to standard PC devices and require no additional code

now i know this says PCI, but i beleive the same holds true for USB. The xbox looks for predefined hardware, so this is why i beleive your HD would show up as a memory device but with an error. this is also why a usb hard drive would probably only work under linux at the moment.

i think changes would have to be made to the kernal so the xbox would be able to find the drive correctly and then run things from this location as well.

h4tr3d · « **Reply #8 on:** December 13, 2002, 03:29:00 AM »

QUOTE

I'm enjoying talking to myself here, hopefuly someone else will read some of this and be able to contribute. As I'm finding out more I am posting it so all can see it without having look that up first and duplicate any effort.

Doesn't look like you could plug a memory card directly into a port on the front, at least not for use with anything written using the SDK. To mount a memory card requires the slot ID, XDEVICE_TOP_SLOT or XDEVICE_BOTTOM_SLOT. I had assumed that along with XDEVICE_NO_SLOT these would map to 0, 1 & 2 (not in that order) to represent the port numbers on the integrated hub. However these constants turn out to be 0, 0 & 1, so the extra 1 is obviously added in the library for the two slots (giving 0, 1 & 2), and so we are not able to get down to the first port on the hub (real 0) for the to access a momory card there. Unless we can put a value of -1 to get back upto 0.

That wouldn't work either, the xbox assigns a drive letter to the memory card (just like a pen drive under windows, then you use it like a normal disk drive). The letter assigned is apparently predetermined by the slot the card is in, so the library wouldn't know what letter to issue if we got it to plug in to the first port on the hub.

rab.

here he is saying that you cant just plug a memory device into the front of the xbox. you must plug a memory device into the controller in order for it to be recognized properly.

also:

QUOTE

Went out and bought a memory card to test my theory (didn't get the genuine MS one, got an InterAct authorised accessory one, which came with an extra "break-away" cable, which was handy to connect my keyboard to the box at the same time as my controller).

Connected a USB lead to it, like so:(no picture)

Plugged it into the PC and it shows up a an unknown USB device, under Windows XP. It shouldn't need drivers for a standard USB storage device, so it must be a bit different.

To test a bit of other USB thinksings I plugged the memory card into the back om keyboard hub, and plugged the keyboard into the xbox, and the box can access the memory unit as expected.

rab.

basically he is saying that he plugged in a memory card to windows but it wouldnt be recognized, and conversly when he plugged the memory card into his xbox thru the usb hub in his keyboard it worked fine...im assuming he had his keyboard plugged into the front of the xbox.

so this is contradictory, because a memory device does work when plugged into the front of the xbox thru another hub....what is going on here??

QUOTE

Finally got my final year project done, and so had time to play with this a bit more. Plugged the memory card into the PC under linux to get some info from it.

T: Bus=02 Lev=03 Prnt=03 Port=01 Cnt=02 Dev#= 5 Spd=12 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=32 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=05fd ProdID=1316 Rev= 1.00
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=80 MxPwr= 60mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=42 Prot=50 Driver=(none)
E: Ad=81(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl= 0ms
E: Ad=02(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl= 0ms

As you can see it is a mass storage device (0x08), but it has a subclass of 0x42, which in the spec is listed as reserved for future use. Has this been implemented now? If so what is it? Haven't been able to find much about it.

rab.

aha...keep reading, we are getting there....

QUOTE

I suspect it would be possible to write a driver, though I don't know how easy it would be. The subclass of 0x42 is not an official one as far as I can tell. This defines block message format used to comunicate with the device, so you would need to understand it to write a driver. I suspect MS made up a new, non-standard, one so they could licence the info, and prevent just anyone making them.

so basically a memory card could not be recognized under windows without a special driver....on the other hand, a standard usb storage device like a hard drive wont be recognized by the xbox, no matter where its plugged in, i believe.

you could try it, however.

controller with usb port

this guy put 2 usb ports in his controller...this would enable you to plug the harddrive in here and see if it makes a difference....i dont think it will though.

even if it did work, that still doesnt mean you could run anything stored here other that gamesaves.

RIPDOTCOM · « **Reply #9 on:** December 13, 2002, 06:35:00 PM »

damn dude, thanks for the research. i was hoping it was going to be real easy but I guess not. I swear I saw some pople on the forum with USB HDD' ssetup as memory cards but maybe it was a bunch of BS. I am certain that if you could get it detected then you would be able to launch through either MS dash or boxplorer and it would work albeit slow but not as slow as CDRW's.

h4tr3d · « **Reply #10 on:** December 13, 2002, 10:25:00 PM »

)

anyone have some spare time/knowledge they want to share?

Pheonix · « **Reply #11 on:** December 18, 2002, 10:49:00 AM »

if you have external HDs set up, such as Project 411 GB, then you could hook up an internal HD in where the XHD goes and use it as a Memory card and use the 5GB from each HD for extra gamespace.

razorrifh · « **Reply #12 on:** December 18, 2002, 01:50:00 PM »

if a usb hd shows up as a memory card, whats the difference than with the f drive? using the xbox network explorer, it reports drive f-m (or is it f-o? whatever, you get the point) as memory cards. i'm just curious what the difference is really.

BenJeremy · « **Reply #13 on:** November 27, 2002, 09:58:00 PM »

Try a search of the forums next time.... been there, done that, as they say.

USB drives show up as memory cards on the Xbox, apparently.

Scan-C · « **Reply #14 on:** November 28, 2002, 02:56:00 PM »

QUOTE (BenJeremy @ Nov 28 2002, 05:58 AM)

Try a search of the forums next time.... been there, done that, as they say.

USB drives show up as memory cards on the Xbox, apparently.

that's the way i take my savegames to a friend.an external usb drive 500 mb is more than i would ever need

and it was cheaper than any memory card

Author Topic: Usb Hard Drive (i'm Serious) (Read 265 times)