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Author Topic: Debug Kit Issue  (Read 29 times)

old engineer

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Debug Kit Issue
« on: September 07, 2003, 09:22:00 AM »
So your not getting any standard Xbox numerical error messages when booting up m8???

...The black and white bit sounds strange, almost sounds like its had a bad TSOP flash at some stage corrupting the animation, although the graphics chip, or even the display signal could throw up similar faults.

I take it you've done all the basics when fitting your retail drive, like unlocking it first and evening giving it a decent low level format???

Does it look and read from the DVD drive o.k???

...Need a bit more info off u m8.
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schottjy

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Debug Kit Issue
« Reply #1 on: September 07, 2003, 11:29:00 AM »
Nope, I'm not getting any form of error message... It just hangs after the XBOX text comes up. I don't get the MS (or Xecuter) tag line either...  

I don't know if someone tried to flash something else on the TSOP, but I honeslty wouldn't be that shocked.

As I said, I tried to put my retail box's original hard drive in the debug kit, but it makes some kind of odd noise as the X comes up during boot and hangs there...

I haven't tried to put the debug kit's drive in my retail box, so I cant say for sure what's on that drive (or if it's even a working disk). I did swap out the DVD-ROM drive (both units are Thompson's) just to make sure it was reading the 5558 Recovery CD-RW. Booting with that CD-RW didn't seem to accomplish anything, it still hung during boot.

It sounds like there may be multiple issues with this box... The noises and the black and white boot animations probably don't bode well for the machine..  Is it necessary to have a hard drive to boot the box? (It seems to require the drive be powered on for the box to power up, but does it need to read anything on there?) I tried running in that configuration and it still seemed to hang...

any bay area debug kits that I can have a look at for reference purposes?

thanks,
-j
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old engineer

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Debug Kit Issue
« Reply #2 on: September 08, 2003, 10:25:00 AM »
Yes u do need the hard drive in the console.

...It looks at the HDD during boot as part of the POST.

Although it could quite happily run with no HDD in theory, in practice it needs it to run cached data etc, so its setup to look for one on boot up regardless.

However, normally as u know, if it didn't have a HDD, or it was playing up u would get an error number to work back from.

If u 'aint getting a number you've got serious problems.

R u sure your spare drive is defo unlocked?

Have u thought about reflashing the TSOP yet?

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BCfosheezy

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Debug Kit Issue
« Reply #3 on: September 08, 2003, 11:18:00 AM »
If you get discouraged I'll buy that off of you.
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Gamester17

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Debug Kit Issue
« Reply #4 on: September 09, 2003, 12:51:00 AM »
The HDD password is not in the TSOP it is in the EEPROM (a separate chip), you can probebely boot ConfigMagic (if patch it to retail) to extact the EEPROM, then decode the EEPROM file to get the HDD password. Then lock a new HDD (in your computer) with that password, put it in the Xbox and run the recovery disk/DVD (yes, it comes with a recovery disk). If you don't got a recovery disk you can clone (in your computer) the same data if you have a second debug kit with is working fine, do this before locking the HDD (you probly need to unlock the second HDD as well) then lock it before you put it into the box
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schottjy

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Debug Kit Issue
« Reply #5 on: September 09, 2003, 10:05:00 AM »
biggrin.gif

Turned out that the box had two issues, both of which were relatively easy to fix..

First, the original hard drive in the debug kit was dead. Putting a locked retail drive in
the unit didn't help (but I had forgotten it was locked). After screwing around with the a18/a19 pins (to try other banks of the TSOP), I threw a hard drive that was laying around from an old PC, and voile I could boot my recovery disc. Installed a fresh HD/ROM image from the recovery disc, and the machine was more or less functional again.

However, it was still in black and white (and the screen was noticably stretched). After
getting into the MS dashboard and looking at the settings, it seems that this debug kit thought it was a PAL machine. I wasn't quite sure how I could fix that (since I couldn't boot up my Evox disc or the Enigmah videomode switcher), however the XDK Launcher lets you change all kinds of things, so thanks for that Redmond.

So now I've got (what appears to be) a functional debug kit. The 5558 recovery disc also lets you convert the machine to a retail box, and I tried that, but it still couldn't boot any retail games. So I'm curious what the purpose of this conversion is..

Anyway, thanks again..
-j
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