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OG Xbox Forums => No-Modchip Hacks (exploits) => XBE Exploits => Topic started by: karmatikal on November 28, 2009, 04:55:00 PM

Title: Swap Soft Modded Drive To New Xbox
Post by: karmatikal on November 28, 2009, 04:55:00 PM
First time doing a soft mod on the original XBOX so excuse my noob question.

I have a soft-modded XBOX with a dead motherboard.  I have another XBOX I want to put the hard drive into but it's not modded.  Will I be able to just soft mod the new xbox using Ndure and then put the old hard drive in?

Title: Swap Soft Modded Drive To New Xbox
Post by: obcd on November 29, 2009, 02:48:00 AM
The harddrive of a softmodded xbox is locked. The hdd password is unique for every xbox.
You need the xbox eeprom contents to calculate the password to unlock the harddisk.
You will need to relock the harddisk with the password for the new xbox.

Most softmods are for a specific kernel version. If both your xboxes have a different kernel version, the softmod of the broken xbox won't run on the new xbox.

regards.
Title: Swap Soft Modded Drive To New Xbox
Post by: karmatikal on November 29, 2009, 08:45:00 AM
Ok well the motherboards are different versions, so I'm guessing the kernels aren't going to match.

The broken XBOX is a 1.1 motherboard with a 300 GB drive.
The working XBOX is a stock 1.4 motherboard with a stock 8 GB drive.

So my problem is, how do I get all 300 GB of data on to the new XBOX.  Can I softmod the working one, then upgrade the hard drive and just copy the data from the old drive?

I just need to get another softmodded 300 gb drive so I can back up the old drive and copy the stuff to the new drive.. is this do-able?
thanks-
Title: Swap Soft Modded Drive To New Xbox
Post by: sfgsgvs on November 30, 2009, 01:17:00 AM
This is why I use UXE instead of NDURE, then you can just change the drivekey in the Xbox's eeprom to something that's easy to remember like all zeros or 12345678 four times and just move the drive without having to hook it up to a PC.
In your case I would unlock the drive, rebuild C and softmod it with UXE using XBOXHDM and then lock it again using the new Xbox's eeprom.bin.
Title: Swap Soft Modded Drive To New Xbox
Post by: obcd on November 30, 2009, 01:24:00 AM
Depending upon your soldering skills and knowledge of electronics, you could consider building yourself an eeprom reader.

It will allow you to get the broken mobo eeprom contents.

It will allow you to softmod the new xbox without the need for risky hotswapping.

It might allow you to install the 300Gig in the new xbox and alter it's softmod so that you don't have to copy the 300Gig over.

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/357863

Do you have a backup of the broken mobo eeprom chip? (eeprom.bin)

In case you have, you could use it to unlock the 300Gig drive.
After that, you can softmod your new xbox. Once it's softmodded you can install a bigger drive.
You could use xplorer360 on your pc to access the 300Gig drive from the broken xbox. As it is fatx formatted, windows won't recognise it's partitions.

If you don't have the eeprom.bin from the broken mobo, you could also try to unlock the harddisk with one of the commonly used master passwords.
How did you softmod the harddisk from your broken xbox?

regards.
Title: Swap Soft Modded Drive To New Xbox
Post by: karmatikal on November 30, 2009, 05:16:00 PM
Whoa.

Thanks for all the information guys, much appreciated.

When I said the motherboard was dead, it's not really completely dead.  It was an XBOX suffering from trace corrosion.  I attempted the trace corrosion repair on it but I couldn't get one of the wires to stick since it's pad had broken off.  Anyways I had another XBOX with trace corrosion that was a 1.4.  I did much better on that one and it's repaired now.  So the old XBOX is suffering from only 1 trace corrosion symptom, since it's only one wire I couldn't get, so I can power it up and get the eeprom somehow.  It only doesn't power off unless you unplug it and randomly turns off.

Unfortunately I don't have a backup of the eeprom.bin file from it.  I also have no idea how it was soft modded before, it wasn't mine to begin with.

So basically the best thing to do is retrieve the eeprom.bin file from the old XBOX, then softmod the new XBOX with the 8 GB drive, then install the 300 GB over?

Sounds pretty complicated. thanks for all the help
Title: Swap Soft Modded Drive To New Xbox
Post by: karmatikal on November 30, 2009, 07:27:00 PM
Reading a little more it seems that I could do this by

-soft-modding new XBOX to retrieve eeprom
-write a xboxhdm cd with eeprom
-unlocking old 300 gb hard drive (using music file copy method)
-hook up 300 gb to pc and run ndure or whatever and lock using new xbox eeprom
-put 300 gb in new xbox and it should work?

Can someone please confirm this?

Or is there an easier or different way to get this done, like just copying new eeprom over to the XBOX so I don't need to backup and restore data..
thanks
Title: Swap Soft Modded Drive To New Xbox
Post by: obcd on December 01, 2009, 12:49:00 PM
QUOTE
-unlocking old 300 gb hard drive (using music file copy method)


You can backup the eeprom of the old xbox. With the eeprom.bin, you can unlock the harddisk from within xboxhdm. No need to do hotswap tricks.

The ndure script just alters some files on the xbox harddisk. I have no idea how it behaves on an already softmodded C partition. If the previous softmod was ndure as well, I assume everything should work as expected. If it was an older softmod using different font files, it probably won't work as expected.

There is also the nkpatcher 06 and nkpatcher 67 issue. You will need the same one, or your F and (or) G partition will probably no longer be available, since the bios expects a different drive geometry.

regards.

 
Title: Swap Soft Modded Drive To New Xbox
Post by: sfgsgvs on December 01, 2009, 12:49:00 PM
QUOTE(karmatikal @ Dec 1 2009, 03:27 AM) *

Reading a little more it seems that I could do this by

-soft-modding new XBOX to retrieve eeprom
-write a xboxhdm cd with eeprom
-unlocking old 300 gb hard drive (using music file copy method)
-hook up 300 gb to pc and run ndure or whatever and lock using new xbox eeprom

-put 300 gb in new xbox and it should work?

Can someone please confirm this?

Or is there an easier or different way to get this done, like just copying new eeprom over to the XBOX so I don't need to backup and restore data..
thanks


You mean by hotswapping? I wouldn't recommend that if you can avoid it. Try to get the old eeprom.bin or try some of the default passwords like XBOXSCENE (if it was locked using xboxhdm) or TEAMASSEMBLY (if it was locked using ConfigMagic) to unlock the drive. I also think you have to make the C drive stock before softmodding for the new Xbox, you can do that using xboxhdm.

QUOTE(karmatikal @ Dec 1 2009, 03:27 AM) *

Or is there an easier or different way to get this done, like just copying new eeprom over to the XBOX so I don't need to backup and restore data..
thanks


You could copy the eeprom from the old Xbox using ConfigMagic, provided that the eeproms are compatible. The kernel versions also have to be compatible for NDURE, as mentioned earlier.

http://wiki-scene.com/EEPROM_(Xbox)

Compatibility

While EEPROM chips are all the same, the data within is formatted differently between different console versions. Attempting to write a given EEPROM to an incompatible system can result in trouble.

Version 1.0 EEPROMs are only compatible with other 1.0 EEPROMs.

1.1 through to 1.5 EEPROMs are all compatible with each other.

1.6 and 1.6b EEPROMs are only compatible with each other.

LiveInfo and ConfigMagic can convert 1.0 EEPROMs to work with 1.1-1.5 systems, and vice versa. There is currently no tool available to convert 1.6/1.6b EEPROMs.
Title: Swap Soft Modded Drive To New Xbox
Post by: karmatikal on December 09, 2009, 06:29:00 PM
weird problem...

I went to backup the EEPROM from the not working XBOX and Config Magic is saying that is doesn't support locking.  Does this mean I cannot switch this hard drive into the working XBOX?
It's a Maxtor 5A300J0.

I was planning on following these steps

QUOTE(wivenhoe @ Mar 28 2006, 10:56 AM) *

for dotsyntax (and any others)

QUICK TUTORIAL FOR UPGRADING HARD-DRIVE AFTER ALREADY SOFTMODDING STOCK DRIVE VIA NDURE

1) Get xboxhdm and extract it.

2) Use ConfigMagic to extract your eeprom. FTP this to your pc, rename it to eeprom.bin, and put it into the /eeprom folder of xboxhdm.

3) Go into File Manager on your xbox, navigate to e:/ndts and run the default.xbe in there. This will load an altered version of unleashx with full access to C and E.

4) FTP your C and E drives onto your pc and put them in the respective folders in xboxhdm.

5) Run make-iso-win in xboxhdm and burn the iso with alcohol 120% or any other alternative image burning software.

6) Place the xboxhdm CD in your cd drive and then shutdown your PC. Disconnect your hard-drive. Connect your new hard-drive to the primary master and then boot up your computer.

7) When xboxhdm loads up choose option 1, then when it's loaded type xboxhd. Choose option 1 again to prepare xbox hard-drive from scratch. Answer Yes to all the questions and when it is finished hit reboot.

8) Now when xboxhdm comes up choose option 3, and then once this is loaded type 'lockhd -a'. This will find your eeprom.bin and lock the hard-drive.

9) Your new hard-drive is now ready to put into your xbox and will be an exact mirror of your existing xbox drive but obviously with a lot more free space.



What if I can't do #8?


Title: Swap Soft Modded Drive To New Xbox
Post by: obcd on December 10, 2009, 12:48:00 PM
Double check the drive with the dos atapwd program.
It will tell you if the drive supports security (is lockable) or not.

Some pc biosses have problems if a locked drive is connected.
They put the drive in a frozen state so that it can't be unlocked.

If the drive doesn't support security, than it can't be used with a softmod.

The only solution that might work for such a drive is Tsop flashing the xbox with another bios that works with an unlocked drive.

regards