Jason, I've got a 1.4 Xbox, and I've got it working just fine on my box. I'm developing a small game for it right now, in fact.
It seems to me that some confusion exists about what is a debug bios, what is the xbdm.dll file and what is XIG2's role in all this.
There is a somewhat helpful explainating for all of the above included with XIG2 in the form of a README.txt file. You can read this online: http://www.xr8d.net/dev/xig/README.txt
But in brief...
An Xbox debug bios is a bios which is either installed on your modchip/TSOP or is loaded, in Boot From Media form, using a derivative of the Phoenix Bios Loader.
When a debug bios is installed and the Xbox is first started, the debug bios looks for the folllowing files on your xbox hard drive:
e:\xbdm.dll
e:\dashboard.xbx
e:\devkit\xbdm.ini
The dll file is loaded into memory and provides numerous debug functions including the ability to take screenshots. The dashboard.xbx file simply lists the path for the dashboard to be loaded and xbdm.ini is the network settings.
That is the basic configuration of a Debug Xbox. If you do not have the above configuration, XIG2 is useless for you.
Now, XIG2 is a PC application that connects to a Debug Xbox (as described above), grabs a raw screenshot, and the converts it to a useable image format like .jpg. XIG2 contains no XDK code. You do not need VS .net or the XDK installed to use XIG.
-prestige