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[crusty_punk]

I bought an xbox off of eBay that has an xecuter 3 CE chip. It also has the X3 control panel.

The listing said that it was giving a hard drive error. When I got it there was no hard drive at all.

QUOTE

This Xbox is modded on the front. This unit powers on, and does display, however it displays that there is an HDD error.

I have never in my life messed with a mod chip. I have flashed a fair few TSOP chips and rocked dozens of soft mods. I looked inside and it appears to have everything installed correctly. (judging from installation tutorials and images I have seen) Emphasis on "appears"...

However, there is a small plug hanging out of the left front of the case that has 5 pins.(sorry, it's white...just a little dirty)


When I turn it on, sometimes, it 3x boot frag. Most of the time it goes through the flubber animation before it displays an error. I expect it to frag due to no hard drive... I put an original 8GB hard drive in it that I had left over from a TSOP flashed HDD upgrade. I know that it wont do anything because it doesnt match the eeprom, but I was looking for it to tell me something more about the error. That's the thing though... It never tells me what error, just says that I need to contact microsoft blah blah blah.

The light under the chip is red, then after the flubber it turns blue. There is a blue light on one of the components that stays on until the caps discharge.

I have not removed the chip, I have not taken the mobo out because I dont want to disturb any of the components... I want to be as careful as I can with this because it's my first one. (chipped xbox)

The motherboard/PSU is a 1.0
The DVD drive is a Sammy Ver. A
It didn't come with a hard drive.. but I have a few stock drives and an 80GB that I can drop in if I need to. I know how to read the eeprom and build a new hard drive from scratch. I have not tried to boot it with a DVD in. I have both the Hexen Disk and Slayers Disk.

What do you guys think?
Did I waste my money?
Is this sort of thing fixable?
What can I do to try and get this thing running?

Remember, as I said before... this is the very first time I have ever messed with a mod chip. I am a 100% mod chip n00b.

Forgot to mention, the LCD back light never comes on..

[crusty_punk]

ok, I have a little update...

I thought that I would try the Hexen disk and see what I could come up with on my own..
I booted the xbox by pressing the eject button rather than the power button. It fragged like I expected but now there is a new error screen. Like I said in the post above, it just said that box needed to be serviced and to contact microsoft. The new error is an error 6..

"oops! Something went wrong!
(arrow points to the number 6) Error Code"
Under that it explains error codes:
5-9 HDD error
10-12 DVD error
etc...

so I guess the listing was correct that it boots to an error screen.
I wonder why it didn't do that when I first tried it.

remember, mod chip n00b...

[crusty_punk]

another update...

when I push switch 1 in it takes me to a BIOS flash menu...
and it gives me the option to unlock or lock the hard drive.

What do I do from here?

(mod chip n00b)

[Heimdall]

You need to read the Xecuter 3 manual.

I'd suggest that you start with checking that the chip turns on properly:

- short press on the power button, the X LED on the switch panel should turn blue, the chip is enabled, if there is a BIOS on the chip it will boot, you may get an error
- long press on the power button, the X LED on the switch panel should turn red, the chip is disabled, expect an error because you boot the stock BIOS and have no disk
- press power and eject together, the X LED should turn purple, you should see the Flashbios 3.0.3 screen

If that all works, start up Flashbios, and flash X3.3294 to the first 1MB bank. Then drop in an unlocked disk, boot to X3 config live (you may need to hold the white button during boot to make this happen), and set up the disk. While in X3 Config Live, FTP a dash to C:\evoxdash.xbe, and set up the BIOS to boot from C:\evoxdash.xbe.

[crusty_punk]

Thanks Heimdall!

I'll give it a try when I get up and around today.
I appreciate the help.

[crusty_punk]

n00b question: How do I tell what bank I'm flashing to?
Also, flashbios, when I do a network flash, everything goes alright until I get to the flash screen. In the manual it shows that there is a drop down menu to select which bank to flash to, then one I reach doesn't have that option.

teamxecuter's site is down so I cant read the documentation.

I got the exact BIOS you suggested from the usual places. The transfer was successful and the extraction of the rar was successful as well.

I do not see bank switches anywhere on the chip, or amongst any of the components attached to the chip. Are they the 1, 2, 3, 4 buttons on the control panel? If so, I tried to flash with "1" pressed in and it said:
"Got BIOS image over http, 1048576 bytes
Unknown Flash! Halting"

on the computer side it says:

"Xecuter FlashBIOS v3.0.3
MODCHIP IS BEING UPDATED!
Please do not touch the console whilst flashing is in progress! Your console should shutdown automatically when flashing is completed. If your console does not turn off please do so manually when the power led turns amber. "

The xbox never turns off and the LED's never turn amber.
Immediately after I pressed flash, I looked and the LAD light on the control panel never blinked.
what next?

if it matters, I have FlashBios 3.0.3

[crusty_punk]

Nevermind, I got it!

I dropped in an unlocked hard drive and pressed "white" during boot and got to the setup screen.
I guess I was flashing the same bios that was already there.

I formatted the disk and as is well so far. I'm going to FTP in and see dammage I can do to this thing.

I really wish that I had installed the chip myself. This is sort of cheating..

[crusty_punk]

So this xbox has been pretty damn solid for a little under a month... it has booted fine, loaded games fine, FTP is fine, played emulators perfect... XBMC has been amazing.

About a half hour ago, I was watching a show, through XBMC, and the A/V just cut out, the LCD displayed the time for a few seconds then it locked. I turned it off and back on and it 3 x boot FRAG. I let it sit for a while to "cool off" or think about what it wants to do and it's still 3 x boot FRAG. It's never done this before. The xbox has been in the same spot on my entertainment center since I installed the hard drive. There is nothing above or below it to damage it. My damn cat was in the other room. All I was doing was laying on the couch being a fat kid and BAM.

Any idea what may have caused this?

side note: This totally bums me out. I got home about an hour and a half ago from picking up my Mountain Dew SE from a CL seller ($75 bucks and it's mint)... I can't freaking win for loosing.

[crusty_punk]

After I got it working, I set it down in it's place and it sat there for 3 and a half weeks, working perfect.... everything is connected perfectly.

I didn't care that it didn't have a hard drive.. it had an x3... that's all I cared about.

[Heimdall]

Boot with power + eject, see if Flashbios boots.

Hold the white button while booting normally, see if X3 Config Live will start.

[crusty_punk]

I tried both of your suggestions Heimdall and neither worked.
this is really irritating..  

I'm going to try a different PSU and see if that does anything...

[shambles1980]

ok you say frag.
but is it frag.. Frag is flashing red and green.. Would imply bad bios chip lose/ bad solder/ loose wire
so try a diferent bank. With the x3's i like to have IND and M* bios on there. some say i should have the x3 bios on it. but i dont see the point.

you have a few diferent bank selections on it. but the way i flash them you just use all buttons pressed in or all buttons pushed out.

now if its not frag..
and instead is Green and orange then that would imply a bridge on the ram chips to me personally as thats what i most commonly fins is the issue with that error..


so id start trying a diferent bank.
i would also try booting with the chip not connected to the lpc. this should boot to an error 05 due to no locked hard disk.
that will point the finger directly at the chip or its connection..

good luck

[crusty_punk]

I push the power button, it boots, reboots, reboots into frag. It never gets to a point where a bios can be loaded. it doesn't even stay powered on long enough for me to eject the drive. I know this xbox works (when it wants to)...

Like I said before, when I got it, I gave it a hard drive, it worked flawless for 3 and a half weeks. It has sat in the same spot for 3 and a half weeks. There is nothing on top of it, there is nothing underneath it, there isn't anything on either side of it. The cat was in the other room. I was across the room. There have been no anomalies with the mains, nothing has been spilled on it, nobody has touched it.... I was being a fat kid, sitting on the couch, watching a movie, the TV blacked out, the LCD displayed the time for 3 or 5 seconds then froze. I powered it off and back on....3xboot FRAG. nothing ever displays on the screen.

At this point, I think the motherboard is toast. It's a 1.1.

And to be fair, this is my first mod chip, yes, BUT this is most definitely not my first modded console. I know what FRAG means. I have tried every combination the x3's banks have to offer.