Original Xbox: Project Resurrection - Part 3

Life has been busy lately. Between training twice a week, Saturday mornings being taken up with an MMA session plus footy training down at the oval, various social engagements, and some big name games taking up my downtime (Battletech, Arma 3, Outer Worlds) - I am strapped for time to sit and write, and I don't have easy target subjects to write about. As an apology for being away, here's a pic of the world's awesomest icecream.

I meant the Unicorn, but the Sanga is equally great)

Back to business. Last week, the final part for my Xbox rebuild arrived. This post is both an anticlimax and a triumph due to the ease with which it all came together. Perhaps this is because I spent so much time researching and preparing, perhaps it's experience, but there were no glitches in the final build, no major obstacles to overcome, no big surprises (other than good ones). Apart from an 80 pin IDE cable that folded the opposite way to the original (proving a pain in the ass to origami into the box), I encountered zero technical impediments.

In summary, to get this off the ground I needed the following:

• New hard drive - I purchased a Western Digital Blue 500GB SATA drive (Ebay)
• An 80 pin IDE cable (Ebay)
• An IDE to SATA adapter (Amazon)
• A blank DVD-R disc
• Hexen 2018 tools burned to a DVD

The hard drive was easy (and cheap), as was the cable. In terms of uncertainty, the adapter was a complete unknown both in ability to fulfill the requirements, and the level of quality control. This thing is handmade somewhere in mainland china and looked flimsy even in the Amazon pics. You know what though, it worked first time - though I can't yet comment on its long term ability to keep working.

You know what took forever to find though? Blank DVDs. When was the last time you went out and purchased some? Who the hell sells them anymore? Sure as hell isn't my local supermarket. All I wanted was one disc (plus a backup or two in case it didn't work properly first time), but I couldn't even find that. I went further afield, to the local shopping centre (mall for you o/s readers), but the best I could find after a LOT of walking were spindles of FIFTY discs for $40AU. So, uh, no thanks. After almost an hour on the road and in various shops I wasn't about to turn around and give up. A quick search online told me Officeworks might have them. Now, Officeworks and I have a fractured relationship after Laptop-gate 2018 (another story, another time), but I was desperate. As usual, Officeworks had no staff rostered on, and/or they were all hanging around the photo machines pretending to twiddle knobs and pore over colour settings. However, what they did  have were boxes of 10 DVD-R discs at a reasonable price. After some lining up (by myself I might add, it's not like I was waiting for other people to be served), I was on the way home.

See below for actual footage of me securing these

The build went (as mentioned), well. First I removed the DVD and caddy, then I plugged in the new IDE cable. After some fancy cable folding I got the DVD caddy and drive back in place and plugged it in. The HDD was a little trickier due to the IDE cable, but I figured it out after a couple of careful tests. First the drive was screwed into its housing, then I carefully threaded the power cable into the little conduit on the side. When that was in place I plugged the adapter into the HDD, completed my IDE origami project, and got the two cables plugged in. I'm not proud of the way it turned out, but it seems to work.

Oh, I also snapped the front bit off of the DVD drive, but it should glue back on. Right?

Whoop a-day - that's not supposed to be there

The final hurdle was partitioning and formatting the drive then installing the dashboard again. I thought this was going to suck, because I remember it sucking 15 years ago. I was wrong, seems that not only has technology advanced in the intervening years, the world of old school Xbox modding has too. I grabbed a copy of Hexen 2018 (found in the usual places, just search for it), burned it to one of the hen's-teeth-like DVDs (using no special software, just the iso burner built into Windows 10), and popped it into the Xbox DVD drive. It worked. Rather than write an essay, I'll simply embed the video I watched. 

That was it really. To get the games on the drive you'll need to connect your Xbox to the local network with a cable, configure the network settings, and use an FTP program (I use Filezilla) to copy the files over. If you have trouble with copy operations failing, make sure the FTP program is only making a single connection at a time. The OG Xbox cannot handle multiple connections and many errors will occur. Create a folder called Games on the F drive (and G drive is you made both partitions), then simply copy your game folders into those. You need a folder for each game and in the root of each game folder is the xbe file and all supporting files, you cannot nest a root game folder inside another game folder (ie F:\Games\Game A\Game A\<files here>).

Finished! (well, almost, I'll leave the cover off for a few days just in case)

Ok, that's all for this update, and pretty much for the project. I might post some game reviews (or summaries at least), it depends on time. My ONLY regret is not hunting down a cheap 2TB and installing that. Perhaps in part 4...

Disclaimer: You need a chipped/modded Xbox to do it this way. If you have a softmodded Xbox you'll either need to softmod it again or clone your old drive to the new one. I don't know how to do those things.

Original Xbox: Project Resurrection - Part 2

And I'm back with a second installment of "When I found my xbox at the back of a shelf in my shed and decided to try it out". You may remember, back in part one, when I booted it up and...well hey, why not read it for yourself HERE.

Done? Okay cool. So after the great disappointment which was:

I wouldn't let it go, I had to make this thing work and I didn't want to wait a few weeks until the converter arrived. Everything else works fine and I have some games ready to copy to a hard drive, I just had to work something out in the interim. From a little research I learned an SSD wasn't necessarily a great idea due to bandwidth considerations and that sticking with a spinning disk was both cheaper and more practical. I looked around online I was confident I could get my hands on a spinning SATA disk super cheap (refurbished). For now, being the impatient person I am, I decided it was time to pull it apart and check things out.

First, unplug that bastard and pop it open. I hadn't taken this apart in a decade and, given the sudden death of the HDD, I didn't know what to expect. Screws out, case off, and everything looked pristine, just how I left it. What else to do now but dismantle. Why? Why not! Out with the internals, out with the hard drive and DVD! I took that thing to pieces and then, job done, I cabled everything back together (though I didn't put it back in the case).

 

This is where the magic happened. I booted it back up, as much in hope than in anticipation of having fixed anything, and it was alive. Alive! Of course the first thing I did was back up any files I already had on there, delete them to make room, and then copy across a handful of my games to test.

Obviously, this was a resounding success

So why was it working now, HDD dangling in the wind, pants around its metaphorical ankles? I really don't know, but I can play Arx Fatalis so I don't care.

Looks way better in real life

For the past week then I've been ordering parts, researching options, backing up games, and getting my hands on new ones. I'm going to install a 500GB SATA drive and fill it with everything I have, and everything I get my hands on in the meantime. My ultimate goal is to have every Xbox game I'm even remotely interested in on a machine set up in my lounge room. I already have a laptop and router configured that I can use to swap games around so, for now, I can chop and change between about 20-25 games and compile a list of the best couch co-op options for a retro night. Who knows, perhaps I'll even post a micro review or two.

More to come when the parts arrive.