How to turn the original Xbox into a media center.

What this tutorial will give you?
If you follow this tutorial correctly you will take an original un modified Xbox and set it up so that it functions as a media center, allowing you to view video and listen to audio files downloaded to your PC through your Xbox on your TV. You can even add some more stuff to it to access and watch YouTube videos on your TV, play on emulators and roms from all the old consoles, and play backups of your original Xbox games on the system. All this and more without the need of a modchip, soldering or rewiring of the console.

WARNING! - This shouldn’t be attempted unless you understand everything completely and understand PC components and how PCs work, as it could potentially turn your xbox into a big useless paper weight if done incorrectly and we will not be held responsible or fix this for you. So you still want to try it?

What you need:
An Xbox Console.
Torxx screwdrivers sizes 10, 15 and 20.
A Windows PC with a CD Writer.
1 Blank CD.
UXE complete - available here.
The latest build of Xbox Media Center - available here.
A program called Xboxhdm 1.9 - available here.

Step 1 - Setting up UXE and xbmc:
- Extract UXE Complete.

- Open readme.rtf and follow the instructions to set it up for your Xbox.
- Now go in the place-on-e folder, then ROOT folder.
- Delete everything in this folder.
- Extract Xbox Media Center and open the xmbc folder.

- Copy all the files and folders from there to the ROOT folder of UXE complete.

Step 2 - Creating a boot CD:
- Go to the uxe-c-replace folder.
- Copy all these files.
- Extract Xboxhdm 1.9

- Go into the linux folder, in here you should see a folder called C, paste the files here.
- Go to the place-on-e folder of UXE complete.
- Copy all these files.
- Go into the linux folder of Xboxhdm 1.9, in here you should see a folder called E, paste the files inside that.
- Create a folder in E called TDATA
- Create a folder in E called UDATA
- Go to the Xboxhdm folder and click on make-iso-win.bat
- This will start creating the CD image.
- Burn this image to a CD when complete.

Step 3 - Getting the Xbox ready:
HDD = Hard Disk Drive.
IDE = Integrated Drive Electronics.
- Turn Xbox upside down & unscrew the 6 torxx 20 screws.
- Turn over and remove the cover of the Xbox.
- Move the cables to the HDD & remove a torxx 10 screw below them.
- Unplug the 2 cables to the HDD and lift it out with the tray.
- Unplug IDE and power cables to the DVD drive.
- Unscrew the 4 Torx 15 screws in the side of the tray to release the HDD.
- Plug the 2 cables back into the HDD.

Step 4 - Getting your PC ready:
- Boot your pc to bios and set the PC to boot up from CD.
- Save the bios settings and turn the PC off.
- Remove the side panel to access your motherboard.
- Unplug all IDE cables to HDD at the HDD side.
- Make sure your CD Drive for your PC is connected to the secondary IDE.
- The primary IDE should have an IDE cable coming from it.
- Make sure this cable can reach the Xbox HDD.

Step 5 - Bringing it all together:
This is the step where things could go wrong if you don’t follow very carefully. The Xbox locks and unlocks the HDD everytime it switches on and off and we have to get it unlocked to be able to transfer our new softmod files to it. Its pretty simple but just be carefull and make sure you always allow the Xbox to relock the HDD before turning the Xbox off.
- Power up the Xbox to unlock the drive.
- The TV that its connected to should goto a screen saying error 12.
- The instant you see this remove the IDE cable from the Xbox HDD.
- Attach the cable from the primary IDE of your PC.
- DO NOT TURN THE XBOX OFF.
- Power up the PC and XBoxHDM should boot from the CD we made.

Step 6 - Transfering the files to the Xbox:
- On the menu choose option 1.
- Let it detect the HDD.
- When it does type xboxhd
- at the prompts type yes everytime.
- This might take a while so wait.
- When it says its done unplug the IDE cable from the Xbox HDD.
- Plug the Xbox IDE cable back into the Xbox HDD.
- Turn off the Xbox to lock the HDD agian.

That should be it, put your PC back to how it was. Connect the Xbox DVD drive back up and screw it all back together and now when you start your Xbox it should boot to Xbox Media Center not to the default Xbox dashboard.

For more information on what you can do with Xbox Media Center check out www.xbmc.org To take full advantage of the Xbox Media Center you will need to have your Xbox connected to your network and the internet.

1 comment March 26th, 2008

Whats all this about usenet and newsgroups & how do I do it?

For a while now I’ve been using newsgroups off and on to download things, its extremely quick and can max out the speeds of your connection. I’ve downloaded stuff off it at 20mb/s with my cable connection, people get great speeds over ADSL connections as well.

What is it?
Usenet is where the newsgroups are, it is a global, decentralized, distributed internet discussion system. Basically its a load of servers located all over the world that are all exact copies of each other. What this means is that the server that’s closest to you will have the same data as every other newsgroup server around the world.

Some servers delete the content on the server by date basis to conserve space, this is called retention. if a server has a retention of three days it only has stuff that has been uploaded to the newsgroups in the last 3 days, most servers offer at least 120days tho.

What’s on Usenet?
Almost everything can be found in the newsgroups from general discussions about football matches to mental discussions about chemical equations or theory’s and stuff. Although the main reason why most people have started using Usenet lately is not the discussions but the ability to download any file uploaded to it at great speeds no matter where you are in the world. And people upload a lot of files everything that’s on them p2p programs and torrent sites are on Usenet as well and usually before the others.

How do I use it?
First, you need access to a newsgroup server. Some ISPs such as Virgin Broadband in the UK give you a free newsgroup access with their internet packages, although it has a short retention with only 3 days. Personally I would suggest getting an account with a premium Usenet provider its cheap and you’ll get a much better retention. A company I would recommend is NewsDemon - www.newsdemon.com, they have servers based in Europe Asia and America as well.

Secondly, you need a program to be able to access the newsgroups and download the files, i recommend GrabIt. A really great program that’s a breeze to set up. It’s only for PC unfortunately but if you’re a Mac user I’ve heard MT-NewsWatcher does the job too.

Last but not least you need to let the program know what to download. There are various websites on the internet that list what is on the newsgroup servers but i suggest these 3:

1. www.binsearch.info
2. www.nzbsrus.com
3. www.v3.newzbin.com

Now to bring it all together you need to set up your program with your newsgroup details. You’ll need to enter the address of the server, your username, password and the number of connections that are allowed at once. There is a good guide for help setting up GrabIt here.

Go to one of the sites above in the list and search for something you want.

Lets say you went to binsearch and wanted to search for “freeware” type it in the search box and set the max age of post to the retention of your newsgroup server. I’d suggest making the results per page larger as well. On clicking search you’ll be greeted with a page of subjects you can select with a tick box, some times there may be collections of files, these are usually the files your looking for and ticking the box next to it and clicking on “create nzb” you will be prompted to download a nzb file for that collection. This is what GrabIt or whatever program you’re using to access the newsgroups needs to allow it to download the data. (think of this like a torrent file, or directions to the files).

So download the nzb, open it and it should start downloading the files to your computer. By this point you should be dropping your jaw at the speeds.

The other sites I listed above are more like they way torrent sites worked and much simpler to use, but I much prefer binsearch as you can actually choose what parts of a file you want to download.

Files on newsgroups are usually compressed in seperate parts so you will need a program like WinRar or the Mac alternative to extract them once the download is complete.

This is only a short tutorial so if you don’t understand anything or want to know more leave a comment and ill try my best.

Add comment February 23rd, 2008