Markus

Well I've had the xbox for a while now so it's out of warranty and thus I can play with it Yeah, I know, bit behind the times and all that, but I don't use it as much as I used to these days.

I can see two main options open to me:

Soft mod or using a modchip.

The modchip method has two options as well, soldering or solderless.

I'm not handy with a soldering iron so solderless appeals to me, but there is a local chappy who could install it for me.


My problem with softmod is that you need a specific version of game, be it splinter cell, mech assault or 007: AUF, and I don't have any of those games. Yes I know I could go and hunt one down, be it in the real world or via ebay. I'm just wondering if there is a way to softmod without a game, I'm guessing not as it's based on it executing some linux thing.

The modchip route looks good, I know I've got a v1.6 console as I've opened it up and checked the gfx and memory chips and compared that against various info on the internet.

I like the look of the Xecuter 3CE chip, and it is then down to the choice of wether I want it installed professionally or to use the solderless approach via Xapt3r 1.6. However I'm told that isn't 100 percent solderless as it requires you to solder wires for LAN and HDD LED's, but I've also been told they are not required, just nice to have (but I don't have them now, so it would not be too much of a loss if I did not have them with the modchip).

I've had a few people tell me solderless is a real pain, so have any of you gone the solderless route and if so, is it as good as a soldered modchip, or would you recommend doing the soldered thing?

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

Modchip, soulderless option. Done. I've modded a few for mates and had no probs.

Find the divx thread from the past few days for discussion on the subject.

Hanslow

I've done a solderless one recently. Had a minor issue where a bit of plastic on the solderless mount was fouling on a chip, but one hot small screwdriver later sorted that out Other than that, it was a doddle. I wondered if I'd ordered the wrong chip, but I hadn't. It would have probably worked with the fouling, but I was concerned about longevity, although on a v1.1 console, it's had a good life already. I even turned mine upside down and banged it when I thought it had bust, until I realised I'd switched scart channels which was why I had no picture Still worked after that

Installed XBMC which is very good and it's so nice not having to put my disks into the machine any more (yes I'm a lazy sod ).

Can't vouch for your comments on the 1.6 chip, but have a search on the web and you'll find many installation guides which should help

dowser

Soldered my chip in last night; Xecutor 2.6 CE into a v1.0. I did a wired install.

Straightforward, but a shame that the X2 BIOS's don't natively support IP (as the initial cromwell BIOS the modchips are supplied with do); my Xbox didn't want to read the DVD+RW disk I tried to use to then install XBMC.

Richard

Markus

Thanks for the feedback, I'll check out the dvix thread as well.

Soldered is ok, but it means getting off my fat **** and taking the console somewhere to have it done.

I'm not overly worried about the disk size as I'm not planning on copying many games and things onto the drive. I want to have a play with XBMC, plus XLink Kai on the xbox could be handy too, possibly a bit more reliable than the mac interface Amaryllis (Java UI on Mac is pretty good though).

BTW: what's the deal with DVD playback? does XBMC allow this without the "kit" you usually need from MS? What about region encoding and more specifically PAL vs NTSC (as I'm in cannuck land the xbox will be NTSC, so I'm taking a guess it might not be able to handle PAL)

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

Use the controler for playback. works great. XBMC will play pretty much anything you care to throw at it.