XBMC conversion

2old2play's own Codemunkee posted several weeks ago in the Game Trades forum that he was looking for an original Xbox for an XBMC conversion. While trying to find my original Xbox, I researched XBMC a bit and became very intrigued. Before I could find my old Xbox to sell to him, he found one locally - which worked to both of our advantages.

I gave my Xbox to my sister several years ago when I bought the 360. I got her a Wii for Christmas and managed to finagle the Xbox back, and spent a couple days acquiring the parts for the soft mod. To me, this seemed far safer than opening up the console and soldering shit - there is a greater chance I could screw that up!

Rather than provide a step-by-step (there are a ton of guides out there written by people with more of an understanding than I could convey), I'll share just a bit of my experience. First, I had to accumulate the necessary parts. Finding a copy of Mechassault was easier than I thought - $1.99 at a local GameStop. The softmod also requires an Action Replay, which was a bit trickier. Half of the Action Replay hardware is a memory card, which i found in Vermont at another GameStop where all the western New Hampshire stores shipped all their old used Xbox merchandise. The other half, the USB reader, I'll get to in a moment.

First I made sure I have everything:

Clockwise from top left:

The original Xbox and a spare monitor
My laptop, which I used both for reading the how-to tutorials and FTP
Rolling Rock (can substitute with patience, however I chose beer)
The Xbox memory card
Electrical tape and wire cutting/stripping pliers
An old USB cable and Xbox controller break-away cable
MechAssault
Original Xbox controller

The first step after downloading everything was copying the Mechassault saved game to the memory card. Without an Action Replay, this was not simple. Codemunkee gave me a great method via PM, which I adapted a bit:

I used an extra breakaway cable for the Xbox controller (which I read can be used in Windows), and spliced it with an old USB cable. It was a rudimentary job but I made sure it did what I needed it to do. Unfortunately, the software portion was a pain in the balls. I downloaded the Action Replay software but spent an hour trying to figure out why my PC wouldn't connect to the controller/memory card. Note to self: a Windows version, released in 2009, may not work with technology that went obsolete in 2006. I thought the problem was my cable but it was actually Windows 7. Borrowed my wife's laptop (XP), plugged in the USB controller, and it worked.

Applied the exploit, flashed the BIOS, and it seemed to be working.

This is the installer for Linux and the new Xbox dashboard. The programmer did a phenomenal job at making it easy to understand and use. Went back to the Windows 7 laptop and began FTP-ing files into the Xbox:

I know, it's a shitty picture. Despite Apple's great advertising the iPhone camera still sucks.

Copied all the files required for the XBMC dashboard, and power cycled the Xbox..................

Holy Christ on a pony it worked. The picture on the left is the main dashboard, and the blurry pic on the right is the Weather Channel application that's pre-loaded as part of XBMC.

Initially, there is not a whole lot to do in XBMC. The next step (which I haven't gotten to yet) is to load media sources other than the pre-loaded Apple Movie Trailers and Shoutcast radio. However from what I've read, the possibilities are endless. Besides configuring a SMB share between my laptop and Xbox, I plan on loading all the worthwhile streaming video I can find, and loading emulators for some of my favorite classic systems.

I have quite a bit of learning to do. If anybody has any recommendations of good media sources, PLEASE let me know.