so... i seem to have gotten an xbox for christmas... a few q's for all you experts...

[welfareloser]

1. how hard is it to install a mod chip?

2. is there a particular one you would recommend?

3. is making back-up copies of your games and playing them pretty straightforward (ie, tard friendly) or is the process full of bugs and blips that take expert knowledge and hours of headaches and tweaks to get working properly?

(that one is the most important... mod chips are $50 or so, and if the whole playing back-up copies thing is easy to do, it will be well-worth it, given that my games are likely to get the poop scratched out of them fairly often with my careless friends and chilluns... but if it's hard for tards like me, i won't waste my $50.)

4. what other stuff can you make your x-box do after it's been modded? again, i'm most interested in teh tard-frindly activities...

thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge, guys :)

[gear02]

1. I'm not a fan of "solderless" mod chips and unfortunately I have not been up to date with the mod chips, so I'll use my experience. I had to solder 8 wires and if you don't know how to solder I suggest you not to this. Most are easy, but I had one that was ubersmall. Needless to say during this time I was pretty freaked out that I might have killed my xbox.

2. Read xbox-scene dot com for much better information. It's the place for such information

3. See #2, but from what I know ripping games is NOT an easy, if possible process for you to do. To tell you the truth, when people say backing up games, they usually mean downloading the image while owning the game.

4. This part is by far the best thing about mod chips when you refuse to do something illegal (pirate games). You can turn the xbox into one of the best media players. Look for a program called Xbox Media Center. It's essentially XP Media Center on the xbox. Through it you can play movies, music, pictures, tv shows, etc. either from disc, on the hard drive, or streamed from your computer. I use this to play the tv shows I downloaded on the tv.

You can also upgrade your hard drive if you need more space.

You can copy legit games to the harddrive and play them off it, though I'm not sure how well this works.

You can download game saves www.xbox-saves.com straight to the hard drive (no third party software needed). This part is GREAT, especially if you play sports games and want roster updates or to unlock characters in other games (soul calibur 2).

There is a downside. You may have issues to play on xbox live. Though most mod chips have an off switch, I read that microsoft can still detect modded systems even with the chip off. As a result, they'll ban you off xbox live. It's not a big deal if you don't want to deal with 14 year olds shouting l33t all the freaking time, but xbox is a cool piece of technology and a good feature.

Here's a link to the best tutorials for xbox mods out there:

http://www.xbox-scene.com/tutorials.php

[welfareloser]

you are my christmas hero... so, downloading and burning an image is pretty easy, and tends to work on the first try? i really wasn't planning on doing any xbox live stuff, so that's not a concern.

i will check out the link, thank you thank you... i do have an extra 160 gb hd still in its box, if it's possible, it may become a part of my x box empire :P

[Memo]

From what I hear, there is a new hack for it taht does not need a mod chip. It is supposed to work on the newer generation models as well. You do however, need an Actional Replay, a memory card and Mech Assault.

[Jcranmer]

1. how hard is it to install a mod chip?

2. is there a particular one you would recommend?

3. is making back-up copies of your games and playing them pretty straightforward (ie, tard friendly) or is the process full of bugs and blips that take expert knowledge and hours of headaches and tweaks to get working properly?

(that one is the most important... mod chips are $50 or so, and if the whole playing back-up copies thing is easy to do, it will be well-worth it, given that my games are likely to get the poop scratched out of them fairly often with my careless friends and chilluns... but if it's hard for tards like me, i won't waste my $50.)

4. what other stuff can you make your x-box do after it's been modded? again, i'm most interested in teh tard-frindly activities...

thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge, guys :)
1. It's not bad if you take your time. But it can be a big pain, most now use a pin-header install, so it's just a matter of soldering about 12 pins and 3 wires. Of course it depends on which version you have, 1.6 and 1.6b need some special consideration. You can find out more from the site that gear posted

2. Xecutor3 without a doubt. Get it and find/download a copy of Slayer's Auto-Installer 2.6 dvd. modchipman.com is fast and is where I got mine from.

3. With the X3 chip and Slayer's, it's pretty darn easy. Boot up X-box, select rip DVD to hard drive. Use a program called Qwix from your PC to ftp the image over to the PC and create an ISO image (all in one step) that you can then burn to DVD (or CD if it will fit) with Nero or any other burning software. Or for that matter play the game from the HD. This works with almost everything I have tried, no problems at all. And of course you can download them from Usenet pretty easy as well

4. Play Region Free DVDs (even in progressive scan), Play just about any other Console system through the use of Emulators and Roms. Use Xbox Media Center to play just about any format of media locally or streamed from your PC, including streaming from a ReplayTV. Get Weather updates from weather.com. And I am sure a ton of other things!:)

Umm..Not that I know anything about this of course, since almost all of this could be considered illegal. :|

I did forget to mention that you won't want to play on Xbox live after doing this, even though you can turn off the chip, they are now banning people that upgrade thier hard drive. (Which you really will want to do as well)

[gear02]

you are my christmas hero... so, downloading and burning an image is pretty easy, and tends to work on the first try? i really wasn't planning on doing any xbox live stuff, so that's not a concern.

i will check out the link, thank you thank you... i do have an extra 160 gb hd still in its box, if it's possible, it may become a part of my x box empire :P

Read Jcanner's post about ripping games. It turns out it's easier than I thought...i guess they made improvements since I got my chip.

Also I agree with him that you should try Slayer's Autoinstaller. It's essentially an installation program that will install everything, from dashboard to XBMC to other programs. It's amazingly easy to install.

[Jcranmer]

Read Jcanner's post about ripping games. It turns out it's easier than I thought...i guess they made improvements since I got my chip.

Also I agree with him that you should try Slayer's Autoinstaller. It's essentially an installation program that will install everything, from dashboard to XBMC to other programs. It's amazingly easy to install.
Yeah I have only had mine for a couple of weeks now, and have done about 6 games that way, with no issues at all. The only one that even gave me the slightest problem was Halo 2, because it's on a DVD9 and I only have a DVD5 burner. However if you remove the xbox live stuff and the dashboard updates from the image it fits perfectly on a 5. :)