So I decided to dust off my xbox after having it sit in my closet for 4 years so that I could just now get into the modding scene. I have been researching non-stop for a few weeks now and went through and ordered an X3 CE and 500gb HDD last night. I chose the HDD using the compatability chart that is out there and can say that it's a Seagate ST3500320AS. I know locking doesn't really matter for a hard modded box.

My question is basically what are the steps I need to take to properly format everything to begin with the mod. I should be getting the chip and HDD around the same thing so I was looking to do everything at once. I read the there are certain things I need to do (flash the bios) to properly format the drive to allow the system to revognize anything >137gb.

Should I mod first, transfer everything off my original HDD then swap it out? Any help would be great, everyone seems to know a lot on these boards.

THANKS!

im presuming that after 4 years the only things worth saving from original HDD are game saves. Most of the Homebrew stuff will be well out of date (besides any roms you may have for emulators) . If it were me. I would install chip, save any stuff i wanted to PC via FTP. Then download an all in one installer like Auto Installer Deluxe. Install new HDD and use AID to set it up. Re-Install some form of Dashboard (XBMC is proving very popular and quite rich in its features). There are a few dashboards you could use any many configs. Its all down to personal choice.

the steps are very simple if you have a chip in fact its a piece of cake.
1.install chip.
2.download slayers auto installer 2.7 or auto installer deluxe 4.50
3.burn installer iso to disc/dvdr.
4.flash chip with auto installer
5.take out old xbox hdd,put in shiny new one.
6.put auto installer disc back into xbox and format new hdd.
7.then install whichever apps you want from the disc,it does it automatically.my suggestions xbox media centre as main dash,unleashx as an app and dvd2xbox as an app.
check over at xbox scene on how to flash the executer chip bios correctly because if i remember the xecuter3 chip has 3 banks you can flash as in have at least 2 different bios on your xbox that you can switch between for playing online if you wish.
there are plaenty of threads over there concerning which bios you should flash especially seeing as the older bios(really older bios)have a 137gb limit.

Do you know how to identify the current bios version on a chip ? I recall mine is an old Aladdin and it displays "excecuter 2" on boot.

sounds good. Yes all that I care about on my old HDD are my save games (GTA SA at 100% gotta keep that one!). I'll look at xbox-scene again a little harder. For some reason I felt that everything I was reading was dated so I wanted to make sure I was doing what was right for the most current set up.

Also, wouldn't it make sense to have somewhat of a "set-up" disk for all of my firs-time installs. This would obviously include XMBC and slayer but I was thinking that if I'm going to be installing a lot wouldn't it be easier to put a collection of apps/tools on one disk to start with? If you agree what are some of the essentials I should look around for? I know XMBC takes care of a lot but I was thinking emulators, media players, set up tools, etc.

XBMC should tell you what chip and bios you have running. You have to look in system information.

Ok thanks.

well if you want the most up to date then get aid 4.50 instead of slayers as slayers was last updated 3years ago.
aid 4.50 has all the newest versions of all the apps and emulators.
when you are talking about media players xbmc is the no1 choice as for setup tools what do you mean by that??

Thats helpful. As for the setup files, I'm not sure really. I was speaking from a PC perspective of having an install disk of all the common apps/programs you would want to put on a fresh install. I like to keep everything in one place so if I ever have to reformat or do this for someone else, I have it on one disk.

well you have everything you need in the auto installer disc,version 4.50 is the most up to date version and was released in june of this year.
you dont need anything else when it comes to adding apps,emulators,formatting hdds.....etc

Yup, it's so easy these days. Too easy. You don't know you were born.

There are a few quirks with AID Installer.
Firstly the apps, emulators etc are from when the installer was packaged (made) so as Fu says they are dated from the summer so XBMC and other bits will require updating after initial install.
Secondly you will have some tools installed by the installer in set directories, i myself dont use the old folder layout ie- emulators in emulators folder, apps in apps folder etc. For me emulators drop straight in the games folder. You get the idea anyway.
In conclusion, you will probably have to re-arrange some stuff. As for updating things it couldnt be easier. Its not like a PC with installers as such, its a case of copying and overwriting stuff via Either FTP or from disc. Im sure you get the picture.

Tech released a new verion of xbmc just last week so yeah you will have to update xbmc and as for the emus well they are all up to date apart from the mame ones and fbaxxx.
i think you get mamedox1.1 and mameox128 with aid and fbaxxx pro1.28 IIRC.

I'm currently downloading XMBC 1.10. Is there a more current version I should be looking into?

xbmc 1.1 doesnt sound genuine at all. Delete immediately.
Try http://t3ch.yi.se/ for genuine builds.
Alternatively http://www.sshcs.com/xbmc/ for nightly builds. Nightly builds are a bit quirky at the minute so stick with the T3CH build.

I'll check it out.

For reference, I was downloading everything from here:

http://www.aideluxe.com/index.php?title=Downloads

and you'll see that at the bottom XMBC ver 1.10

Yeah that is probably ok. It would seem to be a build made by the AID team. It probably comes with a whole bunch of skins and plugins most of which you wont like in the case of the skins and as far as the scripts go half are shoddy and lots dont even work. Some plugins are regional and most require a really up to date build of XBMC. The newer skins also require a recent version XBMC. Hey its all up to you, i prefere to get my builds from the builders/creators. Try this site for info on XBMC. Over time most development threads have moved to XBMC's new home at http://xbmc.org/forum/
Good luck, thats all your getting outta me.

thanks for all your help, this is a lot to take in haha

Stick with the T3CH builds for XBMC. There are official nightly builds but the last time I tried any of them they had a lot of very basic xbox features (like trainers) broken. T3CH builds usually still have all the xbox stuff working. The latest versions of certain skins are still broken too.

stick with the basic pm3 skin that you get with xbmc,its the nicest and cleanest looking skin.

For me (HD 720P) Transparency! 2.01 (xbox optimised version).
Looking forward to Ronnie's next release.

MC360 rules.

How does T3CH just get away with distributing XBMC on his site like that? Everyone seems to freak out about xbox binaries but he seems unaffected. He could be in another country or whatever but still, You don't see many others doing it. Is there some kind of crazy workaround?

360 is the worst skin i have ever seen, PM3HD for me, clean and user friendly.

I read somewhere that T3CH's a girl. The official xbox nightly builds are freely distributed via direct download as well. I forget the url, but it's not xmbc's website, it's a site dedicated to the nightly builds.

Well I'm still waiting for the HDD to come in but after reseaching in the meantime I realized that SATA drives seem to cause a few more problems than they should. At the time I bought this harddrive

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ST...S-R&cat=HDD

I read that all I needed as a SATA -> IDE adapter but now I realize that these can be pretty spotty as far as quality goes. I got a good deal on the drive too as you can see ($44) so it was hard to think twice about it. I'm thinking now I just want to do everything the right way since this will probably be my one and only mod. I'll probably cough up the extra cash and get a 500GB IDE drive. I just wish I was more patient a week ago.

I've never tried a SATA drive in an xbox, coz I don't like the idea of using an adapter. An IDE would be much safer if you ask me. And if you're going as high as 500GB, you'll need to make sure when you format it that you set the cluster size to 32kb to avoid long term data loss. The AID may do this for you if you use it to set up your partitions, but you can make sure by using XBPartitioner v1.1, which I think is on the disc. For a 500GB drive your clusters MUST be 32kb or you will start to see files dissapear after a time.

Thanks. IDE it is.

OK new newbie question relating to this topic. I set the drive up using Slayer 2.7 and when I look at the partitions it sets up I have a c: partition with barely 2gb on it, an E: partition with about 5gb on it and everything else (458gb) on the F: partition. Am I missing something here? I was under the impression that almost all of the free space should sit on F:.

Nope that seems normal. You will also have a X,Y and Z drives too. These are cache drives. You could have had a G:\ drive aswell. Anything over 120gb (i think, cant remember) can be allocated to G:\. Depends on bios/chip etc.

That's exactly how it should be. You need that space on your E drive for savegames. The C drive is for the Microsoft dash stuff and should be left alone really. You can put stuff on the E drive if you really want, but with over 400GB on your F drive, you shouldn't need to. You might wanna double check your cluster size with XBPartitioner, as I don't know if Slayers Disc sets it to 32kb for drives over 250GB. Better safe than sorry. The last thing you want is your data wiping itself next year.

I definitely made sure that it was 32bit clusters before i did anything haha. I read that enough in the forums as I was researching it. So now I'm good, Slayer 2.7 is great aside from the out-dated emulators.