HowTo transform your xBox into a Media Center with XBMC

Legal Issues

It is strictly forbidden to modify your xBox, sell or install mods chip in france. Even opening the XBOX is forbidden. Remember pirating is a crime, support the developers and film companies.

What does XBMC do?

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/info_project.htm

Process

What you will have to do: (red mandatory, blue optional)

1. Buy a Xbox
2. open the Xbox (void garanty)
3. Install a modchip
4. flash a BIOS on modchip
5. Install a new dasboard with FTP support
6. backup original data found on C:\ with FTP to your PC
7. install and configure Xbox media center (XBMC) with FTP
8. Adapt scripts (XML files) for your network or shares drives
9. Install a streaming server on some PC or use Samba to access remote data (video, pictures and music)
10. Add a 3rd party 5:1 cable with digital output, RGB ...
11. Install a bigger harddisk if you want to host more video, music on the Xbox
12. Install a harddrive led
13. Configure internet
14. Install Linux

1. Buy a Xbox, required

		=	=
Remote Controller pack, a lot more user friendly than the pad for this application..	A xBox	With chance, you can still find this pack from christmas 2004. Cost me 199€	No Games, but a video DVD is in the pack.

Optionnal

Network cable, if you want to use your PC as a storage server. M$... sell also a wireless card. I was trying this streaming solution 10 minutes, then a strong headache forced me to stop it.

2. Open the Xbox (void the garanty)

1.70€ This is the cheaper version I've found. This is a Torx screwdriver

time: 5 minutes

Overall view, return the xBox	Locate the screws, 4 are under the gromets, 2 are under stickers. Use the allen #20	All screws have the same length. 2 additionnal screws are under the sticker
Remove the harddisk, only 1 screw. Use the allen #10 Remove	Remove the DVD rom, only 2 screws Use the allen #10	Ready to install the mods chip.

3. Install a mods chip

All mods-chips are more or less equal! I mean that some special restriction, like DVD region, macrovision, disk eject, run signed (from M$ or 3rd party game company) or unsigned code (Linux, softwares and emulators) etc... are not controlled by the mod-chip itself but only by the BIOS (Basic Input Output System, this small program is responsibe for initializing devices, starting a kernel, and low level operations)...So what?
Differences are:

• Ease of installation (soldering may be required or not), 1st generation of chips (2000) use to have more than 50 cables, 2rd generation less than 15 cables and 3rd most of the time no soldering.
• Onboard memory size (up to 2Mb for the latest generation) and number of BIOS you can store (up to 6 with different memory mapping : 6 bios of 256kb or 2 bios of 512kb and 4 of 256kb ....)
• The way you can flash a new BIOS (printer LPT port or USB or through the dashboard with a CD).
• Possibility of extension: like adding a LCD panel (Xenium).

Price range is from $20 (soldering required and only one bios like the Aladin) to $60 (2Mb, USB, 6 bios, LCD) for the most expensive.

I choose the Xbit because: Xbit is Solderless (for all XBOX versions from 1.0 to 1.5): All You have to do is to position the chip correctly, and use 1 screw...In fact the double row of pogo pins (pins wih springs) are postionning the chip nearly alone. Xbit accept BIOS up to 2Mb, you can have many bios in the onboard memory (6 memory mapping) and chose the one you prefer with dip-switches (6 configurations) Has a USB interface while other has LPT or none (Some of them even sold the LPT bios loader separatly) Xecuter 3.0 was my first choice but it was not available at that time

All manufacturer have great HowTo sections, for Xbit just follow instructions here:
http://www.dms3.com/xmanuals.htm
http://www.dms3.com/xbit_pogopin_install.htm

4. Flash a Bios on modchip

Which BIOS? Nearly all mod-chip are shipped without a BIOS installed, in best case you get a cromwell BIOS (open source BIOS develop to boot linux), this is because of legal issues: a lot of BIOS are based on M$... hacked version.

http://www.xbox-scene.com/bios_retail.html Here you can find a comparaison table of all functionnalities with a glossary of technicals terms

Executer is a famous modchips builder and they provide their own BIOS free of charge, You can install it on all mods chips since they provide both binary image of 256kb and 512kb.

5. Installing a new dashboard

The M$... dashboard do not have: FTP (File Transfert Protocol) support, game backup, file explorer, linux loader, skins support etc... and can only run signed code. This is why You must install a new one:
EvolutionX or Avalaunch or neXgen (Team XOS WIP) or MediaXMenu or UnleashX or tHc Hacked M$ Xbox Dashboard . I have only tried EvolutionX and I am happy with it

For installing EvolutionX, all you have to do is to locate on internet the file: SlaYer's EvoX Auto-Installer v2.5FINAL.iso (215Mb) and burn it on a DVD-RW or CD-RW.

Boot your XBOX with this CD inside, and follow the onscreen menu. In 2 minutes, You can have EvolutionX, Linux, XBMP installed. You can even prepare a new and bigger harddisk with no efforts.
Reboot

If You want that Avalaunch display your BIOS version in the first page, You need to open the file c:\evox.ini . For the Executer 4981 BIOS add these 2 lines:
Rom = "x2 4981.06",0xca25c9b3721da8c96c4770515dbcda07
Rom = "x2 4981.67",0xb6eb9fb7b79795c962b7f998ee4a8694

6. Backup original data found on c:\ with FTP to your PC

Connect your Xbox to the network! Using the remote controller or gamepad, you can go in evox "system preferences", this is the place where you can set the FTP server adress, password, DNS, gateway.

• Use a fix IP, it should be something like 192.168.0.XXX with XXX from 2 to 255, use for example 192.168.0.10
• Do not set the 2 DNS (Domain Name Server which is normally your router 192.168.0.1) if you do not want to let your XBox have an access to internet.
• You can not change te FTP login name ("xbox"), only the default password ("xbox") this is because the login "xbox" is encrypted in MD5, a page on www.xboxmediacenter.com (FAQ) section let you change it in file fileserver.xml

Save all changes (save changes is located at the end of the menu), and reboot your Xbox

Attention: I use to have some instabilities with 2 different crossed Ethernet cable, in fact the FTP was instable and unusable (disconnect and time out problems), I am using a router-switch in the middle now and everything is working perfectly. This is probably due to a mass problem.

Use your favorite FTP client (LeechFTP, CuteFTP, ....) to connect to the XBOX, it is good idea to backup all files found under C:\ (default dashboard and RSA key pair for your machine)

If you want to play with EvolutionX: add or translate for example some new entries in the main menu, edit the file c:\evox.ini

7. Install and configure Xbox media center (XBMC) with FTP

XBMP is now discontinued, a XBMB team decide to rewrite it and create XMBC

XBMC review at Tomshardware

"Xbox Media Center (XBMC) for Microsoft's Xbox game console turns the Xbox into a very capable multimedia jukebox, enabling it to play AVI (divx/xvid), MPEG, MP3, JPG and many other audio/video/picture file formats from CD/DVD, HD, a LAN or the internet."

For legal reasons, you can only download XBMC source code, but not the binary since the SDK of Microsoft do not allow You to distribute binary. The open-source community is currently creating an open source SDK: the XDK.

How to find binaries:

• Try to find it on P2P network : eMule, eDonkey or
• www.geux.net make a light distribution (without codecs, scripts and skins) or
• If you want to have always the latest build (risky it may not be a stable version since it reflect the current state of development) : http://www.azard.firstream.net/ or
• Compile it yourself with XBOX SDK and Visual C++ if you own a M$ license ;-)

How to install it:

• XBMC is ONLY a directory, copy it to e:/apps/XBMC for example and add an entry in c:\evox.ini

  section "Root" { .. Item "Multimedia Station","e:\Apps\XBMC\default.xbe" ... }

• Reboot and you're done.
• If you have problem with XBMC, please first read the Frequently asked questions first: http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/info_faq.htm

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/info_screens.htm screenshots
www.xboxmediacenter.com Official Homepage
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmc/ Official Homepage for development on sourceforge
http://www.allxboxskins.com This is THE place where to get skins. Upwards of 50-60GB+ of transfer everyday. a 3GB+ skins inventory!

8. Adapt scripts (XML files) for your network or shares drives

XMBC configuration is done through a XML file (plain text file heavily structured with some special tags), this file is in e:\apps\XBMC\XboxMediaCenter.xml

The purpose of this file is to tell the player where to find digital content, because your multimedia files can be stored on the XBOX or on the network:

This file contains a documentation and is quite easy to modify.

Attention when you copy digital content to the Xbox harddrive with FTP, the filesystem (FAT-X) has a lot of limitations! no name up to 43 characters, no special character < > = ? : ; " * + , / \ | and avoid accents too...

9. Install a streaming server on some PC or use Samba to access remote data

A list of all available tools can be found on http://www.xbox-scene.com/tools/tools.php?page=streaming

Personnaly I have only use Relax pre 0.76, I ran into problem with NFS protocol and was not convince by its efficiency. I decide to try Samba (smb://) and it works since!

1. open e:\apps\XBMC\XboxMediaCenter.xml
2. At the end of the file, locate the bookmark section.
   Example of bookmark
   smb://xbox:k7sEP1zY@192.168.0.4/EOLE/
   xbox is the windows/linux/macintosh user name (this user must exist)
   k7sEP1zY is the password, do not use ';' as this has a signification in the smb:// url (use to specify a network domain)
   192.168.0.4 is the fix IP (nearly all router can assign a fix IP adress to a Ethernet card) Here this adress is one of my PC
   EOLE: is the name of one of my share drive

10. Add a 3rd party 5:1 cable with digital output, RGB...

XBOX HIFI STATION RGB / SVHS / Optical / Coax / Component	Xbox RGB-Pro-Advanced cable
RGB SCART output Gold contacts Optical output / coax output for 5.1 Dolby Digital S-Video/SVHS output COMPOSITE output Audio-output COMPONENT Y/Pr/Pb for videoprojector less than 20€ HERE !!! I bought this one	RGB-SCART-cable Gold contacts Optical audio output DolbyDigital 5.1/AC2 Receiver Audio/Video Chinch ouput SVHS output less than 18€ HERE !!!

11. Install a bigger harddrive

1) Boot Xbox with the original hard disk,
2) With FTP save everything from C:\ and E:\: on your local PC, If you want to reuse this old disk (8Gb of free space), do not forget with SlaYer's EvoX Auto-Installer v2.5FINAL.iso to unlock the harddisk before removing it from the XBOX otherwise it is unusable.
3) Install the new hard disk in the case,
4) Using the CD which contains with the CD containing SlaYer's EvoX Auto-Installer v2.5FINAL.iso ,boot the Xbox and choose "Initialize new disk",
5) Restart the Xbox without any CD after completion,
6) Using FTP, copy everything back to C:\ and E:\

12. Install a harddrive LED

Add a led to your Xbox to see hard disk activity

13. Configure Internet

All You have to do is to specify the gateway and DNS in the dashboard. If XBMC configuration file (e:\apps\XBMC\XboxMediaCenter.xml) do not contains any gateway or DNS it will use the dashboard settings.

14. Install Linux

http://www.xbox-linux.sf.net/
 http://www.xbox-linux.org/ Linux Debian on Xbox

15. Frequently asked questions

I've load a bad/corrupt skins and can not change it in the graphical user interface of XBMC!
Search in E:/TDATA/ in all directories for a file settings.xml (on mine Xbox it was in E:/TDATA/0face008) and edit this file

<general>
<skin>MayhemWidescreen</skin>
<timeserver>true</timeserver>
<ftpserver>true</ftpserver>

change the skins name to the previous which was working, and then restart XBMC

Not required but...

You may want to :

• Change the Fan because it is too noisy in a home cinema setup...
• Connect USB devices: keyboard and mouse, in order to use linux. Some interface are now available ($15) or you can build it yourself (soldering required)
• Replace the genuine DVD rom, in order to have a better compatibility with CD-CDRW (the genuine drive Samsung read correctly only closed sessions discs, other do not read CDR)

Helping the community
There is surely something for you!

• Help at the code level,
• Create more skins, logos
• Write documentations, tutorials.
• Translations of interface, manuals...,
• Help newbies in forums,
• And pay some games instead of copying them!

Thanks

My thanks goes first to M$... for having created such a device, and think that nobody will ever crack its protections schemes. Then to the community which always do a great job and is creating a lot of good releases in all domains.

Xbox Linux clusters

A lot of people want to create farms of Xbox to resolve some complex challenges (like Seti at Home, RSA key crack)
http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/ THE home for linux on XBOX
http://www.cs.uh.edu/~bguillot/xbox/home.html    Unmodified Xbox Cluster 4 nodes
http://home.llamma.com/xbox/beowulf.htm plan is to have a 14 nodes cluster, but no advance in the project since a while
Xbox clusters up at Linux Expo
Domino 6 for Linux on M$ Xbox

Emulation

http://xboxemul.gueux.net/
http://www.lantus-x.com/xSnes9x/ SNES
http://mameox.sourceforge.net/

Links

http://www.xbox.com/ Official XBOX site
http://www.xbox-scene.com/ The REFERENCE site, if you visit only one, this MUST be the one!
www.teamxecuter.com the best, oldest, constantly improved mod chip available.
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/modtips/story/0,24330,3420568,00.html XBMP Review at techTV, some video can be download.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbplayer Host the source code of the project.

http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net/ open-sourced Windows(Win32) port of Xbox Media Center, named Media Portal.

http://www.xboxhacker.net/ All about mods chips in general
http://www.avalaunch.de/ Avalauch community
http://www.teamavalaunch.tk/ Team Avalaunch (dashboard)
http://www.xboxopensource.com/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/openxdk/ OpenXDK is an Open Source, Free, Legal Xbox Development Kit. OpenXDK is being developed to facilitate hobbyist and "homebrew" coding for the Microsoft XBox.