Hacking the XboX

[legman]

From my post at Doom9.

I have bought one and this is from 2 posts. Please add any info you you have to this thread so we can get down to making it play everything.
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This is not a gamming site, but in order to get DivX movies out of this box we need to take a closer look.
I have played around with it a bit.

Here are a few notes:

The game disk can only be read in a dvdrom drive.
It appears, at first glance, to be set up as a DVD. Video_vts folder with the files inside.
After looking at the vob size, it become apparent that there has to be more then 12 meg on the disk, but where is it?

I inspected the bottom of the disk closely and it appears that the disk has been created using several new processes. It is divided into areas that are defined by very fine lines that are difficult to see with the naked eye, This would explain why you can not see the data in a standard cdrom or dvd drive. The hardware in the xbox drive most likely has a special instruction set to jump forward to a particular point on the dvdrom.

I have tried to read the disk and create backup images in cdrwin and clonecd. Neither can read the disk properly and has errors.

I was able to make a winimage iso of the dvdrom and burned it, knowing it was a waste of time, but what the hell, and it did read in a pc cdrom drive, but not in the xbox.

I have no dvd controller yet.

I did manage to rip the dvd with Smartripper 2.39, but did not see that any keys were needed. The vob was unencrypted already.

On further inspection, the vob file turned out to be…no surprise here..the xbox splash screen.

Suggestions and possible ideas for the future.

Rip the hard drive in the xbox so others that do not have one can see the file structure and possible make new ghost files to replace it in order to get added functionality.

Remove the dvdrom from the xbox and connect it to a pc to see if there is anyway to read the additional files on the dvdrom.

If it is possible to get the layout and information on both the hard drive software and the makeup of the dvdroms, we may be able to burn mini-dvdroms to cdr / cdrw media with appz like dvdit.


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Ok, I took it apart.
Tools needed:
Torx #20
Torx #10
Phillips #1 to take cover off dvd drive. There are 4 screws, 2 t back and 2 holding the top and bottom steel plates together.

You can remove the box seal without leaving a mark by heating the round clear sticker up with a blow dryer until it becomes warm. Then carefully slide the edge of a razor under it to be able to grab the edge. Pull it back very slowly without stopping at any point until it is free. Stay off the carpeting or any area where the exposed sticker may pick up lint, hair or other foreign objects.

remove from box. Remove all cables by pulling back on tape on each bag carefully.

Open tape of bag xbox is in. It is covered with a type of wrapping that sticks. Peel it off carefully and you can put it back later if necessary.

open a game, again, if you peel the seal slow, it will not tear.

Fire up the box and let it stay on for 10-15 minutes to get warm.

Turn it off and flip it over on a soft surface. Carefully slide the razor under the edge if the center stickers and peel them back to expose the screw holes. Yes, when you put it back together and smooth the stickers out with a flat edge, you cannot tell it has ever been opened.

Grab the rubber feet and pull back on them. They are stuck with adhesive and will pull away cleanly and will be restickable also. After you remove all six screws push the stickers back lightly and flip the box upright.

Lift the top off.
Remove the one screw between the dvdrom and the hard drive. This will allow the hard drive plastic mount and drive within to be removed. Detach cables.

Remove the 2 screws at the top front sides of the dvdrom. This will allow it to be removed. The dvd drive is in a plastic mount also. On reassembly, put the plastic mount in first and align the base support points to the mount locations at the bottom first, then snap the dvd drive into to plastic mount. Failure to do this will make it very difficult to put back together correctly.

At this point, you will be able to see everything.

You will notice the dvd drive uses a propritery 12 pin power and controller plug.

I turned the xbox on and tested the pins at the board

With the rear of the box to your left:

12V-G-?-?-?-G
5V-3V-?-?G-G

The cable lines are aligned from end to end, but cross over.

You need only to connect the 12V to yellow, 5V to red and the G by 12V to black on you pc cable in order for the drive to power up.

You puter will see a tompson dvd rom drive when the bios detect.

Neither win2k nor win98se were able to assign the drive a drive letter, even though the bios detected it. Maybe someone else can figure out why. Bummer…..

http://www.thomson-asia.com.sg/asiachif.htm

That is the manufacturer

I then plugged the Seagate drive in as a slave. I needed to remove te one jumper, currently set to cable select, to set it to slave.

My bios detected the drive fine, so I booted the puter with a 98 boot disk and checked it out in fdisk. Fdisk was unable to detect any partitions on the drive. As expected, when I fired up ghost, I was unable to use it because the was no drive letter assigned to the hard drive because it had no known partitions. Another bummer.

It is going to take some of the advanced techs to make some tools to deal with this xbox or we are never going to get squat done.

Hope that helps.

Box is reassembled and back in shipping box like new. lol Kids will never know it was opened and neither will anyone else if I need to use the warranty.

[legman]

I posted this here because it has been up at doom9's for about a day without a reply. I am very interested in having some discussion.

[Macros746]

I, for one, am very interested in this project. Because of it's similarity to the PC architechture I think the chances of PC emulation and/or SVCD, VCD playing on the X-Box are much Stronger than PS2 or Gamecube (which, because of proprietary discs will never be a VCD/SVCD option) I wish you all the luck in the world but don't have the money or the technical know how to take apart and study the X-Box. I look forward to your conclusions...keep up the good work.

Mark

[MrDilemma]

legman,

This i have to say seems really interesting. Too bad you took the xbox back. Did you try to have win2k map the drive?
I'll explain why I say that: Some time ago i bought a new motherboard (FuturePower - Athlon 1 gig) and decided to make multiple partitions on my second 30 gig hardrive. I used Partition magic 7. Because FuturePower sux the whole thing froze IN THE MIDDLE of "moving partitions" or something like that. This is before windows boots up. I rebooted the computer and now win2k can not see the partition. I opened up partition magic again and it said the volume had a "hex" partition. Wuteva that is. So everytime i booted up my computer i had to either map the drive or go to drive manager and assign a drive letter to it. I wouldnt try this with xp because 2k seems to be able to see "weird" partitions. Worth a shot! I wish you the best of luck on this one buddy. Oh, and were can I go to find new developments on Xbox hacking as well as the ps2? Has anyone found a way for ps2s to play mpegs? I think that the version of gyplay that allows you to make self-bootable dreamcast movies without the bin2boot crap by just burning the audio.raw on the second track was the best thing ever. Holla Back!

[legman]

Thanks for the replies guys. All this work and you are the only people to respond in 2 days! I was beginning to think no one cared.

I did not return the xbox. I put it back in the box for my kids for Christmas

It had my curiosity.

If fdisk does not see a partition, then no ms os will see it either.

Perhaps someone with a bit more knowledge then me can tell me if there are different mac/beos/unix/linux partition configurations and even possibly supply the necessary software tools and know how to check out the hard drive.

Support info on the dvdrom would also be good. Information on how to hook the pins up and get it to function in a pc would be great. We might only need to install the hardware with a driver, but I have the feeling there is more to it. There may be some standard pin locations that have been moved. This is where we in a dvd drive pro to look.

It is possible the drive comes unpartitioned and the box partitions it when you first use it. I never did anything but load a game, take it apart and put it back together.

Summery:
You can’t read the game disk in a pc cd drive, you must use a DVD drive, but even then you can’t see the game files in win2k or 98se. The DVD drive has a 12 pin plug in addition to the standard 40pin ribbon cable.

The hard drive comes either unpartitioned or is in a format that a standard ms pc can’t see.

What we need:
Applications that can read everything on a dvd rom.
To determine if there is any data at all on the hard drive.

The hard drive and the DVD rom are the keys here. Everything else is soldiered to the board. We either make the box do what we want with a disk or hard drive or both.

Please help, I only tinker and am not qualified to do real tech stuff.

[daren b]

being in uk and no xbox here as yet i read with interest your dilema and add a small contrabution
in gearsoft gearpro dvd recording software you can instruct it to read all hidden files on dvd and transfer to dvd-r
not having a xbox dvd to try i will leave it to you
maybe you never know

[MrDilemma]

Also try different os's. Maybe you'll get lucky linux etc. Daren, have you ever tried gear soft? Where do you get it? Legman, lets keep this going! Oh, also i read somewhere that some guys on http://www.teamxbox.com experimented and got a mini dvd to work on the xbox! Hmmmmm!

[MrDilemma]

Guys check this out in case you didn't know. A little off topic but just wanted to share the wealth...

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.granavenida.com/vcdspai...htm&hl=en&sa=G

[daren b]

yes i use gearpro dvd a lot for certain reasons i got a demo from their website and a little file from else where private message me if you wish

[legman]

Good stuff, I am on it!

[MrDilemma]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-11-21 13:39:48, legman wrote:
If fdisk does not see a partition, then no ms os will see it either.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>
Thats not always true man trust me! : )
Oh and has anyone ever tried that link i posted? Does it work for a full movie?

[legman]

.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: legman on 2001-12-22 09:30:16 ]</font>

[legman]

Now that we can get the image off the drive by unlocking it, I wonder if posting the files is illegal. I did not agree to any license when I bought the thing.

[legman]

Okay here is the deal guys:
We can access the hard drive of the xbox now. The file structure appears to have a header for each file as verification. I suggest we see if we can first create a successful back up of the hard drive. After doing that, we can proceed to replacing a prenamed module file on the hard drive with an auto loading mpeg4 decoder. Remember, if we can force the xbox to use the dvd drive, then we can bypass the hardware lock on the drive for region playing of dvd's.

Very vague, I know, but this is where I am at right now.

PS> I have access to the dev kit also. The access is limited what i can get out of a friend of a friend and he appears to be very interested in hacking thing also.

I passed along some blank cd and compression utils in the hopes that I can get a complete copy for myself. I will let you know if I get it.

[jminas_]

i'm new to the vcd/svcd concepts, so this post will probably be laughed at. I have just bought the xbox and have tried burning vcd/svcd's to play on it without success. Now i've learned tht the xbox won't play vcd/svcd's. When the xbox is hacked....will it then play these movies formats?

THANKS FOR NOT LAUGHING !

[legman]

http://www.siliconice.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=1&topic=174

[rallytbk]

Try submitting your findings on slashdot.org These guys take apart everything and give great reveiws on how it was done.

http://slashdot.org/

[legman]

.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: legman on 2001-12-22 09:28:56 ]</font>

[legman]

wow, it is still there.