Hotswapping Tips

[SmokiestGrunl]

Into: I used hotswapping and the audio exploit to recently mod my v1.5 xbox. The problem I ran into was the hotswapping proccess itself. All the tutorials didn't really describe it well. Anyway, here are some tips that helped me with the hotswap:

 

Basic Hotswap method:

Plug in your power cord and video cord to the back of your xbox with no game in the DVD drive. Then, wait 5minutes for the xbox to load to the dashboard and then pull out the xbox IDE cable and plug in your PC IDE cable.

 

Tips:

1. Try not to shake the drive too much while hotswapping.

2. Try to do the hotswap quickly. (Have the PC's IDE cable in your hand while pulling out the xbox's IDE cable).

3. Just because the computer detects the drive (in bios or device manager) doesn't mean you did the hotswap right!!

 

Windows HDD Driver tips:

 

1. Hotswap while windows is loaded. This is by far the EASIEST method to get your drive recognized. To do this load windows (xp or 2k) and do the hotswap. Then after the hotswap, right click my computer, goto properties, hardware tab, and load up the device manager. Expand the "Disk Drives" icon. Finally click the "scan for hardware changes" button (looks like a computer with magnifying glass). If you did the hotswap correctly, it will only take a minute for your drive to show up in the device manager. If it takes a long time to detect, then you probably did the hotswap too slowly.

2. ONLY left click when necessary in the HDD driver program because it is very buggy and will crash if you left click too much. Use right clicks almost exlusively.

3. Do right click "insert file" to put files on the xbox harddrive.

4. FOR THE AUDIO HACK: Hdd driver will crash if nothing is in your "music" folder. Therefore, you will never be able to use the HDD driver to do the audio exploit if you dont insert an audio cd in your xbox and click copy track to harddrive within the MS dashboard. (This will create stuff in the music folder so HDD driver wont crash.)

 

Xlinux Tips:

1. Put the xlinux cd in your cd drive, turn the computer on, and be ready to hotswap the xbox harddrive.

2. When the ascii picture of that guy loads up do the swap.

3. Then press enter to boot. If lots of errors pop up, the HD Is locked, try to swap again from step1.

4. All the tutorials i read assume you have a fat harddrive on your PC. i didnt so i had to figure out these commands for myself:

 

Basic Linux commands to get XLINUX working:

 

linux command_____________dos equiv___________function

ls_________________________ dir ___________ tells you whats in a directory

cd_________________________ cd ___________ lets you go into another directory

cp________________________ copy ___________ copies a file from one directory to another

mv________________________ move _________ moves a file from one directory to another

(note mv is used to rename files in linux, ex. mv xboxdash.xbe linux.xbe renames xboxdash.xbe to linux.xbe)

 

/dev/hda /dev/hdb /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

are the drives in linux. the A in hda means primary master drive. B is primary slave. C is secondary master and D is secondary slave.

So, if your xbox is on primary master use hda in your mount command, etc.

 

if you dont have a fat harddrive for your exploit files, burn a cd with the exploit files, then mount the cd:

mount -t auto /dev/hd* /cdrom

(note, make the * A B C or D depending on where your CD drive is plugged in)

 

To mount the xbox drive:

mkdir /xbox

mount -t fatx /dev/hd*% /xbox

(note, * is A B C or D depending on where the xbox HD is hotswapped to % depends on which hack you are doing. For the audio hack you need to access the E: drive so, you need to make % = 50 for the font expoit you need to access the C drive so % = 51.

ex. for using the audio exploit with the xbox hardrive on primary master:

mount -t fatx /dev/hda50 /xbox

 

 

if anyone wants to add to this to make it some sort of tutorial, just reply to this thread. HOPE THIS HELPS SOMEONE!