XBOX Backup Media

[BladeRnR]

Gidday. I purchased an XBOX recently (It has some cool titles I wanted to play and it's a damn good console actually). I had the ubiquitous modification performed but have a question around type of Backup media to use. I tested some 'Backups' using a TDK DVD-RW to be sure the ISO's I created were ok and they tested fine. I used Shintaro 4X DVD-R and the XBOX can't recognise it and simply says the disk in the drive is 'Unknown'. On the DVD-RW the disk is identified as 'Game' and everything works ok.

For XBOX owners out there what Backup Media works reliably for you? The XBOX I got has a Samsung drive which is supposedly the most compatible drive around.

Cheers

Blade

[BladeRnR]

Seems I worked out the problem. Burned the ISO with Alcohol 120% rather than Nero and they work fine now. One important point I've found - you must burn at 2.0X or less for a successful backup.

Cheers

Blade

[[WTF]Cyclonus]

I've always wanted an XBOX ever since they came out. They're a bit cheaper now so I'm even more tempted.

How much did you get your's for? and how much was the "alteration"?

[BladeRnR]

I held off for a long time buying one because the library of games was relatively small. Now the selection is really excellent and there's some sublime games out for it (Colin Mcrae 4, Crimson Skies, Star Wars - Knights Of The Old Republic). The console cost $280 at Video Games Heaven when you buy a game. The MoD cost $200 from Xboxmods Australia (http://www.xboxmods.com.au).

I investigated the MoD very carefully as there's a lot of shonky Operators out there 14 year old with 2 days soldering experience doesn't exactly instill huge confidence in me). The MoD I got is the most professional I've seen yet. It still uses the EvoX 2.2 concept but what they do is actually Flash (Or Re-Program) the existing Flashrom inside the Xbox. There's no extra chips or soldering required. They swap your Board and HDD out for one that's already done at their factory (They're pretty big and service the whole of Australia). The bloke that did mine was 36 and an Electronics Technician. After the MoD which takes 15 minutes he inserts a Boot CD and copies everything to the Xbox HDD. After that it's a simple matter of setting up the XBOX on the LAN (I used 192.168.0.3) and connecting to it using FlashFXP. So simple. The MoD comes with 30 Emulators that can play Mame32, PS1, N64, SNES, NES, Genesis and numerous other ROMS (Even Colecovision and Atari 2600!). So really with the MoD your buying many consoles! To 'Backup' one of your games all you do is simply drag the files from the XBOX's 'D' Drive (DVD-ROM) into a directory on your PC. Then you create an ISO from the files using any number of special XBOX ISO converters (I use Craxtion 3.0). Then simply burn the ISO using Alcohol 120% making sure it's not faster than 2X speed. I've now done about 15 Backups and everything works perfectly. I've also got a Media Player and other cool Apps which you can download from any number of XBOX Sites. The EvOX Dashboard (Think of it as Explorer on a PC) can be fully Skinned with some excellent themes/backgrounds.

If you need any more informaiton let me know. It's a great console (And really just a PC) with tons of good games on it. Bang for buck it's the best way to fly if you're into consoles.

Cheers

Blade

[[WTF]Cyclonus]

Thank you very much for that, very interesting.

[FragBait]

Hey Blade, long time mate...

i've had my xbox for a fair while now, and have had a homebrew chip (xecutor2 lite) put in by a guy who has had about 26yrs of electronics experience.

he also put a rocket switch on for me to be able to switch between xecutor2 and original bios :) how nice of him. it cost me $80 (when it was legal to mod).

since then, a mate of mine does the 007 hack (no chip, no solder) directly on the xbox bios, which works a treat. he also hacked a samsung 616t dvd-drive for me and replaced the philips drive that was in there originally. (i also bought spare samsung dvd drives) haha.

I have since flashed my onboard bios with EvolutionX M7 BIOS (eject fix), mainly because there were some games that were not working with the version i had on there.

With media, I have used princo (with black writing on label) successfully, laser (silver top) which are quite good, and are not synonymous with the silver top cdr's. they are much better quality than that. I personally haven't had any issues with burning anything at 4X as yet.

another utility you might want to look at (if you also have a nice 200-250gb hdd in your box) is a prog called xisoxfer. this util has the ability to mount .iso images and upload/patch media via ftp direct to your box. its better when you actually get them in .iso format already tho.

if you do have a bigger hdd in there, also look at xbcopy, and also xtoolbox.

xbcopy is good for copying xbox games (originals) direct to your xbox and avoid the need for putting it onto your pc first. i also use xtoolbox which is an ftp program for the xbox (xbox-xbox transfers). i use it in conjuction with xbcopy, which is somewhat limited in where you copy the game to, so i use xtoolbox to rename directories and move them to their genre folder on the xbox.

if you want any more info, drop me a line on icq.

cheers

FragBait