FYI: Xbox 'upgrade' info

[Justin <justin@xxxxxxx>]

my brother received his Chocollect Xbox last week and immediately passed it
over to me for 'sorting out' ;-)

I thought I would pass on my experience...

To date I have upgraded several ver 1 & 1.1 boxes by flashing the
onboard TSOP,
this one however was a 1.2 which complicated the issue! If you are going
down
the same route, hopefully this info will save you some of the hassle I had!

I would be using the 007 agent under fire hack so needed to solder some
points
on the mobo, but being a 1.2 box these points have moved! The ones on the
top
of the board are solder pads and were bridged with a single strand of
tinned
wire, this was easy enough.
The points on the underside of the board are now 2 vias, which were a
little
trickier to bridge. If you are doing this hack, make sure you follow the
traces
to the next via or component and check for continuity. By eye, it is very
easy
to think the points are bridged when they aren't!
Having said that, this hack is still *much* easier than installing a
modchip
IMO and if you can borrow all the bits you need, free!


*Important*
The 1.2 Xbox only has a 256k EEPROM, whereas previous versions had a 1Mb
version. This means I had to replace the 1Mb BIOS image in the 007 savegame
(needed for the hack) with a 256k version. I chose Executer 2
(Xecuter2_4976.02_MultiVer_256k). If you are planning to use Slayers 1.2
you
will need this BIOS version (or newer).

The first attempt to flash the on board TSOP with the new BIOS failed, this
turned out to be because the "savewithraincoat" executable (which
is part of
the 007 savegame hack) was incompatible with the 1.2 box. After locating a
newer version (0.501), all was well.

The next step was to install a bigger hard drive, and then run Slayers 1.2,
which was a breeze.

Only having a 256k EEPROM means you can't fit switches to a 1.2 Xbox and
have
multiple BIOS' (which is doable with 1 & 1.1 versions), this means you
won't be
able to use the Live service, but there are other ways of online gaming
with
your Xbox...:-)

Justin.

P.S. If you break you're legs, don't come running to me!