Basically, my situation is as follows. My friend had an old xbox that someone gave him for free. He recently stopped playing xbox games (he's busy with guitar) and just started using it for dvd's. The lens broke, and then he forced the tray open with a knife to get a dvd out that wouldn't eject. He gave it to me if I wanted it, so I took it. Now, I'm wanting to run xbox linux on it. I do not have access to a working xbox dvd rom drive (without buying one) and I was wondering if I could just pop in a modchip, solder in extra ram, and just be able to boot linux directly off the cd, and install it to the harddrive. My real question is, do I have to install linux to the savegame partition and keep the xbox (or evox or other) dashboard intact? or, can I just format the entire xbox harddrive and install linux like I would on a pc, and still be able to boot it? My ideal situation would be like a linux only pc, whereas you turn it on, and it boots directly into linux. I figured with a modchip (replacing the BIOS) the xbox would behave more like a desktop pc. Thank you in advance for your help Forgiste
As far as i know you should mod with the chip and install a dashboard on there like unleashx to start out with after that you can take off unleashx and have linux as the main dash....i dont know exactly what the application for linux on the xbox is but i do know its out there you should be able to run and install linux with no problem,but it will have to be one of the builds of linux that has been converted to be used on the xbox...i will respong back on this matter after i go grab some info... ok here is a link to the linux for xbox distro it should come with a read me file and all that good stuff http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=54192
My field of expertise.. http://forums.llamma.com/viewtopic.php?t=4185 http://forums.llamma.com/viewtopic.php?t=3592 http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Contents That should answer just about any questions you might think of.. Including the problem of not having a working dvd-rom. The extra ram is expensive, scarce and extremley hard to install. The soldering required is formidable...4x60 pin SM chips. Max 128MB and doesn't really make a lot of difference. It can't be done on a v1.6 at all, the pads for the extra RAM are missing. The xbox doesn't make a good pc. Strangely you can buy better for less than the cost of the extra ram in many cases.. the chips run at about £10 each and you need 4, a P3 900 sells bare bones with 256MB for £35 local to me. The TV out is a plus but the screen resolution (640x480) looks pretty bad and the overscan is a real pain. Nice for experimenting but cost carefully.. It may be more viable to just buy a yardsale PC.
Thank you, I believe that answered my question. Yes, if you have the modchip you can feasibly install a larger harddrive and install linux on it like a normal computer, provided that the mod chip has Cromwell (or similar) flashed on it, as Cromwell contains a linux bootloader similar to GRUB and/or LILO. I just wonder if anyone out there will install my new xbox ram chips for me, for a nominal fee?
I charge £14.99 for each ram chip and £75 for installing them..plus 17 1/2% because I'm a business.. It's not a nice job, small and fiddly. Very high risk of a dead box. I only know of one other business that does that and they charge £299 for a full box with the extra ram but no other mods. I have done 6 and my view is never again...I killed 2 mobo's trying.. Unless you have a dead mobo with the compatable samsung ram chips and think you can solder them in yourself then try it.. It's too much of a fiddly job to pay somebody for. You can certainly buy a better pc for much less. I can't even source the samsung ram chips anymore..only place I can get them is out of a dead box.. The only noticeable performance boost is with the surreal64 emulator..some games run a little better.. Linux wise, it takes 10% less time to compile gcc, that's about all I can see.. Unless you compile everything on the box you will find everything is written for 64, and then there will be heaps of errors with unmet dependencies and wrong versions of tools..You will need to compile within linux a complete new distro from scratch..host independent, with various custom patches for things like libc to stop it taking the headers from the host kernel...nightmare.. 128MB is still seriously low ram..any modern linux applications are written with 512 in mind.. My advice is stick with the 64MB.. It's just not economic.. The linux was a project to see if it could be done. It was never really intended to be any more than an experiment. ...Just an aside to anyone else reading this... why do people hear about being able to run linux and think...well I can't play xbox games on a pc so it must make a brilliant pc??.. Nothing is further from the truth..performance wise it's a slow Pentium 3 with low memory and only I IDE cable..hell even the USB isn't fully implemented so no external hdd..By the time you have dressed it up with a chip and a bigger drive..keyboard..mouse..adapter cables..and whatever else you may as well just buy a 4 year old pc and enjoy 10 times the performance.. Hell..because of the way the xbox architecture works it isn't even possible to burn cd's without a major amount of messing about... It's a fine project if you have the bits lying about..but as soon as you start buying it's a waste of money.. Realistically..how much is a Pentium3 766 worth?? £20 anybody??..
