Hey, This christmas, fingers crossed, I will be getting an Xbox360. What i wanna do is mod it so i can play legal backups. Now im always worried about opening up consles. Ever since i tried it with my ps2 and stupidly left the power on and electocuted myself (Frying the board i have tried to avoic opening up consles. However this is something i really want to do. So i was thinking to make sure im ok with the xbox design would it be a good idea to pick up a cheapy xbox from ebay or something and play around with that? Open it up and such... Is it the same layout? I mean im sure il be fine opening an xbox 360 im just a bit nervous il break £200 worth of kit. So any help would be mcuh appreciated! Also if anyone has any guide to opening up an xbox 360 that would be much appreciaed. Lecsiy
I don't have an Xbox360 myself, but from what I understand it's a bit different from opening an Xbox, considering there are special tools being sold to help make it easier to open them. Also, it's probably a similar layout, but keep in mind that the power supply and hard drive are external on the Xbox360, whereas they were both internal on the Xbox. Also, the Xbox360 and Xbox aren't even modded the same, at least for now anyway. The Xbox can be modded through software or hardware, whereas the Xbox360 is done through firmware. The Xbox is much easier to mod, because soft mods are very straight forward nowadays, and hard mods are fairly simple as well. However, the Xbox360 is a completely different story. There are numerous ways to run hacked firmware. There are chips being sold that patch the firmware on the fly, however the wiring of these chips is not a simple task, especially for those that lack experience with a soldering iron. If you're never used a soldering iron, I don't recommend it. The other method is to permanently flash the firmware onto the optical drive using your PC and a custom adapter (homemade or retail). The problem with this is that if the flash fails or you use the wrong firmware, then you end up with a bricked drive. So essentially, both methods have their ups and downs, and require a high level of caution. As for a guide on opening the Xbox360, you may want to check the Xbox360 forum for that. My advice, is that for now, you may want to just wait it out and see if any better solutions are created for the Xbox360 before attempting to mod it. Especially if you're worried about ruining it. If anyone reads this and finds something wrong, feel free to correct me
It is different, and so is the modding method, by far. Honestly, the 360's method is easier in some ways, and harder in others. But sadly, any experience on the original really won't transfer over to the 360. Although, there is a lot more that you can do with the original than the 360 right now, so it's not a bad fun project.
