Cody Taylor

I’ve been meaning to load XBMC on my xbox for awhile and use it for a media player in the bedroom but I never got around to it because all the instructional material that I had read said I would have to scour used game stores for a very specific version of MechAssualt or one of the other games that allow you to softmod the original xbox. Turns out I didn’t have to. I did some reading and found a way to mod my original Xbox without having to purchase anything at all. The technique is called hot swapping and it involves attaching the Xbox hard drive to a pc and overwriting the dashboard.

The only real problem with this method of modding the original Xbox is that the console’s drive is normally locked. If you just take the drive out of the Xbox and hook it up to your PC then the drive will not work. That is why it needs to be swapped when hot (powered up). When the Xbox is in the dashboard or running a game then the drive becomes unlocked. When I swapped my drive I was in the middle of a Chessmaster game. Apparently this can be dangerous to both the PC and the Xbox so it’s recommended to either jumper the two cases together or supply the Xbox drive with power from your PC’s power supply.

The entire process was surprisingly easy and once I had finished reading every thread I could find on the topic I had my Xbox streaming family guy with XBMC in about an hour or so. The only down side so far is that the fans in the Xbox seem to be on full output always and it’s really loud but apparently there is a fix for that.

Obviously I had to open up both the Xbox and my PC. There’s a very descriptive tutorial on how to open the Xbox at this Xbox site. I can’t really say that I didn’t buy anything because I did end up purchasing a #20 Torx Screwdriver. I only had to pop off the cover of the Xbox and take the harddrive section out. I did not remove the drive from it’s plastic enclosure. With the PC, I disconnected all drives and left only one DVD-ROM connected as the secondary master.

It was tedious to get the Xbox and PC close enough together to connect the power cable from the PC to the Xbox drive while having the Xbox drive still connected to the Xbox IDE cable but once it was close enough I had more than enough room to attach the master IDE cable from the PC to the Xbox drive when it was time to swap. Here’s a pic of my Xbox connected to one of my old computers:


As far as software and explicit instructional material go I loosely followed this Xbox hotswap guide. I used version 3.1 of Ndure as opposed to 3.0 like the guide suggests and the options were a little different but still pretty straightforward. I had a problem here where I got banned for the xbins IRC channel and couldn’t rejoin but I used a web based efnet client and managed to get back in. I also was unable to get any software from the xbins server unless I used FlashFXP. Other FTP clients wouldn’t let me download anything.

By default, after the installation, the new dashboard is UNLEASHX. The sounds are hideous and it looks really bad but it gave me ftp access and seeing it meant that I didn’t break anything. After putting everything back together the first thing I did was install XBMC.

It seems that the guys at valve are finally going to allow community content to be played by the mainstream user. Along with a non beta version of the sdk that is said to release next week the l4d devs are also going to be overhauling the matchmaking system to support “Add-on Campaigns” which will allow you to select campaigns that you have installed.

Because of the recent announcement of Left 4 Dead 2, a lot of fans are wondering whether it’s worth the trouble creating any custom content because the it may not work with the new game. I found this quote from one of the writers for most of Valve’s games which addresses the issue.

Chet_Faliszek wrote:One thing we do know for sure is we want to make sure that everyone making a Left 4 Dead 1 map now or campaign now it’s still going to work in Left 4 Dead 2. You will be able to start Left 4 Dead 2 up, you will have the new creatures automatically, you’ll have the new weapons you will have all of that in the world, if you want to do some of the new director stuff or some of the new ways we control item placement you can go re-do it and add that, but you can also just leave it the exact same way and it will work.

When I was first reading about this on the Left 4 Dead Blog I started thinking of playing de_dust with hordes of zombies which was apparently done in the demo but never released. But then I remembered that I only have the game for XBOX 360. In the few news reports that I’ve read I haven’t seen any mention at all of XBOX changes. If you read that blog Yasser Malaika talks about how easy it will be to install the add-on by double clicking the VPK file. More than likely Microsoft will make me pay for every custom map that is freely available for the PC version.

If you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ve probably browsed or bought from the iTunes Store. With over 35,000 downloads currently available, finding the quality in all that quantity is growing increasingly difficult, frustrating and costly.

eldavojohn writes “GamePolitics is writing about a proposal to tax on things that make your kids fat. The logic from its author: ‘Almost all experts agree that the primary reasons [for the obesity epidemic] are increased consumption of larger quantities of high calorie foods, snacks and sugar sweetened beverages… and lack of physical activity as vigorous play is replaced by sedentary activities such as watching more television, movies and videos and playing video games. This bill would raise revenues from modest surcharges on the very food products and sedentary activities that are linked to the lifestyle changes involved in the explosion of childhood obesity in the last 20-30 years.’ Not as explicit as Japan’s fat tax but we’re getting there.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Craig writes “Gamepark have officially released the follow up to its successful Linux handheld the GP2X, the GP2X Wiz is a 533Mhz Linux-based handheld that’s a similar size to the GBA Micro with a touchscreen and 12 games preloaded into memory, many of which are demos of commercial games. The system comes with 1GB of flash memory which can be expanded with SD cards. The Homebrew Community have already released ports of games such as Quake, Wolfenstein3d, Warcraft and emulators for SNES, Genesis, Commodore 64 and the arcade emulator Mame.”

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Brad Wardell of Stardock and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy recently spoke with Gamasutra about their efforts to move the games industry away from restrictive DRM. Despite the fact that both have had their own troubles with piracy, they contend that overall piracy rates aren’t significantly affected by DRM — and that most companies know it. Instead, the two suggest that most DRM solutions are still around to hamper a few more specific situations. Quoting: “‘Publishers aren’t stupid. They know that DRM doesn’t work against piracy,’ Carmel explains. ‘What they’re trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy games for , none of which goes into the publishers’ pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold.’ … ‘I believe their argument is that while DRM doesn’t work perfectly,’ says Wardell, ‘it does make it more difficult for someone to get the game for free in the first five or six days of its release. That’s when a lot of the sales take place and that’s when the royalties from the retailers are determined. Publishers would be very happy for a first week without “warez” copies circulating on the Web.'”

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eldavojohn writes “At some point in the history of video games, violence became uncomfortably real for censors and some parents. In addition to that, realistic use of narcotics has entered mainstream games. While gamers (of adult age) have by and large won the right to this entertainment, a large amount of games have arisen lately that challenge a different aspect of video games — inappropriate or sensitive topics. We’ve covered it before on Columbine to Fallujah, but I noticed through GamePolitics recently a large trend in severely controversial video games. Where do you stand on these titles?” Read on for the rest of eldavojohn’s thoughts.

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Apple announced recently that iPhone and iPod users had downloaded an impressive one billion programs from the company’s online App Store in a mere nine months. Meanwhile, 15 of the 20 most popular paid downloads since the service opened have been games.

Parz writes “The recent announcement that the upcoming Ghostbusters game will be a timed PlayStation exclusive in the PAL territories — revealed a mere month before release — has set a nasty precedent which could have long-term repercussions for the industry. This Gameplayer article explores how this generation of gaming has spiraled into a tit-for-tat war on third-party exclusivity deals instigated by Sony and Microsoft, and the effect it is having on the psychology of the consumers. The Ghostbusters developers aren’t pleased by Sony’s deal, and the Guardian questions whether the game will be big enough to really affect console sales.”

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whoever57 writes “In response to the school shooting in March in which 16 people were killed, the German Government plans to ban all games in which players shoot at each other with pellets. The rationale for this is that ‘paintball trivializes violence and risks lowering the threshold for committing violent acts.’ Fines could be up to 5,000 euros.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.