Xbox Hacks

193 Articles

Xbox 360 Controller Remixed For Optimized FPS Play

July 1, 2008 by 13 Comments


[F00 f00] of Acidmods was not satisfied with his first-person shooter gaming experience, so he modded an Xbox 360 controller so that A, B, X and Y buttons are on the underside of the controller, on the inside edges of the wings where the player’s fingertips usually go. He also moved the right thumbstick up a bit so that it would be level with the left one. He designed it to improve his ability to play first person shooters, but the advantages go beyond one genre of game. The right thumb is free to remain on the right thumbstick, and the colored buttons can be pressed by four fingers instead of just the right thumb. We love this mod for it’s simplicity and effectiveness, and we’re eagerly awaiting the internal photos he promised.

[via BB Gadgets]

Mr. Modchip Ruling Released

June 26, 2008 by 6 Comments


In an unexpected development, [Neil Stanley Higgs], aka Mr. Modchips, was cleared of his previous convictions in British courts for selling modchips for the Xbox 360 as well as modded consoles.

Notably, the prosecution did not argue that he infringed copyrights, but merely facilitated copyright infringement by selling modchips that circumvent the Xbox’s ETM. Since the copyright infringement argument was not made, existing law continues to hold sellers of pirated games and owners of modded consoles responsible for infringing the copyrights of game developers, as they are the ones who illegally copy the software. Pirated game sellers’ violation of the law is plain to see, but owners are still held responsible the moment they place the pirated disc into the loading tray and boot it up. The infringement in these cases occurs exactly when any part of the pirated game is loaded onto the console’s RAM, as this is considered another illegal copy.

[Higgs]’s charges hinged on whether the Xbox’s piracy prevention methods were intended to completely prevent pirated games from being played or merely act as a hindrance. The court felt it was the latter, and so they reversed the charges.

[via Xbox-Scene via Team Xecuter]
[photo: Raybdbomb]

Xbox 360 Modding Case Details

June 23, 2008 by 15 Comments


If you’ve been wondering about what changes Lian-Li implemented in their commercial XBox 360 casemod called the PC-XB01, they’ve recently updated their product page.

The case does not add any new functions to the console, but it improves its efficiency on several levels. To deal with the noise produced by the DVD drive, they installed sheets of sound insulation foam around the drive, greatly reducing the sound it makes when it spins up. They did even more for temperature control, replacing the standard dual 70mm fans with a single 120mm fan that cools more efficiently and quietly. The case is also larger and features a frontside grate, allowing for vastly improved airflow. Lian-Li designers even left opening in the back for option water tubes in case you want to add a liquid cooling system.

[via Xbox-Scene]

Modchip Your XBox 360 Controller

April 21, 2008 by 28 Comments


[CyberPyrot] and [l0rdnic0] released their spitfire mod on acidmods for XBox 360 controllers. It involves some fine wiring, but a relatively low parts count. The heart of the mod is a PIC16F84A, a crystal for the clock and a few passive parts. It took me a little while to find it, but the code for the pic hiding under the parts list. For a lengthy demo of the mod in action, you can check out this video.

Related: Xbox 360 Hacks, Xbox Hacks

Read Every Bit On A DVD

September 30, 2007 by 16 Comments

If you are curious about reading all the bits on a DVD, [tmbinc] has devised a hardware hack that uses a Pioneer DVD drive with leads soldered onto it and a Cypress FX2 microcontroller board to grab the flow of bits and push them over USB2.0. My favorite part of this tutorial is when you slow the spinning DVD down very slightly with your finger with a scope hooked up over what you believe to be the raw data stream from the disk. If the data rate slows when you physically slow down the disk, you probably are grabbing data from the correct pin. [tmbinc] even put together a software tool to process the resulting raw DVD data.

Timing Attack XBox 360 Kernel Downgrade

September 22, 2007 by 15 Comments


[Xantium] let me know about the latest from the XBox Scene. The attack that was just a proof of concept is now a fully released hack. [Robinsod] released details on how to perform the ‘Timing Attack’ in order to downgrade the 360s kernel to a hackable version. The hack requires an infectus mod chip, a PIC interface built around a 16F876A and a software package to get things rolling. The big deal is that you can now downgrade your 360 from any kernel to an exploitable version. Considering the previous limitations, this is pretty exciting news for the homebrew crowd.