One of the most amazing things about the Xbox 360 isn’t the graphics or the high price; it’s how much heat the thing puts out. Hot air pours out of the machine and I’ve often considered turning mine into and Easy-Bake convection oven. People have been modifying the boxes since their initial release and xboxexpert, on xbox-scene, decided to put together a guide to help out anyone seeking to watercool their Xbox 360. From the text it sounds like he didn’t even play the thing once he got it from the store, the first thing he did was pull it apart. His setup uses Coolance GPU water blocks and a Thermaltake cooling system powered from the DVD drive 12V line.

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It looks like backup copies of games can now be booted on the Xbox 360. Maxconsole has the video. This hack is similar to the final firmware hack of the original Xbox. The response to the challenge code is written directly in the firmware. So instead of checking the disc, the firmware responds to the challenge directly. Here are the technical details. This hack doesn’t allow you to run unsigned code or ignore region codes. All it lets you do is play direct one-to-one copies of game discs.

Related: Xbox 360 Hacks, Xbox Hacks

The official Xbox 360 hard drive connector combines a SATA connector and a power connector into one plug. Even though it is proprietary, some clever hackers have found a really easy way to interface with it. Since it is slot based you can just etch contact pads onto a circuit board and plug it in. The hard drive inside uses standard connectors, but this adapter will keep you from opening the case, voiding your warranty. It will also be much quicker to use daily. You can use Xplorer360 to get full read/write access to the drive. They’re selling the adapter in kit form for $17 and assembled for $20, but the high res pics show how easy this is if you just want to build it yourself.

[via xbox-scene]

Related: Xbox 360 Hacks, Xbox Hacks

Reader Ran Mokady took a pretty big gamble with this project, but didn’t really have any other choice: his power supply was broken and he couldn’t get a replacement. He ended up replacing it with a standard ATX power supply. Follow along for all of the details.

For anyone who is having problems with their Xbox 360 power supply, or who (like me) have managed to end up with a burnt out PSU and can’t get a replacement, here’s how I managed to run the console off a standard ATX computer power supply.

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Steel Battalion is an odd beast. For those of you that haven’t run into it before: Steel Battalion was released in the fall of 2003. It is an Xbox game that aims to be a mech simulator (even deleting your save game if you failed to eject). To make the game more immersive it came with a specialized controller with around 40 buttons on it. That piece of hardware drove the cost of the game to $200. At that price you’d figure they could get the controllers to rumble. Well one mech jockey decided to hack in the missing feedback by scavenging the rumblers from another controller. The control for these comes off of the com lights which flash every time you’re hit. There are some additional tweaks on the site too. If I had spent $200 on one game I wouldn’t be getting anywhere near it with a soldering iron, but I do hope this project turns into a full fledge cockpit someday.

[thanks AlphA]

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I know this isn’t new, but today is a special day: the new Xbox is going to be officially revealed tonight on everyone’s favorite music-free music channel. This post is about what to do with your soon to be obsolete Xbox.

Xbox-Linux installs have become fairly easy; You no longer have to crack open the case. You can buy or build a simple usb adapter to upload a 2MB file on to the Xbox by using an exploit in MechAssault.  After that you can boot a live Linux cd.  Even after this your Xbox will still be able to play games. 

What you can do with it is up to you imagination. 

• Use it as a front end for mythtv

• Tuck it in a closet as a headless server

• Install a variety of distros, like Gentoo

• Upgrade the ram, hard disk, and add vga out

• Install OSX as mentioned previously

• You could even build a cluster

The best place to start on this journey is the xbox-linux wiki.

Continue reading “Planning Your Xbox Retirement” →