xbox

117 Articles

XeXLoader Reminds Us Of Xbox Glory Days

December 28, 2009 by 8 Comments

The newest version of XeXLoader boasts a pretty slick GUI. This is a homebrew loader for the Xbox 360. Don’t get your hopes up, it requires an older kernel and you’re not getting on Xbox Live if you do this hack.

But think back to when the original Xbox was first hacked. Watching the XeXLoader (after the break) sends us back to the days of EvolutionX. Sure there wasn’t much that could be done in those early days (other than pirate games), but that slowly changed with the hard work of a lot of developers. XBMC came out of those first steps and became the greatest media software ever to grace your television. The GUI work here may be more beginning steps in another great community-driven legacy.

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Xbox 360 Controller On NES

November 30, 2009 by 7 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzW0JAx2lFM]

Some may think that linking an Xbox 360 controller to an original NES console is overkill. [Francois] would not count him self among that group. When the robotics team at his school was done using the controller with one of their projects, [Francois] used a Cortex M3 processor to get it to run with one of Nintendo’s 8-bit consoles. Part of the code for using the controller with the robot and the NES is available. Now all that is left is being able to play Duck Hunt with a Sixaxis controller.

Xbox-intosh & An Atom-based Cube

November 29, 2009 by 31 Comments

Though [Will] is more of a PC guy, he needed a Mac to run the software he needed for his line of work (Final Cut). Making the best of an unfortunate situation, he constructed this hackintosh inside the case of Microsoft’s original gaming console – the Xbox. [Will] did a good job at documenting the build.

[Paul], who seems a bit more fond of Apple’s technology, still felt as though his hardware could use an overhaul. So he gutted his G4 Cube and dropped in an Intel Atom 330 based system to get his ultimate HTPC. To make controlling the 1 TB beast more fun, he hooked up a Wiimote through DarwiinRemote.

Ben Heck Gets Sloppy And We Love It

September 23, 2009 by 18 Comments

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[Ben Heck] is a name synonymous with game system hacking. His projects have been seen and praised by people all over the world for both their quality and their ingenuity. He’s so good, in fact, that many of his projects have gone far beyond what we typically think of as hacking. They look and feel like commercial products. While that is a fantastic accomplishment, we have a soft spot for seeing stuff that is truly hacked. This lasted job he did is a great example. The controller needed to work using a single hand, so he hacked it. He was in a hurry, so it didn’t get his usual professional finish. We kind of like it that way. This one handed controller mod can be seen in action after the break.

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Double The RAM On D-Link Router

September 19, 2009 by 26 Comments

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[Pelaca] upgraded the RAM on his D-Link DIR-320 router from 32MB to 64MB. This hack is simple enough: swap out the existing RAM chip for another one and change the bios to make use of the upgrade. The actual execution is not that simple because of the pitch of the TSOP II package; you’ll need to bring your mad soldering skills to pull this off.

This reminds us of when upgrading original Xbox RAM to 128MB was all the rage. It involved the same type of hack, adding four memory chips to unpopulated positions on the motherboard. The forums are thick with people complaining that their box not working after a failed upgrade attempt. Hopefully you’ll have better luck.

[Thanks Juan]

Xbox Crammed Into Inch-thick Package

August 19, 2009 by 24 Comments

Xbox Micro

Reminiscent of [Ben Heck]’s portable and laptop console mods, [Bandit5317] over at Xbox-Scene managed to fit the guts of an original Xbox into a custom-built slim case that measures just 2.5 centimeters thick. In his post, he describes some of the difficulties of cutting down a behemoth Xbox to a third of its original size, such as rewiring a custom IDE cable to avoid the extra 1/16-inch it would take to fold a standard one. The case is hand-crafted, (no laser cutter!) no-frills box made of painted polycarbonate, and man is it sexy. It is built off of a v1.4 motherboard running a third-party BIOS and with a 320GB laptop hard drive. Load up XBMC Media Center and you’ve got the slimmest home theater PC on the block.

[thanks FranklyCrafty]

Snes On An Xbox360

August 17, 2009 by 34 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBDYbRxYax4]

Surprisingly the Xbox 360 hasn’t seen a lot of homebrew action. [tmbinc] has taken it upon himself to port the Snes9x emulator to it. There’s no pretty GUI, and its not running on top of linux or anything. This is native, directly to the hardware emulation. He believes this is the first to do so. Unfortunately, it will not work on the most up to date Xbox 360s.

[thanks xb0xguru]