[mythtv-users] xbox recommendations

CHRIS KOTTING ckotting at wideopenwest.com
Mon Jan 22 12:58:39 UTC 2007


I'm in the process of implementing pretty much what you're described 
(without the HD).  The DuoX2 chip (purchased from www.llamma.com) has two 
distinct BIOS setups, switch selectable.  One is for the 1.6B and later 
Xboxes, the other is for everything else.

I went the modchip route because the box I was working with had a bad bios 
chip, so bypassing it was by far the simplest option.  (The DuoX2 selects 
between it's own BIOS and the factory BIOS by how you start the Xbox.  Teh 
power button starts using the Duo2 BIOS, the eject button starts using the 
Xbox native bios.)

You will need to flash the DuoX2 with a Cromwell or other BIOS, as the BIOS 
it contains is essentially a flashing utility.  Make sure your soldering 
skills are up to par.  I used to do electronics assembly for a living, and 
some of the solder points were tricky for me.

I considered Xebian, but because every other machine in the house is on 
Fedora Core, I decided to try X-Fedora and an installation based on Jarrod 
Wilson's instructions.  The one hitch is that since X-Fedora is built 
(currenty) around Fedora Core 4, which Axel Thimm no longer supports, you 
need to tweak the atrpms.repo in yum.repos.d to look at the Fedora Core 5 
RPMS.  (Yes, Axel, I know it's risky.  Yes, I accept that.  No, I won't 
blame you if it breaks.)  It works, but you have to be careful about 
updating either the kernel or X because of X-box specific patches.

I am writing up a HowTo, so I'll make that available if anyone's interested.

If I were going HD, I might be more likely to do a Myth set-up based on 
either Knopp-Myth or starting from scratch using X-DSL.  (I'm setting up a 
second system eventually, just to play with X-DSL.)

Kotts

On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 20:41:24 -0700, Jack Madison wrote
> I did do some looking around on xbox-linux.org, but the hardware mod
> article I found is almost 3 years old and describing how to flash the
> xbox, nothing about a new chip.  It also requires using a game w/special
> save games and such.  A search on their site for DuoX2, the cheapest
> chip I could find that appears to work, came back with 0 matches.
> 
> If there is a way to flash the bios without using an old game/game
> saves/etc and without pulling the hard drive and connecting it hot 
> to a PC I'd probably give it a shot.
> 
> At the moment I'm leaning toward just buying the DuoX2 chip and
> installing Xebian, but I'm still open to suggestions.  I may take a
> quick trip to the local GameStop to see if I can find the proper version
> of the proper game.
> 
> Any other suggestions, is the HD connection worth it (can the xbox 
> as a mythtv front end keep up)?  Does the xbox remote work well?



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