Weekend Project: Softmod Xbox, Install Coinops 8

[boxpressed]

After I saw video of Coinops 8 Massive in action, I ordered a modded Xbox with it off eBay. It's fantastic.

 

I have another Xbox with a dying DVD drive and a blank 160GB IDE drive, so I decided to make another modded console with Coinops for the living room (where we still use a 35" Sony Trinitron CRT).

 

Yesterday, I followed this extremely thorough tutorial on Youtube and successfully softmodded the Xbox and upgraded the HDD in about an hour.

 

Today, I downloaded Coinops 8 Massive from a torrent (took about 5 hours), then unpacked it (1 hour), then FTPed it to the Xbox (2 hours).

 

Super easy to do after following the instructions from another YT video.

 

And Coinops looks great on the Sony CRT. It's fun to sort by year released and see the evolution of arcades (the first game is Gunfight). And then you have all the console games too.

 

If you have an old Xbox and a spare IDE drive (I wouldn't go lower than 160GB if you want the massive edition, which is 90GB by itself), you'll need only a few more items to do this yourself. I highly recommend it.

[Jess Ragan]

It looks really nice, but that file, geez! 90GB is going to take a long, long time to download.

 

Still, this is tempting. I've got an Xbox back in MI, which I modded years ago. It'd be neat to turn it into an arcade machine. Tell me, have Xboxes gotten easier to mod? I remember needing a copy of Mechassault, a USB adapter that fits into the top of the controller, a flash drive, a partridge in a pear tree, etc. It was a little involved back in the day.

[boxpressed]

That's basically the same procedure. It takes me less than an hour to softmod your Xbox and install a larger hard drive. I'm sure it can be done more quickly, but I'm still following the video as I go along so that I don't miss a step.

 

You need these things:

 

Xbox

IDE (PATA) HDD, preferably > 160GB

Female IDE to Xbox controller cable (about $8 off eBay or Amazon)

Splinter Cell

USB drive < 4GB in size (this is the trickiest part, apparently)

Crossover cable or router that's close by

Softmod programs

FTP program for your main computer

 

Once you prep the USB drive, you can continue to use it for future softmods, so you save a little time that way.

 

IDE hard drives are getting harder to find, but you can still buy new Western Digital 250GB models for $20 off eBay. Lots of people use an IDE-SATA adapter to get huge 2TB drives in their Xbox, but that's overkill for me.

 

This is the video I used:

 

I recommend giving it a shot. My favorite games are four-player beat-em ups (TMNT, D&D Shadows over Mystara, etc.) with wireless controllers.

[Raticon]

Interesting. I got myself an Xbox both hardmodded and softmodded for the purpose of running emulators. I was so angry that i was about to start tearing down the whole house when i couldn't get the FTP process to work. I then stumbled over the "Big Ass Emulator Disc" with some 14,600 or so games on it for a bunch of systems.

: - Atari 2600
- Atari 5200
- Atari Lynx
- Colecovision
- Intellivision
- MSX
- MSX2
- Nintendo Entertainment System
- Super NES
- Sega Master System
- Sega Genesis
- Turbografx 16
- Neo Geo Pocket
- WonderSwan

The biggest problem was finding an active link as the BAED is almost 10 years old by now and links are either dead or dying from low amount of subscribers.

Would you say this is a vastly inferior way of playing this compared to running CO8? Should i reconsider?

Edited July 29, 2017 by Raticon

[boxpressed]

I'm afraid I don't have enough expertise to say whether 10 year old mods are still viable. Maybe someone else here can. I do know that there have been systems emulated on the Xbox since then, including the N64 and Playstation. These are not as mature as the emulators for the older systems, but it's fun to try them anyway (Mario Kart 64 seemed pretty good). Coinops is an all-in-one emulator (arcades, nes, snes, genesis, n64, playstation, turbografx, probably more) + frontend, but you can also use separate emus for each platform if you like.

[cybercylon]

So you can install a bigger HD with just the soft mod? I thought that needed a hardware mod. I think I still have the exploit on an old Xbox memory card and Splinter Cell somewhere. Sounds like a good project for one of my Xboxes that has a dead optical drive.

[boxpressed]

Yes, you can install a larger HDD with this softmod, but the original HDD needs to be in working condition. Each individual HDD is locked to each individual mobo. You basically clone the 8GB HDD onto a larger one.

 

You'll need a working optical drive to run Splinter Cell, but that's all it has to do.

[tjlazer]

I just did this! Added a 250GB SATA HD and Coin Ops 8 Massive! That way I can also load lots of XBox games too. You can also add games to the package.

[Jess Ragan]

Another AtariAge member sold his spare Xbox to me at cost, and I was able to install both Coin-Ops and HyperVision on the system. I don't have the "massive" version of Coin-Ops, but what's there is more than enough. By the way, have you guys checked out HyperVision? The interface borders on sensory overload, but you have to admire how flashy it is considering the age of the hardware.

[NE146]

I just did this! Added a 250GB SATA HD and Coin Ops 8 Massive! That way I can also load lots of XBox games too. You can also add games to the package.

 

I haven't touched my xboxes in years.. but can you do that now? Add a SATA hard drive? All I knew was you had to use IDE

[tjlazer]

Yes you can use a IDE to SATA adapter. Has to have the master/slave jumper on it though.