What do you think of the first Xbox (2001) now looking back?

[eightbit]

I'll chime in as well. I did not own the Xbox when it came out. I remember my friend's brother got it on launch and I was really impressed with what I was seeing at his house. But, I was pretty broke at the time and I passed on it as well as the PS2. I really wish I did have it on launch though.

 

Many years later (around 6-7 years after launch) I ended up getting one second hand and I loved it. I softmodded it and added emulators which were fantastic and I enjoyed quite a few games on the machine. Then I gave it to my brother and moved on to more current consoles of the era.

 

And then, a few weeks ago my brother found the Xbox in storage and asked me if I wanted it. I said sure, and back in my hands it was. Now it had problems. It would turn on when plugged in, turn off randomly, drive did not work. Time and storage were not kind to this Xbox. The battery capacitor leaked and corroded some traces and the DVD drive outright died (not a belt issue).

 

After some work, I repaired the traces (and removed that blasted battery cap), replaced the DVD drive (and belt on that), and since it were already softmodded by me 14 years ago I figured I would hardmod it with the TSOP method which did not exist back then. When all of that was done I figured I would upgrade the hard drive to a 2TB SATA drive with IDE to SATA adapter.

 

All said, its been done for a week or so and it is fantastic. Most of the games really do hold up and many still impress me today. The emulators are still fantastic and I will say that most of them still feel better than what is available on a RetroPie. It's one hell of a console and I am glad to have this in my collection again.

 

I always thought of the Xbox as the spiritual successor to the Dreamcast. Heck, Microsoft could have teamed up with Sega and released it as the "Dreamcast 2". A lot of the console design appears to have taken queues from the Dreamcast and a lot of the games that you would have expected to come out on the Dreamcast (or a Dreamcast 2 if it existed) came out here. Games like Crazy Taxi 3, Outrun Coast to Coast and a bunch of other Sega titles that were released for it makes it feel that way to me.

 

Love live the OG Xbox...best console of that generation in my personal opinion.

[cimerians]

Loved it, I still remember getting the green Halo edition. 720p gaming and it was easily hackable too. I would spray paint some of them. It also had one of the greatest games I played Ninja Gaiden black. Fun times. 

[DJ Clae]

I was in the anti-Xbox camp originally in 2001. I felt at the time MS had no business in the market (was dismayed about Sega getting out), the box and internal hardware design (PC parts) was ghastly, and as an American product it stood no chance in the Japan-dominated space (I was partly right on that). My roommate had one at launch, and we played 4-player splitscreen Halo a lot.

 

I got my own Xbox the following year when the holiday Sega bundle came out. It gradually became my go-to console for third party Western games, and I began to warm up to it. Then the 360 came out, which I was a big fan of. Now, between my two brothers and I, I have become the Xbox guy of the three of us, buying each new Xbox at launch, though I still hold some preference for the PlayStation. (Even though I was a Saturn guy during the PS1 days. That's another story.)

Edited January 9, 2021 by DJ Clae

[Hwlngmad]

I think the OG Xbox holds up really well today, modding aside.  It has a good amount of multiplats and exclusives with plenty of gaming variety.  I think if someone were to pick up an OG Xbox today and start exploring its library, they wouldn't be disappointed, that's for sure.

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

I just picked up a working one for 45 bucks off an old couple on craigslist last friday.  I havent used mine in years because the disc drive stopped working and all the tricks stopped working too.  probably a blown clock cap inside.  the drive on this one i picked up is also acting up, so i'm using it as much as possible..  i started on a crt but then moved it over to my HD tv and the original xbox looks great in component thru hdmi to this day.  a lot of great exclusives and i consider it the Dreamcast 2.  i need to get this one fixed.. do you know if you can still mod if the drive broke and the cap leaked?  

 

Furious Karting is a great game!  Carve, etc.. I can think of so  many great exclusive racing games on it.

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

Also I love the feel of the controller.. the regular S one, i'm not sure if I ever tried out the Duke.. I have some third parties controllers that came with the one i bought last friday though that are as big as the duke!  one's a gamestop brand, and the other some other brand that's so 200x looking!
 

[digdugnate]

i borrowed an OG XBox back then with the big honkin Duke controller.  back then i was like 'this thing is big, heavy, and lame', lol.  There just weren't enough compelling games for me to want to own one, either. looking back, I don't think I missed much out there, but it's interesting to see how stuff has progressed in 20 years.

 

Mrs. Digdug and I were Playstation users until 2011ish?  We went from PS2 to 360 when our PS2 finally gave up the ghost, then upgraded to a One in 2013, then One S in 2019 (I think).

Edited January 25, 2021 by digdugnate

[SlidellMan]

When it comes to the games I played, Halo was good, along with Toe Jam & Earl 3, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Steel Battalion, and Kakuto Chojin looked interesting. To tell you guys the truth, despite being a Nintendo guy at the time (still am for all of their defects); I thought that the original X-Box got too much shit back in the day, and even admit that it was a good enough platform that MS could have squeezed a few more years out of it. Oh, and let us not forget that Modern Vintage Gamer was the one who programmed all the homebrew emulators for it.

[xenomorpher]

On 1/25/2021 at 12:05 PM, NeonSpaceBeagle said:

 do you know if you can still mod if the drive broke and the cap leaked?  

It depends. First thing is to remove the clock capacitor if it's not a 1.6 version XBOX. There's a thread below where I gave advice to someone that had XBOX issues that could help you out, but find out what version it is, a quick Google search will bring up a guide. But open it up and actually look at the board. Someone could swap motherboard or had it sent in, weird and unlikely but possibly. If it has leaked, clean it with 90%+ isopropyl alcohol all over the area.

 

You can attempt a laser pot tweak, or replace the laser. Find out what DVD drive you have and go from there. Full replacement ones are expensive, and personally I would avoid Philips. I have three drives are dead, and one was a replacement that was DOA. It's anecdotal, so do what you think is best. I haven't checked to see the price or availability of parts for all the DVD drives, but I personally would go with whatever is most readily available.

 

It is possible to mod it without a working DVD drive, but it's best to have at least one that works in case you need to use a disc rescue program if something goes wrong with the hard drive.

 

Mrmario2011 has a few great videos on YouTube about the original XBOX. I recommend watching the more recent up-to-date ones. If you can, I would hard mod it. You can get an Open Xenium modchip on eBay pretty reasonably. Just make sure you use 30 kynar awg wire. I wrecked a motherboard by trying to get away with what I had, it was stupid and I was impatient and knew better. You do have to solder, but it's honestly worth the effort. I have used softmodded XBOX systems, and they're fine starting out and you can put larger hard drives in them too. Mrmario2011 goes over that process too, but a modchip in the long run is better. 

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

10 hours ago, xenomorpher said:

It depends. First thing is to remove the clock capacitor if it's not a 1.6 version XBOX. There's a thread below where I gave advice to someone that had XBOX issues that could help you out, but find out what version it is, a quick Google search will bring up a guide. But open it up and actually look at the board. Someone could swap motherboard or had it sent in, weird and unlikely but possibly. If it has leaked, clean it with 90%+ isopropyl alcohol all over the area.

 

You can attempt a laser pot tweak, or replace the laser. Find out what DVD drive you have and go from there. Full replacement ones are expensive, and personally I would avoid Philips. I have three drives are dead, and one was a replacement that was DOA. It's anecdotal, so do what you think is best. I haven't checked to see the price or availability of parts for all the DVD drives, but I personally would go with whatever is most readily available.

 

It is possible to mod it without a working DVD drive, but it's best to have at least one that works in case you need to use a disc rescue program if something goes wrong with the hard drive.

 

Mrmario2011 has a few great videos on YouTube about the original XBOX. I recommend watching the more recent up-to-date ones. If you can, I would hard mod it. You can get an Open Xenium modchip on eBay pretty reasonably. Just make sure you use 30 kynar awg wire. I wrecked a motherboard by trying to get away with what I had, it was stupid and I was impatient and knew better. You do have to solder, but it's honestly worth the effort. I have used softmodded XBOX systems, and they're fine starting out and you can put larger hard drives in them too. Mrmario2011 goes over that process too, but a modchip in the long run is better. 

thank you for all of this!!!

I ordered some new rubber bands for the drive off amazon and i'm going to start off with that and work my way up to what you suggested.

[xenomorpher]

On 2/3/2021 at 11:03 AM, NeonSpaceBeagle said:

thank you for all of this!!!

I ordered some new rubber bands for the drive off amazon and i'm going to start off with that and work my way up to what you suggested.

I heard boiling the worn out band in water will fix it, but I'd rather just get a pack of them on hand in case it happens to other drives.

 

Just a FYI for anyone here that ran into the same issue using the HD Pack, or whatever the component cable block is called, with a HDTV. If you're seeing vertical lines of static, turn off game mode on your TV. I was getting seriously peeved thinking I had to recap the board. I switched it off and it's now amazing. I still would love a CRT like a Trinitron, but they're huge and I already have a big Sanyo with SVideo.

 

Anyways, I also got used cheap Sony Dolby headphones off eBay, and the sound is great, highly recommended. I was missing out on so many things in Silent Hill 4, that I might restart it. I finished the campaign mode of Timesplitters Future Perfect finally after years of playing with the multiplayer and mapmaker. I've been following the Timesplitters Rewind project and I'm pretty excited for it. This is one of those series where I'm shocked some of the younger people have never heard of it and you know they would really like it. 

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

The O ring bands arrived.  I tried to replace the one in my xbox drive without opening it and using a tweezers like some videos Ive seen, but I couldn't get in there correctly.  I am borrowing a longer pair or tweezers from someone at work and going to try again.

[SlidellMan]

I thought I would share this MVG video:

Whoever ported Kenta Cho's rRootage on the X-Box deserves props. Speaking of original X-Box homebrew, what are your top ten games? (No emulators.)

[Tanooki]

Looking back I see them as the hardware side to the many problems console gaming has today as EA is to the software side.  I know it's not popular to call them out because well there are a LOT of xbox fanboys and girls.  I started out using their hardware just before it hit the market as I was at Midway at the time.  I was aware of their full intent, tech requirements, the hardware before it hit the public in late 2001, and let me tell you those pre-release systems had issues.  Internal power supplies dying to literally frying(smoke and electrical fires) to not having enough disc clearance and making lovely circles on media.    That said, my issue wasn't that, hell it's a great little condensed Pentium 3 to simplify things.  My beef what also being a PC entailed, the elephant in the room so much bitching is based on now...internal storage of a hard drive.  But also, the fact they had the gall to make people get suckered in mass to pay monthly (eventually yearly) for the right to play multiplayer games online, a freebie since the 80s(BBS) and 90s (net) for other services including the very PC their OS ran on.

 

Why be nasty on this?  Simple and simplifying.  HDD caused us to put up with what started barely there but really on the 360 and in turn and reaction to the PS3 from Sony... unfinished games coming out.  There is no excuse for it, there aren't like a million potential combinations of hardware, there's one, the system.  Yet they made people roll over and accept large many MB into then GB sized downloads, zero day no less (or shortly after) to take a 0.9beta at retail to a 1.0 game that works right.  This shit never flew before hand and now people just roll over and accept it.  The online aspect, same thing, monthly sub to play Mortal Kombat to some online adventure or RPG...free, until they decided with all their net worth to pass the buck of online gaming off to the game buyers basically technically selling an incomplete experience without paying more.  And beyond those, what else did storage and charged online give us?  Microtransactions, lootcrates, and the rest of that console based IAP that has plagued us since.  Hell they even tried to peddle a system you only could buy signed once bought games or they don't work with that DRM scheme that imploded on them.

 

SO what do I think of the first xbox?  A nice locked down computer with great potential, both for good, and ultimately more so, for the bad which has grown from the test bed there into the problems we all suffer playing games today.

[Greg2600]

My OG controller S has tons of play on it, and still good as new.  Recently I finally got Xlink Kai working so I've been doing some System Link on-line gaming as well, which is fun.

[Frozone212]

for one: Huge

I still like it but i'm considering selling it since so many games are becoming backwards compatible.

trivia you didn't ask for: I can still input the god mode cheat for fellowship of the ring from memory (Yaks be black or y-a-x-b-Black button)

and YAXBAY: Infinite ammo