wip: feat: xbox modding post

content/posts/xbox-modding.md

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+date = '2025-01-27'
+draft = false
+title = 'Softmod your Xbox Original Today'
+tags = ['technical', 'games', 'modding']
+categories = ['technical']
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+
+The original Xbox is a phenominal little machine.
+In this post I will go over my journey of modding my own personal xbox.
+Feel free to follow along, but this is mostly just a recollection of my journey for the sake of writing it down.
+If you want to skip the personal story, the tutorial part starts [here]().
+
+## First Things First
+If you own an Xbox Original and you haven't removed the clock capacitor yet, DO IT NOW. YOU SHOULD'VE DONE IT SEVERAL
+YEARS AGO, IT *WILL* KILL YOUR XBOX.
+Even if you are not sure if it's removed or not, please check to make sure. This is incredibly important.
+
+With that out of the way, let's begin.
+
+## The Beginnings
+It all started with I was about 14 years old.
+I remember it clearly.
+It was early 2010 and I had saved up my allowance for a while and wanted to buy something for myself.
+So as any 14 year old buy with marginal financial freedom, I went to the local GameStop just to browse.
+I was already an avid Halo fan, so I was looking around at the Halo 3 and Gears of War copies that they had, as well as
+the other xbox 360 games showing off on the store shelves.
+But alas, I did not own an Xbox 360, or any (real) videogame console for that matter.
+So I opted to buy something else, I don't remember what excactly.
+What I do remember is that when I went up to the counter, I saw that they had a used Xbox original (back then we called
+it the xbox 1) for sale!
+And only for 1001kr! Which was... not excactly cheap at the time, but hey, I didn't know better.
+I had saved up just over 1000kr! And the Halo 2 Collectors edition was bundled with it! Holy crap!!
+This was a match made in heaven and I bought it on the spot in favor of whatever else I wanted.
+Proud, and with my heart pumping (this was the biggest purchase I had ever done at the time), I took it home and
+deliberately hid it from my mother, because she wouldn't approve of me spending my hard earned allowance on a videogame
+console.
+
+A couple of years earlier, my sister and I received a small CRT TV with an in-built DVD player for our rooms so we 
+could watch movies and (some) TV in our rooms. This CRT had an S-VIDEO input.
+I remember that it was such an adventure trying to figure out how to plug the Xbox to the TV. The figure-8 cable scared
+me when it sparked when I plugged it into the Xbox and I thought I broke it, but I just had to change the input on the
+TV. And when I finally got it working I was rewarded with the comforting green glow of the internal clock needing to be
+set. I promptly pressed 'A' without changing anything, inserted the Halo 2 disc and played for the first time on my very
+own video game console.
+
+I sneak-play'ed so much Halo 2, that I missed a lot of homework, and sleep. I distinctly remember one night I played
+(with no sound mind you) for uncountable hours. Oh to be a kid again. I know that at one point my mom found out and she
+didn't actually care that I "wasted" the money. She only cared about my bedtime (ugh!) and my homework (double ugh!) -
+which is fair, but still.
+
+A couple months after the purchase, I wanted to try out the Xbox Live features and play Halo 2 online (I did not know
+you'd have to pay for it) so I found a way to connect an ethernet cable to the box and tried connecting.
+But I was not able to get any connection. I kept trouble-shooting and then I realized that LITERALLY THE WEEK BEFORE
+Microsoft had closed the Xbox Original live service down. What a bummer dude. Welp. At least I had the Halo 2 campaign.
+
+## Getting a Taste for Modding
+Much later. I am now in my ??'s.
+
+TODO:
+ - Building my own PC
+ - Building skills
+ - Fixing my laptop (which broke all the time)
+ - Modding the Wii
+ - Modding the Playstation 2
+
+The first game console that I modded was a Wii that I bought on a flea-market for next to nothing.
+Side tangent: The Wii is the _easiest_ console to softmod. You only need an SDCard - that's it.
+This Wii modding lit a fire under me, and I started taking apart 
+
+## Softmodding the Xbox
+There are a couple of directions you can take when it comes to modding the OG Xbox.
+I will be exclusively *softmodding* mine, as if I were to solder anything that is required for hardmodding it, I would
+at best brick the console and at worst burn my apartment to the ground.
+This mod _does_ require purchasing some hardware, namely:
+ - An xbox (male) to USB (female) adapter.
+   These are increasingly difficult to find, so if you tend to drag your feet on projects like these (like I tend to)
+   buy it now!
+ - An older USB stick
+ - A DVD burner
+ - Some (writable / blank) DVDs
+
+TODO:
+ - Full list of required hardware
+ - Link to MrMario (check for peertube link as a backup)
+ - Xbox Controller USB thingy
+ - Xbox softmodding tool disc
+ - Extras (chimp)
+ - Holy crap the IDE hot-swapping
+
+## Upgrading the Xbox
+Now that we have softmodded it, we can choose to upgrade the aging IDE harddrive with a slightly newer and larger
+harddrive! This is totally optional, but I highly recommend it as it'll enable you to store many more games on the 
+console itself, rather than mucking about with DVD discs and a dying DVD drive.
+
+{{< centered image="/6616144.png" >}}