Whenever I get interested in something I want to know everything about it and how it works and what I can use it for. Right now I'm interested in LAN parties and multiplayer events. I've been thinking that the original Xbox is an inexpensive and intersting route to start out upon. A while ago I softmodded my Xbox and hadn't really done anything with it. The process was fairly simple but recently I purchsed another Xbox for setting up some LAN events and I had to softmod it. I had to do a bit of googling to get everything I needed so I'm going to put together a tutorial and try to keep as much info in one conveniant place as possible.

-Buy an Action Replay and use it to copy a cracked game save onto an Xbox Memory Card. It'll run you about $30 or so on Amazon but you can sell it once you're done with it and get most of if not all of your money back. Or you could hold on to it as you might want to mod more Xboxes in the future. 

-Next you'll need to download "Krayzie's Ndure Installer." You can get those files here.

-You'll need to install the Action Replays Software onto your PC then use that to copy the file to the Memory Card. There are a few games that have hacked saves but I personally used Splinter Cell, I think it has to be the non platinum hits version, and that's generally the game I see being recommended for soft modding.

-Turn on the Xbox without a game in the DVD drive and go to the memory manager. Copy the files off of the Memory Card to the hard drive. If you're using the crack for Splinter Cell there's two files you need both of them.

-Make sure the cracked saves are the only saves for that game on the HDD then start the system with the game in the DVD drive and load the save.

-You'll be taken to the installer menu. From there on out just follow the on screen prompts. You'll be asked if you want to back up the EEPROM make sure you do that just incase you run into trouble. That way you'll be able to recover your system.

I haven't upgraded the HDD or installed any Emulators because I was intimidated by the fact I had to FTP everything onto the Xboxes HDD. How ignorant I was. It's a very simple and plainless process.




This video will walk you through it. I also suggest checking out the rest of his tutorials as he's covered a lot of very cool projects. Today I purchased another Xbox, why I'll get into later, and I performed the soft mod. Having the files on the Xbox Memory Card already made it a breeze and I was running UnleasedX in minutes. I had actually bought 2 Xboxes but the other had a faulty DVD drive so I returned that sucker but that's just how it goes sometimes.

After watching that video last night I was confident I could FTP some crap over to my Modded Xbox so I began searching for Xbox Media Center. Sadly it's no longer supported by the original developers making the name XBMC kind of...silly? So I did some googling and finally found a version of XBMC that's actually supported on the system its name is derived from. You can download it here. That should save you some trouble.

-Unzip the file, there's a folder titled BUILD that I renamed XBMC as the name of this folder is what the App will be called on your Xbox.

-Follow the instructions in the above video to get FTP access to your Xbox. I recommend using a Crossover cable[Image]. That's how I did it and it was very fasy and very easy. He goes over this in the video but there's a link to buy one on Amazon if you don't already have one. Keep in mind it has to be a Cross over cable you can not use a standard ethernet cable.

-In your FTP client navigate to E:\Apps. Upload the folder XBMC to the Apps folder. This'll take about a minute.

-While you're in the Apps folder with the FTP client create a few new directories. I made folders for Videos, Pics and Music. Once you launch XMBC you can tell it where to look for each type of media.

-Go back to your UnleasedX Dashboard and go to the Apps folder and you should see XBMC click it and that'll launch XBMC. You can also replace the UnleasedX Dashboard with XBMC but I didn't go that route. I like options!

That's all there was to it! After that I started uploading Videos and pictures to my Xbox just to see if it'd play my DVD isos which it did. Also my Modded Xbox is hooked up to my home network. You can easily use it to stream anything off of your PCs hard drive. I wish I had gotten into this a few years ago. There's an awful lot of awesome things you can do with a softmodded Xbox. Having only the standard 10gb HDD is kind of useless at the moment. I've won one 120gb Hard Drive off ebay and am waiting for it to come in the mail so I can perform the upgrade. This also plays into the overarching goals of having LAN parties and tournaments as I will be able to have all the games right there on the HDDs ready to go.
I mentioned earlier that I'd explain my overall goal with amassing a large army of Xboxes. I'm wanting to get into LAN gaming. I want to start out with some smaller LAN parties and eventually start a Mondo Cool gaming tournament. So I thought a good place to start would be to wrangle up some Xboxes and mod them so I can copy the games to the HDD for lan purposes. I've also ordered some more networking gear. I've ordered another Crossover cable and Ethernet hub to use outside of the house when I do set up my first LAN party. I just need to gather up a few more ethernet cables.

So far the only plan I have come up with is to see if my brother will let me set up a small LAN party in his basement and test out the set up and the gear with his kids as my unwitting test subjects. I just need to find out how many TVs I need to lug over there. Then I'll have a little experience setting up and participating in a LAN party which will give me a better idea of what I need to do, how long I need for set up etc etc. You know just to gather practical real world data before enacting later phases of the plan.

I have a good idea of where I want to start setting up some LAN parties but I doubt I'll be able to find a free venue when I want to start doing tournaments. I'll have to do some reasearch...but this all ties into Mondo Cool TV and the Mondo Cool Media empire. Stay tuned!