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I made a commitment… to soft mod my Xbox to run XBMC. I got the Xbox for Christmas about 5 years ago (it’s a 1.2 version Xbox). I was kinda nervous in doing it. I didn’t want it to be a impulse upgrade and end up with a big black paperweight. I’ve done impulse upgrades to my N800 and other linux computers with dire results, so I did my research.

I found two really good websites on how to softmod it, Lifehacker and TechFreaks.

The first step was I needed a way to copy files from my computer to the memory card plugged in the Xbox controller. Everyone suggested getting a copy of Action Replay and the USB adapter for the Xbox memory card. It is VERY difficult to find this adapter. Sure, Ebay and other web sites sell them, but I didn’t want to spend ~$30 for the adapter.

So, I took one of my Xbox controllers and hot-wired a USB connection to it.

This is a picture of the final soldering job. Just match the wire colors between the Xbox controller (red, black, green and white). The Xbox controller has an extra wire, yellow, which I made sure was just also connected. I don’t know if the yellow wire is needed for the controller to work.

Here is a picture of how it all looked in the end.

Next, I had to find a way to plug in the controller into a computer. Note: I’m using Window XP MCE. There is a nice free driver, XBCD which worked great on recognizing the controller.

I won’t go into how you can find the actual XBMC download (see Lifehacker and TechFreaks for details). The Xbox hack requires you use a few specific versions of a game which have game save vulnerabilities. I found a copy of the platinum edition Splinter Cell game at a used game store for 0.99 cents.

And that’s it… I then figured out all the details of XBMC at How to use XBMC and on the Xbox IR Remote Control.

Hope this helps somebody,

F1fan

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