Recently had a hard drive fail on me but i did null the hdd key before it failed. Just purchased a new sata drive but im having 0 luck figuring out how to obtain a nulled eeprom.bin or make one myself. If anyone could help would be greatly appreciated
If you are needing it to simply lock the hard drive on a PC using XboxHMD23USB Beta 2 or 3 or other DOS locking software for the Xbox that uses eeprom.bin to compute the locking password, you can create one for your Xbox version with:
Original xbox eeprom.bin
Just a hot tip; if you can recover your original HDD key and lock the new drive with your original key, do it. People are working on re-implementing Xbox Live and if you want to partake, you'll need to have your original Xbox HDD key, nulled keys won't work. No guarantee that we'll ever see Live re-implemented though, but AFAIK, they're pretty close (at least two different teams are working on independent implementations).
I had this particular Xbox in storage for at least a couple of years when I decided to pick it up again. I connected the shitty component cables to one of my Dell U2410 monitors and to my surprise it did not boot up correctly. After acquiring some DVD-Rs I got a bunch of recovery disks ready, but there was nothing to be done. The old shitty Maxtor drive from my high school computer had finally given up. This being a version 1.6 I had softmodded it. I of course could not find the very important DVD or CD that had a backup of the original EEPROM of the Xbox in question. This meant that I effectively had a bricked softmodded console with no means of reviving it. Then the research began.
There are many tutorials describing on how to make an eeprom reader for the original Xbox console and then there are readers you can buy. So thinking after all the projects I've fried over the years, maybe it was better to buy one. Problem is I could get one overseas and pay $20+ for one and maybe use it a few times. So I went ahead and built one following the schematics from this diagram:
Keep in mind you may need to hold the wires in place while getting PonyProg to read several times before you get a reading. Better yet, have someone help you. Have them get the reading while you hold the wires down. After that you should get your XBOX serial number in the reading and then save the file as eeprom.bin.
After I dumped the contents of the EEPROM I quickly decrypted the HDD key and realized the the EEPROM had been created anew before the xbox broke. That is, the HDD key was set to all 00s. There was no rejoicing to be had for my lost game saves. But I now had a nifty setup that would allow me to read and write the EEPROM from an xbox, whether it was still attached to the motherboard or removed. I cleaned up the code I had wrote and dubbed the program PiPROM: The Raspberry Pi Xbox EEPROM Programmer. Using only a Pi and three connections to an xbox motherboard you can read and write to the EEPROM, recovering your lost HDD keys and restoring your broken consoles.
Once you have the connections made to the xbox motherboard you can connect the three wires to your Raspberry Pi. The pinouts for all of the Pi models have been the same thus far, but when in doubt you should look up the pinout for your version of the Pi. You are going to want to connect the SDA/SCL pins on the xbox to the SDA/SCL pins on the Pi, and connect GND from the xbox to GND on the Pi. Real hard stuff, I know.
Now you are ready to starting reading and writing EEPROMs! Below you can find the syntax for PiPROM. You will need to run PiPROM using sudo in order for it to be able to access the I2C interface. If your Pi is connected to an xbox console and you want to read, write, or erase the EEPROM, you can use one of the following commands:
After it is done you will be prompted with a screen that the backup of your EEPROM will be placed in the "E:\Backups\EEPROMS" directory. Just click on "I Understand". The eeprom.bin file is required to create a new HDD for the system in case your Xbox hard disk has crashed. We will soon retrieve this file.
Resize the screen by using Left and Right Triggers and the analogue stick on your controller. Finally, press Start to save your settings. You can now read that C, E, and F drivers are created on your system. The F drive is however 0 MB in size. This is because the original Xbox HDD is quite small in size and there is just space on C and E drives. This will be fixed when we install a larger hard disk.
Now we can copy the backup of the EEPROM file to our computer. To do that, you can use an FTP program like Filezilla. Make sure your Xbox is connected to your network, then create a new FTP connection inside your FTP program to the IP address that is shown on the right corner of your screen. Mine was 192.168.1.58. The connect using username: xbox and password: xbox.
Then navigate to the folder /E/backups/EEPROM and copy all the files from that folder to your computer. The file eeprom.bin contains the HDD key after you have changed it to all 1s and eprom_original.bin is your original key. Store these files safely.
It is hard to imagine that Downloadable Content (DLC) is not a mainstay in the industry. Yet Ninja Gaiden in 2004 was one of the first big games to supply content for free in the forms of its Hurricane Packs. While the later re-release of Ninja Gaiden Black tried to release them one a physical disc, many changes were made to this version. As a result hardcore players still want to try the original DLC out.
Assuming it is like the retail xbox, then I would assume that you will need to dump the eeprom with a hardware reader/writer, then recreate the HDD. I have no idea where you can get the latest hdd image from a devkit xbox, but it should be out there somewhere. You could also mod it, like you would a retail, but since it is a devkit, it will come with the extra ram already installed, which comes in handy for mame, and surreal64. As for the disc drive, any drive from an og xbox should be pulg and play, as that was before the dvd key concept existed.
It already has a dev kit bios, I dont think the mod chip is really needed. And it is only 3(4 if powering externally) wires, that can be plugged directly into the lpc port on that model. I have fixed my share of og xboxes. lol. And you can get all the parts to make the hardware reader/writer for under $10 at your local electronic parts store(Radio Shack), or online for under 5$ if you dont mind waiting. The only reason I could think of for a modchip, would be to easily flash the tsop, as modchips arent really needed for anything on the original xbox anymore, other than recovering from a bad tsop flash, and that doesnt work with lpc based modchips, as those only work because the onboard bios loads first, then reloads the new bios from the lpc port. If the onboard bios is messed up, it wont boot the console.
The only reason for a mod chip in an original xbox these days is for repair, in my book. You want more ram, flash the tsop, want a bigger hdd, that supports up to 2 tb, flash the tsop. other than that, softmod it, and be done with it. The only other reason I can think of, is if you want to install an lcd screen for things like xbmc.
If memory serves me right, you need to have the DVD and HDD connected yes, the HDD also needs to be partitioned correctly aswell as contain "dash.xbe" in the correct place... on a retail system you also need the HDD to be locked, i've never actually worked with a devkit of the old xbox's so i can't really tell you much about those =/
You don't need to read out the EEPROM using hardware, it'd be sufficent to just run the tools from Superdisc, essentially it holds everything you'll ever really need to do anything with a classic xbox, there are menu options called "Lock HDD" and "Unlock HDD" which lets you lock/unlock the HDD without having the key (it'll be read from the EEPROM and used, just like the bios does) there are also tools which let you switch the regions and such (allowing for different video output settings etc.) 2ff7e9595c
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