T-Shirt Ninja

Ok, I know theres a handful of people on here that do some xbox modding. I've been reading up on stuff on xbox-scene.com and techtv about it and I've decided to take the plunge. Tomorrow I am gonna order an Xecuter 2.3lite off a dude on RFD for 63 bucks shipped (from winnipeg). I think I'm stuck ordering it cause I've yet to find anyone in the local area who can get me an Xecuter.

I have a v1.0 xbox so I need to desolder the holes in which the header go into, should I use a desoldering wick? or a desoldering bulb to remove the solder? Is the d0 connection as hard to solder as everyone makes it out to be? I have some decent experience soldering circuit boards so am I looking at the same way of soldering? 15W iron, solder a lil excess to the wire then touch the wire to d0 and apply the iron to the wire and itll bond right? Anything else majorily complicated?

Also I was thinking of modding a vantec stealth fan to use instead of the stock fan for extra cooling, I already reapplied some better thermal compound to my cpu's HS. I'm also modding the jewel to glow some white out the top for some bling effect.

And finally I was planning on installing a 120gb Maxtor HDD and leave it unlocked (since im banned from XBLive anyways for getting a refund from M$). Should I spend the extra 10 bucks to get an 8mb Cache? Or does it not make a difference with the xbox? I've got a dvd+R burner so technically I could backup games onto DVD+R's right? Will the Thomson drive read them fine? Anyone know what media works on the thomson drive? I have a couple CDRW's from sony and Maxell DVD+Rs.

After, I plan on flashing the BIOS with the EVO-X bios and installing the EVO-X dashboard (since its the easiest for begineer). And installing all the major necessary apps, XBCOPY and the rest, what programs are good for a begineer? I hear the Xbox media player is a really good app, any opinions on it?

Hmm that's about it, Just wanted to get the ball rolling with the help since I plan on having modding it around friday. TIA!

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

wow... sounds expensive

imported_gatherer

the way professional or mass produced boards are made the solder fills the empty holes (or those holes with no pins from parts in them) right through so that there is a solid bit of solder from one side to the other.....

so to get the solder out a solder wick is best and it's also best to dab a bit of fresh solder on there to get it moving.....

T-Shirt Ninja

Thank ya Jason, guess I should pick some of that solering wick up when I go buy another soldering iron (only have a 40w at home).

And its not too expensive, Im figuring around 180 total for the modification plus the xbox (which I already have).

imported_gatherer

get a 35 w... no less the more powerful the better... the warm up time takes less time and so therefore there is less chance of oxidizing....it also helps with heat transfer which mean less time touching the board.... and the less time you need to be touching the board.... and thats better for the board

T-Shirt Ninja

Really? I was thinking the hotter the iron the more of a chance of me burning the board was. One of the points the d0, is extremely small lol I don't wanna Fubar my box.

imported_Stock Si

I tryed to do this myself, a little while back, and i screwed my xbox up!! I then took it to a " professional" and he couldn't fix it, so now i have a screwed xbox!...so just be careful cause it is easy to screw it up! I fried one of my tracers from the d0 point. Yes it is has hard as they say it is, a tip is to carefully scrap the d0 point so there is a really good connection, cause i had it working for 3 days then it came undone, and i had to resolder it, and then i screwed it!..lol.. So don't do this unless you are willing to lose your xbox!!!!

Cynikal.Mindset

I believe the dvd media is dvd-r...thats what my friend got when he got his xbox modded from the guy that did it

imported_My Blue Si

The wick is okay, you can also use a desoldering pump. Both have worked fine with me. If your getting a 160GB drive, just ftp all the games on your drive. Why waste time burning them, plus you can bring the console anywhere without tons of games with you. Take your time when doing this stuff, it's very easy to toast it or screw it up good with a single twitch of the gun.

T-Shirt Ninja

Ive read you can fix traces, I have some background in soldering, so I hope it wont be too hard, I bought a new 15W soldering pen iron from RS, gonna get the whick and the modchip tonight, a Xenium for 70 cdn. I think I can do this, if not Ill get my cousin who did electrical engineering to solder for me But like I said if I can get the D0, then I can get anything.

T-Shirt Ninja

Well I bought the xenium today and installed it, worked on the first try, took about an hour to install but well worth the time. Now its time to back up the old HDD, buy a 120 gb and flash on EVOX bios and some programs to test. I'm so happy!

90ls

i got the xenium,. tried installin it for hours. could'nt get it to work.

so i gave up and gave it to a freind to do the install for me.

soldering is not my freind.

cant wait to get it back

T-Shirt Ninja

ERRR, I flashed my bios to the evox M7, but im having problems booting off the EVOX dashboard iso disk, my xbox isnt reading the media, even tho the same media worked with the BIOS flash. :S So confused.