Combining XBOX and PC

I was taking apart the original XBOX, and noticed that the Hard Drive and Optical Drive used the same kind of IDE ribbon connector as a computer does. So, why not install the XBOX Hard Drive as a slave drive on a computer, and install the optical of the XBOX in the same PC, and try to boot from the XBOX HDD, or , Run a game in the XBOX Optical drive and see if it will auto load with the XBOX HDD.
Any doubts or reasons this wont work before i try and just go for it?

reply to post by ShadowLife


It will not work. Please do not waste your time. Just search google for xbox hacks and you will see the xbox requires the drives to be hooked to their board and such unless you hack it.

reply to post by ShadowLife


Hmmm, well that all depends on if you are willing to mess up an Xbox and fry a computer lol. I have no idea what would happen, let me know if you try it.

It's slightly more complicated than that.

Here's a link explaining better than I can xbox on pc

The CPU and Motherboard are the main guts that make the PC and XBOX work. Plus video card.... The XBOX OS (stripped down version of windows 2000)

Instead, look into turning it into a little media center.

There are several ways to retask that little piece of equipment.

reply to post by ShadowLife


First, you must know that you can't turn an xbox into a pc... and for a very simple reason... it IS already a PC...
the differencies with your usual computer are:
- All the hardware is very specific and not easyly replaceable
- The motherboard does not allow any additionnal peripheral, since there is no need to, and would increase costs
- Of course, the operating system is different
- The bios and all the System Hardware interactions are a bit different, probably "to make things harder for hackers" at the mean time, and also because it can be much simplified compared to a PC bios because of the standard and not-evolution-friendly hardware...

Knowing that, now you have to understand that Microsoft have (in purpose) done several things in a different way... If everything was done as it was on PC's oses, this console would have been hacked in days... and it took a bit longer (not much btw)... Here are the most concerning of these things:
- The harddrive is hardware-"Locked" with the motherboard, this means, to get simple, that it has "your motherboard's signature" on it... That lock is done at detection moment, and can be quite difficult to avoid... This Lock means that basically, you can only use your XBox harddrive with YOUR xbox. If you try to plug it with ANY other hardware, it will just either not even power on, or just remain completely undetected... The XBOX also can't boot with an "unlocked" harddrive...
Locking is a very standard feature that is available on virtually all hard drives, but only manufacturers have use for it. Some Computer sellers companies (compaq/hp) for example sometime uses that "Locking" features on their pc (or at least, used at this time)
- The partitions on the hard drive are in FATX, not in Fat, Fat32, Exfat, ntfs, etc... That mean that if you plug in on a Windows PC, even if the harddrive is unlocked, you won't be able to see any FatX partitions... In fact, you'll probably see the disk as a brand new harddrive with no partitions at all on it.
- The XBOX Dashboard will never boot on a standard PC.. It will use the same cpu code at run time, but at boot time, It will probably use some bios interactions very specific to the xbox and a PC would not know how to handle them... so there is no need to try to boot your xbox hdd on your pc... (even considering that your hard drive wouldn't be locked)

Knowing all that, you can find several ways to work around these problems and do some interessting stuff with it, but the interessting stuff will be for the xbox, not for an xbox-pc hybrid (that would never work)...
So basically to hack an xbox, what you need is to work around the Lock problem, and the FatX problem... You can do it by several different ways, my favourite being having an hacked xbox, and hot-swapping hdds after boot... But you should be carefull with that... If you fail to lock your hdd or accidentally corrupt it (or if you forget to install something the system need after formatting / partitionning + locking your hdd), you'll turn your it into an XBrick... Your only way to recover this error would then be to setup a modchip on the motherboard (a temporary solderless one would do the trick, and it's easy to use, but still annoying)

Well, that was the long story...
Short:
You can't turn an xbox into a pc or a pc into an xbox... it's already one, but more limited and restrictive
I tend to agree with others, you should turn your xbox into a media center, that's the best role for this console... I recommand you using XBMC as a dashboard too... (but don't overwrite MS Dashboard... you'll still need it unless you have a modchip... (and if you delete / overwrite it, you will probably need a modchip lol))