Xbox 360 Hacks - News, Hacks, Cracks, Mods.

The Specialist has released a tool enabling you to use HDD’s on your 360 which have not been “certified” by Microsoft. Hddhacker v0.5B is specifically written for the Western Digital BEVS series — for the moment it won’t work with anything else. And due to certain limitations you may only use a 20GB drive, at least until Microsoft includes support for larger disks.

How it works:

x360 HDD’s contain information on sector 16 about the HDD: the HDD serial number, the model, the firmware version and the size in sectors is stored here. The x360 asks the HDD to identify itself, by sending an ‘IDENTIFY DEVICE’ ATA to the HDD. It will compare the returned information to the info that is stored on sector 16. This information on sector 16 is signed and thus can not be changed. This tool will mod the FW from the WD HDD to comply with the information on sector 16, so that the ‘identify’ information will match the information on sector 16 and your x360 will accept the HDD as valid.

Very nifty!

How to use:

Get yourself a Western Digital SATA BEVS HDD. Copy sectors 16 - 22 (7 sectors) from a valid x360 HDD to the Western Digital. Then, boot to dos (not a dos box from windows) and run this application. Make sure that you have ONLY this Western Digital drive connected to your sata controller, have the other devices disconnected. Then follow the instructions on screen. Keep in mind that you have to start the utility from a writable path if you want to create an ‘undo’ file (it will save it to the path you’ve started the tool from). Make sure that you have FIRST copied the sectors 16-22 onto the drive, BEFORE using this tool ! The tool will need that info on sector 16, otherwise it doesn’t know how to mod your FW.

After the tool has flashed your drive, turn off your computer, wait a few seconds, restart your computer and re-run the tool. The tool will tell you then whether the whole thing was successful.

- discussion thread -

Download: Hddhacker v0.5B

- source: maxconsole

There’s a very interesting thread started by robinsod over at XboxHacker with regard to downgrading the 360’s kernel. It’s a complex procedure but very informative… The end result:

Confirmed, downgrading allows the Kiosk disk to run again!

So I have now proved that kernel 2.0.2858 (won’t boot the kiosk disk) can be downgraded to 2.0.1888 and that WILL boot the kiosk disk (or bits of it) from CD-R. This was proved with a mobo for which the DVD key is NOT known (as noted by others the key is not necessary when booting the kiosk disk, indeed no C/R data is present on the CD I used so the DVD key is not required, side note: can we use any old SATA drive in the same way that a standard PC drive could be used on a modded XBox1?)

Click the source link to see robinsod’s progress & work. Very cool!

- source: xboxhacker

I’m a huge Fight Night [Round 3] fanatic… Whether it be for the 360, PSP, or PS3, I will kick your ass. Now, I’m well aware this isn’t a hack, but it’s damn cool that this guy actually took the time to compile a website with formulas (and screenshots) to easily create your own custom boxers.

I figured I would share this with you… While on a mission to find something resembling Rocky Balboa and I came across this site. It features Rocky plus many other fictional and non-fictional greats, including random celebrities, UFC fighters, and of course some of the top boxers: Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson, Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago, Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell, plus many many more…

Have fun!

- source: Sho89mtx’s FNR3 Site

Finally — something worthwhile… Now, I certainly don’t encourage online cheating as it pisses me and many others off; however, this discovery is quite nifty. Over at XBL Hackers they have a preliminary tutorial detailing how to change various settings defined in Gears of War’s “Coalesced.ini” file.

What you need:

• 2 files from the GoW disc/image, Coalesced.ini and Xbox360TOC.txt.
• An MD5 Checker
• A Hex Editor
• A Text Editor
• ISO Injector, by Prey.
• A blank Dual Layer DVD-R (DL-DVDR)

A quick Google search will turn up any of those for you.

Quoted tutorial:

First off open Coalesced.ini in notepad and find the value you wish to edit, in this tutorial i will be changing minplayers=2 to minplayers=1.
It is important that you DO NOT edit coalesced.ini with notepad as it can corrupt the ini. Now you need to make sure you have changed everything
regarding minplayers=2. It is referenced twice as we can see in the ini.
Now open winhex, and in the asci section search for minplayers=2, once it has been found byte swap the 2 for a 1 from another value in the ini,
i changed EndOfGameDelay=15 to EndOfGameDelay=25. see how it works? Now as there are 2 references to minplayers=2 and EndOfGameDelay=15, find both
and edit accordingly. Once your done, save the file and exit the hex editor.
Doubleclick WinMD5.exe, and point it at your new coalesced.ini and hit show MD5. Make a note of this number as you will need to edit Xbox360TOC.ini
to include it.
Open Xbox360TOC.txt in notepad, on the 3rd line down you will see,

474110 0 1727648 ..\WarGame\Config\Xenon\
Cooked\Coalesced.ini XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX is the current MD5 hash of the coalesced.ini, you need to replace this with your new MD5 hash.
Save the changes and exit and get ready to inject the files back into the image of GoW.

Open Preys excellent ISO injector 1.1, and open your GoW image, inject both files using the readme for instructions on usage.

Burn to a DVD DL disc and get ready for some fun!

Nice hack! Now again, we don’t condone cheating — if you cheat, you’re asking for it!

- source: XBL-Hackers

I just spotted this on engadget…

Ever wonder why Microsoft hasn’t released an HDMI cable for the Xbox 360, or whether the AV port was really capable of digital out? Well, here’s your answer: we landed pictures of what appears to be the second Xbox 360 — the Xbox 360 v2, if you will — codenamed Zephyr. (The original Xbox 360, if you recall, was codenamed Xenon.) The long rumored about and awaited update to the console won’t just feature a new, cooler 65nm processor, it’s also finally added an HDMI port for full digital 1080p pleasure, as well as a 120GB drive, just what the doctor ordered. The 120GB drive may or may not come bundled with the kit, we don’t yet know, just as we also don’t yet know how much a Zephyr 360 is going to run (we imagine it’ll go for the same price as currently so they can keep up a little on their expanding margin). But our very kind Xbox insider seemed happy to let us know we’d be able to get them “soon.”

Interesting news tidbit… Although it’s a shame HDMI wasn’t initially supported. Drats!

- source: engadget

Do you have an Xbox 360, or maybe just a [wired] Xbox 360 controller, and perhaps you have a PS3 too? If that be the case you may find interest in this…

diabolix has compiled the Xbox360 controller driver for Fedora Core 5. Its been tested on Snes9x and Doom (under linux on the PS3) — it works quite well.

Copy this installer to your PS3’s HDD linux partition and connect your controller via USB. Run “install-xbox360-driver.sh” initially from the terminal, enter your root password (if you aren’t root already), and viola — a functioning Xbox360 controller on your PS3!

Download: Xbox360 Controller Driver for Fedora Core 5

Looks like Commodore4Eva has brought in the new year with the first Xtreme firmware release of 2007 — 5.2A/B/C/D!

What’s new?

• Disc-LockOn added for chronic open tray consoles.
• DVD Video disc problems fixed.

Disc-LockOn is additional laser calibration performed when disc inserted returns a cannot identify disc type error. This is for consoles that had very bad open tray issues (Finally got hold of one that had this problem :))

Open tray errors now fixed for good, but “Open Tray” is still a valid status for disc insertions when the drive cannot recognize the disc.

More technical details inside ReadMe.txt.

Download: Xtreme Firmware 5.2A/B/C/D

- source: xbins

Not totally blown out of proportion is a video of a masked German hacker who demonstrates the possibility of running homebrew on the Xbox 360. Throughout the duration of the clip you’ll notice King Kong boot followed by a short delay and a custom screen with both the Mac logo and Linux penguin, it reads “Coming Soon.” The hacker uses an attached circuit board (to the 360) and laptop to achieve this; I guess we’ll have to wait and see whether or not it’s legit. At the moment we should probably consider this speculation, but it’s something to keep our eyes on. :)