Upgrading The Hard Drive In My Original XBox

I have just finished the final part of refurbishing my original ‘crystal’ Xbox tonight. I had previously replaced the GPU and CPU paste, cleaned the entire case, replaced the PSU board, system fan, DVD drive and bottom EMF shield. I even replaced the DVD drive belt. I took it one step further and softmodded it using Rocky5 and the Splinter Cell exploit. This gaming beast had the full make-over treatment. 

But there was one final step I wanted to do and that was upgrade the hard drive. The original 8GB drive was showing its age and wasn’t really big enough to take advantage of the extra things you can do on a modded Xbox.

So I grabbed a 160GB IDE Seagate hard drive and set about installing it. I could have put up to a 2.2TB drive in it, but my budget was tight. Also putting in a SATA drive requires buying a converter and new IDE cable.

There is a single IDE channel on the Xbox motherboard which the DVD drive and hard drive run off, so only two devices can be hooked up at once, but an Xbox wont boot if the DVD isn’t there – so you can’t simply put the second hard drive in the place of the DVD drive.

Full instructions are available online, but the basics are, buy a Molex splitter so you can power two hard drives at once, install Chimp a special cloning tool, then quickly remove the IDE cable from the DVD drive while the Xbox is still on and plug it in the new hard drive. This is the ‘hot swap’ method. Now you can run Chimp and clone the old drive to the new drive. Then if everything has gone well, you can shut down everything and put your Xbox back together with your new hard drive in place of the old one.

The whole process took about 45 minutes and I am now sitting here with my Xbox running even better than before with a 160GB hard drive instead of the 8GB stock drive.

Replacing the noisy fan and DVD drive made it a lot quieter, but now with the new hard drive, it is super quiet. The new hard drive is a 7200 rpm drive (vs the 5400 rpm stock drive) so it is not only quieter but should be faster. This will be especially handy when copying games to the hard drive and playing them off of it.

160GB might not be the biggest drive, but when each game is less that 5GB, it will hold a large amount of my games. I would need at least 500GB to house all my games and the collection keeps growing. I want it just for my favourite go-to games or the ones I am playing through now. It saves wear-and-tear on the DVD drive and makes loading a lot quicker.

So there you have it. My beloved Xbox has been given a much deserved pampering. I am very happy with it. Not only does my crystal look gorgeous, but it performs super smooth and super quiet too.

I'm now going to start copying a few games across to the hard drive.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

The Original Xbox… Was It The Dreamcast 2?

I have been a huge Sega fan for a long time. The Sega Saturn was amazing, I had a huge game and accessory collection and the Sega Dreamcast was fantastic, but sadly Sony dominated the gaming scene which helped drive Sega out of the hardware business.

While you might see Sonic and other Sega franchise titles on other hardware, sadly we shall never see another Sega branded home console.

However, all was not lost with the demise of the Dreamcast. While many fans hoped for a Dreamcast 2, we did get a new Sega console of sorts, in the form of the original Xbox from Microsoft.

OK, so let's think about that for a moment.

The XBox released in 2001/2002 was in the sixth generation of consoles alongside the Sega Dreamcast released in 1998/1999. The Sony Playstation 2 released 1999/2000 and Nintendo Gamecube released 2001/2002 were also sixth gen home consoles.

As you can see the XBox was two or three years after the Dreamcast.

The Dreamcast was ahead of its time for standards. It was the first console to have built in online capabilities with a modem and it featured four controller ports. The large controller had four coloured buttons labelled X, Y, A and B and a memory card slot in it – called the VMU, because it had a screen and its own buttons like a mini console.

The Xbox was also ahead of its time. It had online capability, with built in ethernet out-of-the-box and it also featured four controller ports. The large controller was very similar to the Dreamcast controller design and I did read that it was based on it. It has four colour buttons labelled X, Y, A and B although the colours are swapped around and it has an additional thumb stick. It also features a memory card slot (two in fact) in the controller.

OK, so Microsoft drew inspiration from the Dreamcast when looking at their first home console. But it doesn’t just stop with hardware.

Some Dreamcast titles featured Windows CE on their discs offering more features than just the standard Dreamcast operating system, so Sega already had tie-ins with Microsoft. It was also rumoured that Sega asked Microsoft if they would make the Xbox backward compatible with Dreamcast discs, but they decided not to – wanting their console to be new and fresh, plus worries over online Dreamcast titles.

However, there were a lot of Sega franchises brought over to the original Xbox. 

Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, House Of The Dead and Shenmue all Dreamcast games, received new versions for the Xbox. Panzer Dragoon was a Saturn game which received a new version for the Xbox and PS2.

Outrun from the Master System/Mega Drive and ToeJam & Earl from the Mega Drive both received new titles for the Xbox.

On top of that – although not exclusive to the Xbox – a number of Sonic titles such as Sonic Heroes, Sonic Riders, Shadow The Hedgehog and Sonic Mega Collection Plus made their way to the Xbox.

Sega really wanted to get their games on to other hardware to keep their software side and game franchises afloat even if they didn't have their own home console systems to do it.

With the hardware similarities and the software titles brought to it, the original Xbox could be considered the closest Sega fans got to the mythical Dreamcast 2.

For me, it was a sad day when Sega announced they were closing their hardware side. Despite the Saturn and the Dreamcast being the underdogs I rate them as some of the best consoles ever. This may be why I have such a fascination and love for the original Xbox – a spiritual successor to some of the greatest consoles ever made.

I love my Xbox and still play it today. I'm not a Microsoft fan and do not like the 360 or One, for me the original Xbox is the best offering from Microsoft.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

Destroy All Humans!

I am not a huge game player, but I do like a console to play on and I prefer older consoles as they are simpler. I don't often get excited about a game either, but every once in a while a game really takes my catches my attention.

So while collecting games for my original Xbox, I came across Destroy All Humans!

It might be from 2005 and I am sure most people have heard all about it or its many sequels and the fact that a remake is coming, but I hadn’t heard of it before.

I am not normally a fan of third person open world shooters, but this has a difference.

You play an alien who has been sent back to earth to harvest alien DNA from humans because their planet population is dying out. You run around zapping humans, changing yourself in to them to blend in and performing tasks without being detected. You can also climb in to your space craft and blow up vehicles and buildings.

The whole thing is set in the world of 50’s B-movie science fiction and it is utterly hilarious. For someone who is a fan of these cheesy movies with bad special effects and aliens made out of rubber suits such as classics The Blob, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Attack Of The 50ft Woman and The Creature From The Black Lagoon - this is an excellent hark back to those days. In fact its silliness reminds of the Mars Attacks. which also draws from these classic B-movies.

For the age of the game its graphics still stand up well and once immersed in it you can overlook these anyway. It is truly one of the most fun and unique games I have played in a long time.

It was available on the original XBox and Playstation 2 as was the sequel. There was a Wii exclusive Destroy All Humans! Big Willy Unleashed and a third instalment for the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 was called Destroy All Humans! Path Of Furon. A remake of the original with updated graphics and a few new features is coming soon for the XBox One and Playstation 4.

I am loving playing through the original and cant wait to find the sequel too for my original XBox.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

The Original XBox... A Beautiful Beast

About three months ago I bought an original XBox. I have wanted one for a while and one came up for sale locally. £20 for the console, S controller and 9 games was too good a bargain to give up.

I had an original XBox about 10 years ago, then my kids took it over and it got upgraded to an XBox 360 - which I had no interest in. Since then I have been firmly in the Sony camp - despite being a Sega diehard.

A sixth generation console, the original XBox was Microsofts first step into the console business - besides its brief pairing with the Sega Dreamcast offering Windows CE on discs for added functionality. It competed with the Sony Playstation 2, Nintendo GameCube and the Sega Dreamcast. The XBox was by far the most technologically advanced.

It is basically PC hardware in a fancy case and custom software, powered by a 733Mhz Pentium 3 processor, 64MB RAM, 8/10GB hard drive, DVD drive, built in ethernet and nVidia graphics chip. This is a large and heavy device.

It was the first console to feature a built in hard drive. However, it isn't for installing games on - like modern consoles, it is for game saves and ripping audio to. 8GB (or 10GB in later models) is plenty for even the biggest gamer and could hold a lot of music as well.

Since buying this XBox I haven’t touched any of my other games devices. There is something amazing about using a simple and dedicated gaming machine. Modern consoles might offer fancier graphics, but they come with a lot of baggage, from having to install games, waiting for large system or games updates and charging wireless controllers.

With the XBox, you plug in a controller, turn it on, put in a disc and you are ready to play in seconds. For a console that is almost 20 years old, the graphics on it stand up very well, even though it doesn’t feature HD graphics.

I have been rocking a selection of games, which is growing very quickly.

Halo is amazing - which I have already completed, Halo 2 is even more fantastic and I am loving classics like Project Gotham Racing 2, Outrun 2, Midtown Madness 3 (an absolute masterpiece of a game) Dead Or Alive 3, XIII, S.W.A.T, Soldier Of Fortune 2 Double Helix, Doom 3 and Doom 3 Resurrection Of Evil (which was an expansion pack for Doom 3, but was released as a stand alone game for the XBox).

As far as I know there were only about a thousand games released for this console, which had a five year life and despite it being fantastic, it doesn’t have the fan base of other consoles. Only 24 million units were sold worldwide which is tiny compared to the 155 million for Playstation 2, however it still outsold the GameCube at 21 million and the Dreamcast at 9 million.

Accessories are expensive, but games are very cheap, however secondhand shops only ever have a few games - yet they have piles of PS2 games.

I am absolutely in love with this games machine. It might be old, it might be heavy and you might have to sit with a controller wire trailing to your console - but the game experience is fantastic.

As with all older consoles they do develop faults. Luckily mine seems to be fault free currently, with the exception of a DVD drawer that sticks occasionally. I have removed the top casing and everything looks tidy in there and it is a 1.6 revision, so one of the later ones. To keep it going I’m going to strip it down and replace the thermal paste on the processor and graphics chip, just to ensure it runs cooler and nicer for longer.

I may not be a Microsoft fan, actually that is an understatement. I own a Mac, cannot stand Windows and detest the XBox 360 and XBox One, but Microsoft got it right with the original XBox. It is an awesome games machine and lead the way for online gaming.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

GTA 5... The Worst Discs Ever

You can’t deny that Grand Theft Auto 5 is a phenomenal game. Released in 2013 it is one of the longest games I know of to receive updates. It even spans console generations - being on the PlayStation 3, XBox 360, PlayStation 4, XBox One as well as Microsoft Windows.

Its a huge game. Installing on a console takes a long time and then installing the years of updates takes even longer. The XBox One and PlayStation 4 both total over 40GB.

I have it on three of those platforms and all have had their issues with installing. All my discs are in mint condition, so installation issues cannot be put down to scratches and finger marks.

My PlayStation 3 has caused me the less stress, but a few weeks ago I had a brief time where the disc was unreadable when playing. This fixed itself.

The PlayStation 4 is a constant issue. There are two in my house currently and neither will install past about 8% before it claims the disc is unreadable and may need cleaning. At times it will not even detect the disc in the drive and at least twice I have had to do a force boot eject.

The XBox One version has suffered from similar issues as the PlayStation 4 version. It became stuck in my daughters XBox multiple times, but eventually did install.

The Windows version isn’t without its hitches either, with install problems and quitting during play rife on forums.

Searching the internet, there are multiple tricks to get it working. Some have had luck turning off the internet connection - claiming installing and downloading the updates simultaneously being the issue. Other tricks include turning off mid install or rebuilding your console database.

For me nothing has worked on the PlayStation 4 version. I am stuck with a perfect disc and it not working on multiple consoles. While every other game works perfectly fine.

The only option is to download a digital copy - which of course I would have to pay for again. This is not a road I want to go down.

Rockstar really need to address this multiple system problem.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal