EquinoX
Monday, February 16, 2004
Those of you interested in trying out OSes(or those of you fed up with Microsoft Windows) click here..
http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=cd
Personally I like Slax and GeeXboX... Fun to use.
So another lazy weekend ends. Spent most of the time watching "One Piece" episodes 20-28. That as well as cooking convection oven beef steak. Wasn't much of a task though; took the "korban" beef, flattened it out with the kitchen mallet, marianated it. then baked it at "skewered meat" setting for 17 minutes each side. Then you had your instant mashed potato flakes in butter, salt and hot water and mixed veggies also in salt and butter.
After that kind of meal, you would expect your body temperature to rise... it was a good thing we have air conditioning.
Friday, February 13, 2004
DyneBolic and Knoppix : Live Linux-On-CD
Here's a great tip. Always have a copy of either one or BOTH CDs at hand. Why? You'll be thankful you did if you suddenly find yourself unable to boot into windows.... What is Dynebolic? It's an operating system. And it even works on the X-Box. All you have to do is stick the CD in and restart your system(xbox or PC) and you're able to access your entire hard drive and other devices in a windowed GUI. Plus, it's free.
X-Box USB?
For those of you who didn't know. the X-Box Controller is actually connected to the X-Box via USB connector with an extra yellow wire. A very simple way to have any USB connection to the X-Box is by getting a USB cable and an X-Box Controller cable, cut both cables and solder the same colored wires together omitting the yellow wire. tape each wire with rubber tape so the metal connectors don't touch each other and wrap the whole thing up in rubber tape. Viola. you have yourself a USB connector which you can connect to a hub to connect a keyboard, mouse, Digital Camera, USB storage, etc.
a warning though. if you're using USB storage with important data in it... make sure you have a backup. The Microsoft original Dashboard will assume your USB device to be a memory cartridge and format it accordingly, so you lose all data in it. At best, avoid using the MS Dash when using your USB devices.
Story of the X
Since the day I bought my XeoX modded X-Box, it has been difficult to get away from it. To me it's the best thing to ever come out of microsoft(not to say that I'm much of a Microsoft fan in the first place). Although it was built for gaming, it wasn't the absolute reason for buying it. Why the X-Box? Where I come from in this day and age people prefer the Sony PS2 as a gaming console. Well, I'm not saying that PS2 is no good. It's like comparing the Mac to the PC. Different class of users. If you prefer a tool to be reliable and you don't like the hassle of it crashing on you every now and then, you'd be better off with a Mac or a PS2. But if you're into modifications and hacking, I'd say the X-Box and the PC is for you. (In truth, the X-Box IS a PC anyway as most of you might already know.)
What have I done with my X-Box?
Try doing this on a PS2 -
1. Playing games without having to insert a DVD in your console.
2. Transfer Gigabytes of data.
3. Play Audio and Video in almost any format. (including DivX and MP3)
4. View Photos
5. Install/use a Linux Operating System.
6. connecting USB devices to it (well, a PS2 can do this too, but the fun of it with the X-Box is building your own USB hub/Connector)
7. write your own programs.
X-Box? Such a thing exists?
Of course when I first got my X-Box, all it did was play games which I had to buy. I first heard of the Xbox when I was into playing Oddworld:Abe's Oddysee on the PC. Also played the sequel, Oddworld:Abe's Exodus on the PC and was waiting for the next series when I found out it would no longer be released on the PC platform. So what did I do? Search the web for emulators and found zilch at the time. I bought a copy of Oddworld:Munch's oddysee for the xbox and was trying to get it to run on my PC using all sorts of tricks. including BIOS hacking. I found out later that the DVD was faulty. Funny, isn't it. Why did I do such things? the X-Box was not something easy to obtain at the time. As I mentioned before, people from where I come from prefer the PS2, so no shop sold the X-Box. And even when they did, I couldn't afford one. My only source of information was the internet.
What led to me to getting the X-Box finally.
Only three years after it's release was I able to buy one. And from where I come from, that usually means that the ones sold at the common gaming stalls already had a mod chip in them. Great. I didn't need to install my own mod chip. The story starts with my wife wanting to get a better TV for the bedroom. We were using a 14 inch Fisher TV which the remote control was patched up in masking tape to keep it from falling apart and the ON button was horrendously difficult to press. I didn't want that 14 inch to go to waste so we decided to put it downstairs(and later when we got it downstairs it faulted on us completely). And I told her that if we're getting a TV, I was getting an X-Box once i could afford it. To me a TV was not a necessity. I didn't really watch a lot of TV anyway and I already had my 19 inch monitor on my PC to watch just about anything. even TV, since I had a TV card anyway. But we got ourselves a 29 inch samsung flatscreen which I then connected to one of the PCs we had in the bedroom using a PC to TV Scan translator to watch Anime Fansubs in DivX format. it was good for a while, despite the cables lying around everywhere in the bedroom. But things were going to get better.
Upgrading the master bedroom media electronics
I finally got the X-Box from a gamers stall at Mines shopping complex. So what did I do right after I got it? I got myself used to having it around first. played a few games... actually most of the time it was Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beachvolley. (my wife's favourite at the time as well). I already had ethernet cables around to connect my PCs in the house via switch. So when we got the xbox we were able to get rid of the scan translator and simply connect the xbox to the TV and a network point in the room. with that we had a connection from the PC to the TV without having to use a scan translator.
However, just having that didn't mean we could watch DivX on our 29 inch TV. I had to first install X Media Player. and in order to do that I needed to be able to ftp files to my X-Box.
Hacking the X-Box
- Installing EvolutionX and X Media Player
So I downloaded EvolutionX, edited the evox.ini file to enable ftp and set my X-Box IP Address. I then had it burnt onto CD-RW(It has to be CD-RW, because the X-Box will not be able to boot up from a CD-R). Once I was able to boot up my x-box into EvolutionX, I was able to ftp anything from my PC to the X-Box and right away transfered BoXplorer. Then I copied the entire CD into the X-Box so that it would boot into EvolutionX everytime I start my X-Box.
On the same night I downloaded the X Media player source code, compiled it, and copied the binaries to my xbox. Immediately we were able to watch downloaded fansubbed anime burnt on CD-R on the 29 inch TV from the X-Box.... it worked, but the X-Box DVD rom had a substandard laser. so I found myself ejecting and inserting the CD-R to make sure the X-Box knows of it's existance.
- Overcoming the X-Box laser problem. Use your PC's CD/DVD rom drive.
X Media Player works fantastically with RelaX. All you have to do is install RelaX on your PC, share folders (including your CD/DVD-Rom drive) and enable it. You will also need to change settings in X Media Player's config.xml file to point to ReLax.
The Entry Point
I'm using this blog space as my way of documenting research, ideas, as well as news and events. Most probably it would contain information about X-Box hacks and reviews of anime and software.
