2003 Microsoft Xbox (Original) Upgrades – OpenXenium, 1TB SSD, 128MB RAM, and XboxHD+

I bought a non-working 2003 Microsoft Xbox a couple of years ago, which I fixed at the time (as discussed in another blog post). After a while of using it stock, I wanted to do some modifications to bring it a bit further into the 21st century, including:

• Fitting an OpenXenium modchip.
• Replacing the original HDD with a 1TB 3.5″ SSD.
• Upgrading the system from 64MB RAM to 128MB RAM.
• Installing an XboxHD+ HDMI encoder board.

I also wanted to perform some preventative maintenance, including replacing the electrolytic capacitors on the mainboard and PSU, replacing the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU heatsinks, and fitting a heatsink to the Northbridge chip.

I thought I’d write up a somewhat comprehensive guide as to this process, as information on some aspects of Xbox modification is quite sporadic, and resources can be tricky to find.

Electrolytic Capacitor Replacement

Aluminium electrolytic capacitors are commonly used for filtering, smoothing, and decoupling in both high- and low-voltage electronics. They are quite cheap in comparison to their solid-electrolyte counterparts (such as tantalum and polymer electrolytics), so are very common in consumer electronics.

Their useful lifetime is highly dependent on the specific application that they are used in (i.e. frequency, ripple current) and temperature, as well as the manufacturer and series of the specific component. They typically comprise aluminium windings which are coated with a liquid electrolyte, which can dry out over time (negatively affecting the performance of the capacitor, often causing them to fail dead-short), or even leak out and cause corrosion to the PCB and surrounding components.

There are several production variants of the Xbox mainboard and PSU, each of which have different electrolytic capacitor values and locations, so take note of which you have.

There are commercial capacitor packs available for the Xbox, but I just made up my own by noting the specifications of all of the electrolytic capacitors on the boards, and ordering a set of high-quality known-brand parts.

When substituting electrolytic capacitors, the capacitance needs to be the same, and the voltage rating can be the same or higher (within reason) – when you’re going through all this effort to recap something, be sure to use high-quality replacements.

This is a v1.4/v1.5 Xbox, with the following electrolytics on the mainboard (36 total):

• 5 x 10uF 16V (SMD)
• 13 x 22uF 25V (through-hole)
• 1 x 47uF 16V (SMD)
• 7 x 100uF 25V (through-hole)
• 1 x 680uF 16V (through-hole)
• 3 x 1500uF 16V (through-hole)
• 5 x 3300uF 10V (through-hole)
• 1 x 1F 2.5V (through-hole)

When fitting new electrolytic capacitors, you must take care to ensure that the value, voltage rating, and orientation of the new capacitor are correct – electrolytic capacitors are polarised, so must be installed the correct way around, else they’ll get hot when powered on (and probably explode). The polarity is marked on the case: for aluminium electrolytic capacitors, the negative side is usually shown by a white stripe (for through-hole) or a black bar (for SMD); for tantalum capacitors, the positive side is usually shown by an orange or white bar (for SMD). This catches a lot of people out!

I usually remove each capacitor one-by-one using my desoldering station, then immediately install its replacement part – this minimises the likelihood of getting it wrong. The board should then be thoroughly cleaned to remove any leaked electrolyte and leftover flux, using isopropyl alcohol and an ESD-safe brush.

You can’t always trust the orientation markings on the PCB silkscreen (if it even has them, not all boards do), as sometimes mistakes were made in the design from the factory (take the PCB layout of the audio circuit on the Commodore CD32, for example), so care must be taken to match the orientation of the new capacitor with the original. Make sure to take lots of “before” pictures for reference, and double-check throughout.

This Xbox has a Delta DPSN-96BP PSU, with the following electrolytics (11 total):

• 1 x 0.22uF 50V (through-hole)
• 2 x 10uF 25V (through-hole)
• 1 x 47uF 25V (through-hole)
• 2 x 100uF 25V (through-hole)
• 1 x 150uF 400V (through-hole)
• 1 x 1000uF 16V (through-hole)
• 3 x 2200uF 10V (through-hole)

I also cleaned all of the connectors with contact cleaner, and reflowed most of the larger solder joints across the board to help prevent cracking.

Thermal Paste Replacement

Thermal paste is used to improve heat transfer between IC packages and heatsinks, and helps prevent hot spots or overheating – it tends to deteriorate over time and becomes less effective, so it makes sense to replace old thermal paste during an Xbox service.

The Xbox has two large heatsinks, one for the CPU, one for the GPU – both of these are held in place using clips which are easy enough to unclip. The heatsinks can then be removed.

The original thermal paste is a strong adhesive, so pulling the heatsinks off directly may damage the ICs underneath – I used a hot air station to heat up the heatsinks, which helps free them off by loosening the adhesive.

The leftover paste can then be removed from the ICs and heatsinks using acetone and cotton pads – it’s important to get both surfaces as clean as possible before the new thermal paste is applied to improve its efficiency.

New thermal paste can then be applied and the heatsinks and clips refitted.

I also fitted a self-adhesive heatsink onto the Northbridge chip.

OpenXenium Modchip Installation

Hard-modding (i.e. the installation of a mod chip) is a common upgrade for many games consoles – for the original Xbox it allows you to easily load custom BIOS images, which allows you to bypass copy protection, run custom software, and upgrade the hardware.

There are lots of mod chips available for the original Xbox – I decided to use an OpenXenium mod chip as these are commonly available and quite cheap.

Fitting the OpenXenium requires soldering a pin header into the LPC header on the mainboard, fitting the mod chip on top, then either (non v1.6) running a D0 jumper wire to the Xbox mainboard, or (v1.6) bridging D0 to the 1.6 pad on the mod chip.

For a v1.6 Xbox, the LPC header needs to be “rebuilt” with a PCB or wires.

If the mod chip is working correctly, the Xbox should boot into the OpenXenium menu.

128MB RAM Upgrade

From the factory, the original Xbox has 64MB RAM – it’s possible to upgrade this to 128MB RAM, which allows you to play SEGA Chihiro arcade games, run emulators with better performance, and tweak some games via XBE patches to run with better performance.

All known Xbox mainboards except the v1.6/v1.6b have four spare footprints for the extra RAM ICs, allowing easy installation – the v1.6/v1.6b does not have these, and requires the new ICs be piggybacked onto the existing ones and wires fitted for chip select lines.

Suitable RAM chips can be found quite commonly on eBay.

The new RAM ICs can be soldered into place – the pin pitch is quite fine, so requires suitable experience, flux, a good iron, and good solder to get right.

I used the 128MB RAM test under XBlastOS (loaded onto the OpenXenium) to check each IC after installing them one by one – if they’re fitted correctly, they will test successfully.

SSD Preparation & Installation

The original Xbox has an internal 8GB mechanical HDD, for system software and game saves – these are quite loud, becoming unreliable, and very limited in capacity, so aren’t suitable for loading custom software or game images.

If you’re fitting a mod chip, it makes sense to fit a larger drive – and given how cheap SSDs (which are quiet and faster than HDDs) are these days, it makes sense to opt for an SSD.

I chose a 1TB 2.5″ SATA SSD – because the Xbox mainboard only has IDE onboard, you also need a suitable IDE-SATA adapter, and for improved transfer speeds (ATA33+) you should replace the original 40-wire IDE cable for an 80-wire IDE cable.

The new drive needs to be formatted for use with the Xbox before it can be installed.

There are several ways of doing this – I opted to connect the SSD to a PC using a USB-SATA adapter, then format the drive using FATXplorer‘s original Xbox HDD formatting tool.

The formatting tool allows the drive to be formatted for several different types of BIOS – I chose “LBA-Increasing BIOS, Partition Table” as I’d be patching my BIOS for LBA48.

The formatting tool also allows the drive to be preloaded – this is useful for loading the default system files on the C: and E: partitions.

The formatted drive can then be installed in the machine.

Preparing & Loading a Custom BIOS

A custom BIOS is required for:

• LBA48 and partition table support for large custom drive partitions.
• 128MB RAM support.
• XboxHD+ support.

There are all kinds of custom Xbox BIOSes, new and old – I used the EvolutionX M8+ BIOS as a base because it’s supported by XboxHD+.

Following the MakeMHz patch guide, I patched the BIOS to support the new SSD, to support the XboxHD+, and to support 128MB RAM – this involves unpacking the original image and patching drive support using EVtool, applying the other patches using Lunar IPS,

The output file can then be loaded onto the Xbox drive – I again used FATXplorer and a USB-SATA adapter on my PC.

The Xbox drive can be loaded using FATXplorer, and the C: partition mounted to the PC – the BIOS file can then be copied across under a “BIOS” folder.

The new BIOS can then be loaded into flash on the OpenXenium.

XboxHD+ Software Installation

This section is also covered by the MakeMHz software installation guide.

The XboxHD+ has its own custom software application, which needs to be downloaded and installed on the C: partition under “xboxhd”, in the same manner as above.

The installation of the XboxHD+ software and custom BIOS should be verified by rebooting the Xbox and launching the XboxHD+ application via a custom dashboard, which should say “Kernel patch loader detected” if everything is correct.

XboxHD+ Hardware Installation

This section is also covered by the MakeMHz hardware installation guide.

The first step of the XboxHD+ hardware installation (on v1.0-v1.5 mainboards) is to fit a QSB board, to improve video clock signal filtering, and to remove FB3B1.

The next step is to remove the original AV connector, which is quite tricky as it has quite a significant thermal mass, so needs flux, good solder, a high-power soldering iron, and ideally a vacuum desoldering station – if not, a good solder pump and/or good solder wick.

Jumper wires are also required to trick the Xbox into thinking an AV cable is fitted.

The next step is to fit the flex cable to the video encoder – the pin pitch is quite fine, so requires suitable experience, flux, a good iron, and good solder to get right.

The AV port, video encoder, and SMBus cabling can then be wired as per the guide.

The AV port spacer can then be fitted to the case, and the mainboard fitted to the case.

The XboxHD+ board can then be fitted and screwed to the spacer.

The flex cable can then be (carefully) installed, and the peripheral cables soldered.

The XboxHD+ installation is then complete.

I reassembled the Xbox for testing, and the XboxHD+ seemed to work well.

Loading Games & Software

There are three methods of loading software onto the Xbox HDD.

• #1: via CD-ROM – this requires burning files to CD-ROMs using a PC CD-ROM drive.
• #2: via FATXplorer – this is fast, but requires the Xbox HDD to be connected to a PC.
• #3: via FTP over Ethernet – this is slow, but the Xbox HDD can be inside the Xbox.

Game image (ISO or XISO) files for your favourite original Xbox games can be downloaded for free online, from sites such as Myrient, Vimm, and ROMsFun.

I downloaded the game images I wanted to install on my PC, and used XDVDMulleter to extract the ISO files ready for transfer across to the Xbox HDD.

I also burned a Hexen CD-ROM and used it to install useful utilities and a default dashboard (XBMC4Xbox) via the onboard CD-ROM drive.

I then used FATXplorer to mount the game partition (G:) of the Xbox HDD on my PC, and copied all of the game images across – this is the fastest way to copy large numbers of files, so made sense for the 750GB of extracted game files that I wanted to transfer.

FTP can be used to copy files from a PC via Ethernet, using a suitable FTP client (such as FileZilla), connected using the IP address and login details from XBMC on the Xbox – the default username is “xbox”, the default password is “xbox”, the IP address will vary if using DHCP and can be found under “settings->network”, and port can be left blank.

This is slow for large numbers of small files, but the Xbox does not need to be dismantled and the HDD removed, so this is good for minor changes (such as tweaking dashboards).

To load program files via the dashboard, you need to manually add the appropriate program folders on the F: and G: drives, which will populate the game library.

Games and programs can then be loaded via the programs menu in XBMC.

With the games library loaded, my Xbox modifications were complete!