XBOX is still fun to hack.

So I was bored and had spent some time in PA this weekend to visit the kids. My brother in law was there and asked for Madden 08 for the old hacked XBOX I have for my boys. I burnt it, and plan to bring it up next visit...

My roommate here has an XBOX but no games or controllers at the moment. Used XBOX controller is still $20 at GameStop! geesh. Well, MechAssault is $3 used, saw 1 8MB MadCatz memory card for $10, and a dongle for $3. Get home and splice the dongle into a USB cable so my XBOX controller can plug into my PC. Download "Action Replay XBox PC Software v1.31" from CodeJunkies and Ltools from Xbins (google that yourself). Plug in the memory card and controller. First USB device it finds is the controller, for me anyway, which I skipped. Pointed the next USB device to the drivers in the Action Replay install directory. Dragged ltools_MA_v1.8_rc1.zip onto the AR software and it installed it to the saves directory. Drag it from PC to Memory card, bam.

Put it on the XBOX and copy to hard drive, then start MechAssault and press "B" to get back to Ltools main menu (Starts in the DVD menu). There you go. Follow the on screen prompts.

So I also used the ltools_dashes.zip and have UnleashX, and I did all this to test my Madden 08 burnt DVD, and help out my roomie if he decides to ever use his XBOX he can get some games from me...

Best part -- took under 30min. First XBOX I ever hacked took like two days of figuring crap out. This was back when installers weren't invented and I had to hotswap the hard drive and such. Eventually I'd like to upgrade the harddrive in my kids XBOX. The 120gb one in there has been full for awhile.

aeroplanes.

i got back in the shop and saw emergency vehicles deploying to the airfield. a buddy goes, "watch this."

i just saw a harrier land without it's front landing gear down. the nose bounced off the deck twice.

it was pretty rad. :)

I rediscover MidpSSH

wow. so i'm stuck at work and bored on a weekend alone. my stunnel wouldn't connect. guess my shell was restarted. the daemon wasn't loaded. rather than play the nintendo ds i also brought with me, i decided to see if there was ANY way to get around this. i ended up getting MidpSSH on my cell phone and logging in, su to root, and running stunnel.
MidpSSH is an SSH/Telnet client for pretty much any cell phone. I of course run my SSH on port 465 so T-Mobile allows a direct connection to it already, so I didn't have to mess with much. Version 1.7.0 is the devel branch, which should be further along than 1.6.0... but it did not work! Almost giving up, I tried 1.6.0 and it's much better. Would be a really great application if I had a QWERTY keyboard :)
Anyway, check it out here.

DS repair.

I bought two broken white DS's from the local classifieds for $50. I was able to repair the first one real easy. When I opened the case, a small surface mount inductor -- L2 (next to power switch) -- fell out. I soldered the bad boy back in and the thing works great! So I got my $50 worth. I used the other one to replace my broken power switch on my own DS, and selling the rest on eBay. Much thanks to Sean for his soldering skills with that switch.

It's fun work. I wish I had the monies to start in DS refurbishment. Might be able to get some money off that on eBay once I collected some parts. But the holiday's and birthdays coming up, ... I wish I had gotten both DS's to work -- they'd be christmas presents for my sons. =\