Saturday I made my second attempt on modding my Xbox this time with all the tools in hand. I gave up last week as the wire install method wasn’t working for me (not my preferred method anyway), this time Matt from work had lent me his solder sucker and it was time to clear the LPC port. The image to the right shows what I have in my v1.0 model and that you can just solder each wire to the board, this may work for some but the port was meant for a header so a header it shall have.

Stuart warned me on Friday that a solder sucker may not be right for the job as you need a tight fit whilst the solder is hot in order to remove it and I would be better with braid. That may have been the case but I had use the sucker before and wasn’t about to change plans at the last minute, these tools weren’t easy to get.

Anyway I removed the old pin install and made my attempts at removing the solder. After much negotiating of positions I managed to get 1 hole clear with the board on its side between my knees the soldering iron in one hand and the sucker in the other…this was to be the only time that move worked.

After many attempts I gave up and cursed around the studio for awhile until I had myself a light bulb moment. I ran out to the communal hallway and spotted my good friend Harry the vacuum cleaner (not in that way).

I pulled off the end and taped up the short metal end (so there was no metal on metal action) and let him rip. The vacuum attached tightly and formed a seal on the bottom of

the board and I simply touched the iron on the top of each point. With incredible easy the holes were clear one by one, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this last weekend.

Once that was done the rest came quickly as I had performed the pin header install many time before. Although you’ll see below my soldering skills are pretty rusty and I made quite a mess of the reverse pin header install but it works so that’s all that matters.

I booted it up and started the Bios flashing stage and encountered another hiccup which would prove to be another project staller. The controller wasn’t moving through the options on the FlashBios screen (to select the location of the new Bios file – HTTP, DVD, HDD), I knew the controller worked fine as I tested it the week before. Some quick interweb searching and I found out that only an original controller will work with the FlashBios screen (something to do with the Xbox being in low level I think).

With that I made a mad dash down the street to the pawnbrokers looking for a controller but come up with nothing, even a bus ride and walk up and down Kilburn High Rd proved fruitless. My weekend Xbox project will be delayed yet another week.

After the break are some photos I took during the process. Until next weekend.

_B

My poor attempt at soldering (it's really just to hold the pin header in)

The Xecuter 2.6CE installed and in place

Powered on and enabled LED showing

Piecing back together

Dip switches all lit up

Close up of the switches showing the memory banks, flashing and enable toggles

Hardware side of the install all complete and Xbox back in one piece