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Catching up...| | Ooops.....Seems I missed a day or two. *Smile*
Well, during my absence I've been a busy lil camper. Besides going on a quilting rampage, I also learned how to mod XBOXes. Seriously, the thing is nothing more than a 733 mhz processor with 64 mb of ram and a 8 gb hard drive. I had one in a closet from years ago, torn apart in pieces because the dvd tray was broken. See, us men save broken stuff for a good reason, and this is a primary example. I had bought another one for 129 bucks years ago as a replacement, but Ben and Gabby outgrew it (meaning they played and/or solved most of the games available for it), so it went to Spud and he's been playing Legos Star Wars and other games. You can get used XBOX games at the video game place for like 3 for 10 bucks, and yes, the unit is obsolete, meaning they don't make them any more and quite developing games for it. Software developers are working on the newer units, like the 360 and PS3 and WII, and selling the games for 50-60 bucks apiece, which is where the money is at.
So I dug out this old broken unit and did research. Hmmm, what the heck is hotswapping? What is fatx filesystem, ndure, and unleashx dashboard? What is xboxhdm? Being curious, I had to answer these questions, and I did. Since I'm 100% linux now, these tricks were easy to learn, and I must chuckle at the irony of putting linux on a piece of hardware made by Microsoft.
To be sure, the thing is no longer just a obsolete gaming system. Now it is a full blown media center, running a hacked dashboard and executing emulators for other obsolete gaming systems, such as the N64 and the Playstation. Roms are freely available on the net, (and YES I do have an original copy of each game:), so suddenly older media is reduced to digital information. Spud, who was born after Spyro the Dragon for the PS1 was a hit, and is now 5, has rescued 23 dragons in a game he would otherwise have never even known about. Try to find a copy of Spyro at your local game place, because it's virtually impossible.
Besides emulating every game system every made, the thing can search the home network for mp3s, videos, and pics. Wow, that's cool, and the visualizations XBMC produces are better than the 360's. Yes, it even has a 360 skin for a dashboard, but I thought it too eerie to be emulating a modern game system, too wyrd for my taste. Well, since it has a built in ethernet port, you connect a cable to it and it becomes a TV based web browser, simply hooking up a USB keyboard and mouse through a 4-port USB hub. Surfing the web on a XBOX on any TV? Who would've thought? Of course, I installed a full version of linux on it, Xebian distro, but I didn't like that much because it cost 2gb of hard drive space and installed itself as an image file, meaning I couldn't figure out how to install new software (gotta have flash to watch youtube!), and never bothered trying the 4-6 other distros that are designed for the XBOX.
Needless to say I told my cousin about my modding escapades, and he came over with his and we modded it as well. Of course, Spud started playing my reincarnated XBOX more than his stock one, so I modded his as well. Then cousin bought one off Ebay, and it got modded, and I just bought another one off Ebay with 2 more controllers and 5 games, and of course it will get modded too. The thing that is all the rage now is to plop a huge 150-300gb hd in them and copying them full of games, mp3s, dvds, and what not, making it a stand alone Media Center. Good choice for an obsolete piece of hardware. Easy as pie to do. Eventually I'll write my own tutorial on how to do it, because most of the tuts out there are a tad confusing. Ben got a 360 for christmas, and he loves it, and I've been telling him I'm gonna mod it next, and he's threatened me with death if I lay a finger on it. *smile*
Speaking of the 360, I fixed my first one a few weeks ago. If you know of anyone with one, you know they are prone to fail from "The Red Ring Of Death", and IF it's still under warrenty, Microsoft will fix it for free, but if not, it costs 140.00 for them to fix it. Ben's cousin had one, no longer under warrenty, so it fell into my lap to repair. I got the satisfaction of tearing one down to the motherboard, and learned how one is put together. The 360 was designed to suffer from heat exhaustion, because MS trimmed down the heat sinks to make room for the DVD tray, and the RROD is a heat related component failure. I read online how to take 8 pennies and wrap 2 in electrical tape and where the 4 chips are that are prone to overheating. So for 8 cents I fixed a xbox 360. Feedback from the cousin was disbelief, but his 360 is still working fine under heavy use, and he (his mom) saved 140.00. Amazing, but true.
Next up, Karaoke on your PC. It's called Ultrastar, and they have a version for Windoze and Linux, modeled after Singstar for the PS2. It's a hoot.
Of course, everyone loves to sing along with songs in their car, but are you brave enough to actually get rated on how well you sing? If you have a microphone for your pc, get the software and test out your ability in the privacy of your own home, with only family members laughing at you. Strangely enough, I do fairly well, mid-amateur range, when I always suspected I was tone deaf. There is a slight catch, however, since it is a piece of free software, and that is that they can't give out songs due to copyright. However, other sites have the .txt files (check out Ultrastarstuff.com) that are free to download, and you have to supply your own mp3s. Not really a problem when you can karaoke to your OWN favorite genre, and not just a pre-bundled pack of commercial songs. That said, I made up a pack of 8 songs, from Avril to Linkin Park to Pink to the Eagles, and I tried them out. Gabby tried them out, and sorry to say, unless she gets formal training, she'll never be on American Idol. *smile* Yes, I trashed my 12 year old's scores, so it's off at my leisure to build more song packs to practice with. It's fun, it's family oriented, and it'll tell you if you should pursue a singing career or not. For me, it's not.
Peace.
| | | Posted 3/8/2009 11:56 AM - 13 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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