Alice in Userland

Softmodding an XBOX via Ndure, xboxhdm, and hotswapping

(source), includes screenshots and much more detail.

You will need:

• original XBOX (not 360)
• Torx 20 screwdriver
• A PC with a free ATA slot (not SATA) + 4-pin molex power cable, and CD burner
• one blank CD
• any music CD
• NDURE 3.0
• updated ndure backup script (right click, save as…)
• xboxhdm 1.6

1. Start up your XBOX and head to MS Dashboard>Settings>System Info. Write down the Kernel number (K:) and Dashboard number (D:) at the bottom
2. Run Ndure.exe. Select the checkboxes of the features you would like, taking care to select the proper kernel numbers found in step 1 (in format 1.00.XXXX.01)
3. Hit next and save to /xboxhdm/linux/, where you extracted xboxhdm to. Hit install, wait for it to finish, then hit next and finish
4. Move the updated ndure backup script (ndure, with no file extension) to /xboxhdm/linux/ndure/ where you extracted xboxhdm to
5. Go to /xboxhdm and run make-iso-win.bat — it will create an iso image
6. Burn the iso image with your favourite iso-burning program
7. Set your PC to boot from disk via BIOS
8. Put a music CD into your XBOX
9. Turn off your XBOX and open your XBOX with the torx 20 screwdriver
10. Connect the XBOX hard drive to your PC’s power supply
11. If your PC’s hard drive is occupying the primary master slot, disconnect it
12. Boot your PC (into your burned CD) and turn on your XBOX simultaneously
13. On your XBOX, copy one track of your music CD to the hard drive, play it from the hard drive, and then pause (this will unlock the hard drive)
14. “hotswap” your hard drive by disconnecting the xbox ATA cable and connecting instead to the PC’s ATA cable while both are running (NOTE: try to keep the drive as still as possible– the slightest vibration will cause step 15 to fail, and you will need to restart from step 12)
15. Press “1″ on your PC keyboard, then at the next prompt, type “xbrowser” and hit enter
16. navigate to the ndure folder, then highlight the ndure file and hit enter
17. select option 4 to backup C drive to E:/backup. Wait until it finishes
18. select option 1 to install Ndure. Wait until all three parts are finished installing
19. When the screen says “done, now exiting”, turn off both XBOX and PC
20. disconnect the XBOX hard drive from the PC ATA cable, and reconnect it to the XBOX ATA cable
21. reconnect your PC’s hard drive to your PC ATA cable
22. screw your XBOX case back together
23. (optional) boot up into your softmodded XBOX!
24. (optional) Install XBMC