What was the Hard Drive in the Original Xbox actually used for?

A fun trip down memory lane! The Xbox is what really started to get me engaged with computers and, while nothing ever professionally came of it, I discovered a lifetime hobby of hardware and OS tinkering.

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Hardware Overviews

If anyone is interested in a great online write-up that further explores the Xbox hardware, have a look at:

Xbox Architecture - A Practical Analysis by Rodrigo Copetti

For historic context, readers may also be interested in reading about the Xbox's evolutionary ancestor:

Dreamcast Architecture - A Practical Analysis

Another fun hardware dive that served as an early bible for Xbox hardware reference is:

Hacking the Xbox by Andrew Huang (free .pdf copy from the author)

Still a fun, if dated read, AnandTech did a pretty good review of the Xbox's hardware just days after its launch in 2001:

Hardware Behind the Consoles - Microsoft's Xbox

A longtime community-lead source on documenting the Xbox's hardware and its revisions:

XboxDevWiki

With a larger userbase, and a more broad scope, the ConsoleMods wiki is also a valuable source of hardware information:

Original Xbox Mods Wiki

RacketBoy is a website geared toward retro-gaming enthusiasts and collectors. They often put out and update cansual overview guides such as:

Xbox 101: A Beginner's Guide to Microsoft's Original Console

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Xbox History

Rusel DeMaria, author of the somewhat famous High Score! (and the Myst strategy guide!!), took the time to chronicle and interview key players in the design and creation of the Xbox, which he compiled into two volumes:

Game of X, Vol. I (The Idea of an American Console, the Demise of Sega, Doing without Asking, and the Dawn of Xbox)
Game of X, Vol. II (Founding the M$ Games Division, Cutler's New Tech, Corporate Vulture Culture, and the 3D Wars)

More recently in the background of gaming journalism controversies, Dean Takahashi previously authored a rather celebrated book on the launch of the Xbox, following many of the same figures:

Opening the Xbox

There is also a six-part documentary series released by M$ for the 20th anniversary of Xbox:

Power On: The Story of Xbox

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Emulation

If you don't have access to Xbox hardware, but want to jump into playing, there is a Windows-only (or Wine) runtime wrapper/partial emulator:

Cxbx-Reloaded

But my personal favorite is a multi-platform, full machine emulator based on Qemu, which seeks to emulate as much of the hardware experience as possible:

Xemu

For this one, you are going to need a copy of complex4627v1.03.rar, a bootable Xbox kernel (yo-ho, yo-ho: Xbins mirrors under Console Based Applications).

If you plan to run with 128MB of RAM, you will need the debug version of that kernel:

You will also need a copy of mcpx_1.0.bin, the MCPX v1.0 bootloader (sometimes called MCPX X3 1.0; usually found in the same galleon, with original BIOSes).

(Note: X2 chips, such as on Chihiro arcade boards, do not contain a first-stage bootloader. Also, Xemu does not support X3 1.1 1bls yet.)

Optionally, if you're feeling nostalgic, you may want to look for a copy of Xbox Dashboard 5960. The Internet Archive might be your friend there.

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Game Information

You're on your own to find the games, but for the most comprehensive index of Xbox game disc information, with complete file content listings and hashes, you cannot go wrong with:

dbox.tools

And if you like this index, feel free to send an email to the admin. They really like hearing from the community and don't get enough love for their hard work (in my opinion).

This is an invaluable resource to help in figuring out what version of an Xbox game you might have.

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Essential Tools

Some essential tools for working with Xemu:

qemu-img - .qcow2 image conversion to help Windows users convert and mount their virtual harddrive. Example:

qemu-img.exe convert "C:\path\to\xbox_hdd.qcow2" -O vhdx -o subformat=dynamic "C:\path\to\new\xbox_hdd.vhdx"
qemu-img.exe convert -f vhdx "C:\path\to\new\xbox_hdd.vhdx" -O qcow2 "C:\path\to\new\xbox_hdd.qcow2"

FatXplorer 3 (TRIAL) - for Windows users who want to mount the filesystem stored within the virtual harddrive (or a physical one, too). NOTE: This is trialware and you will be prompted to purshase a license at some point, but the developer is really involved and dedicated. However, if you don't want to purchase a license, there are alternatives worth exploring like xbox-winfsp. If on linux, have a look at fatx info.

Xbox EEPROM Editor - This is helpful for setting things like your hardware type ("Debug" for extended memory support), region, resolution, HDD key, and more.

XBEExplorer - An excellent tool for reading Xbox executable information such as linked libraries, certificate info, runtime flags, and more.

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Hacking

If you want to get into some fun projects:

An increasing number of people are interested in manually patching games to support progressive scan, widescreen, and higher resolutions (but do know that performance may dip and vary). Have a look at some of the links in:

Xbox-Scene - Widescreen Patches Megathread

You could always try your hand at patching the retail dashboard to have extended features:

UIX-Ultra-Lite

There is some microcode errata present in all Xbox kernels, as noted in this forum thread. While this has no real-world value and does not affect nor improve the performance of the system or games in any way, it's a fun project to learn how to unpack the kernel image. You will need:

• A copy of your kernel
• XBTool 1.0.23, to unpack the kernel
• MCExtractor, to dump the unpacked kernel's microcode info
• A Hex editor (like HxD) to find the old microcode block in the kernel image and replace it
• Microcode Repository, for copies of the old and new microcode blocks for comparison and replacement
  • Old block cpu0068A_plat10_ver00000001_2000-11-02_PRD_80FC9E3B.bin is to be replaced with cpu006B1_plat10_ver0000001C_2001-02-15_PRD_6506E1CF.bin
  • Old block cpu00686_plat10_ver00000008_2000-05-05_PRD_EA2B7B61.bin is to be replaced with cpu006B4_plat10_ver00000001_2002-01-10_PRD_58213E6A.bin

Pro tip: A packed Retail Xbox BIOS image is 256K in size. A 1MB image is that same 256K but concatenated four times. A packed Debug Xbox BIOS image is 512K in size. A 1MB image is that same 512K but concatenated twice.

Complex 4627 versions 1.02 and 1.03 are signed with a standard Retail RC4 key (also called the MCPX 1.0 key):

0x27 0x45 0xa9 0x10 0x39 0x7e 0x6a 0xa6 0x86 0xfb 0x4b 0x1a 0x4b 0xa9 0x0f 0xd2

With XBTool, this key is set in Config\XBOX 1.0.ini and/or Config\Debug.ini, under

RC4_key_encrypt=2
RC4_KEY=

(Also, expect some antivirus false positives when scanning XBTool -- this thing is ancient.)

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More Hacking

One YouTube commenter asked whether the memory leaks in Morrowind were ever resolved: to my knowledge, no.

If you do want some increased performance for Morrowind and your Xbox has 128MB of RAM, you can dump the game with extract-xiso, and then patch Morrowind.xbe with a RAM delimiter tool such as dexbe (simply load your .xbe and uncheck Limit Dev-Kit Mem. to 64 MB, then save and quit) or delimit (a commandline app that you point at the .xbe).

(Note: default.xbe is already delimited, and just a stub for the main runtime anyway).

If your Xbox only has the standard 64MB, or you do not have access to a 128MB kernel, others have suggested making edits to the Morrowind.ini configuration file by finding and changing key entries such as:

[General]
SkipProgramFlows=1
DontThreadLoad=1
ThreadPriority=1
Exterior Cell Buffer=4
UseExistingTempFile=1
CanMoveInfosWhileFiltered=1
Subtitles=1



[LightAttenuation]
UseLinear=0
UseQuadratic=1
QuadraticValue=1.0

Using extended RAM, I have personally opted to skip changing these.

Now, there is also a bug present in all versions of Morrowind (PC and Xbox) where, over a long period of time, actors will move slightly to the left. This is due to an error with the base character animation files; the idle animation loop begins and ends in a different position and because cell changes do not reset an actor's position, there is nothing to stop them from moving indefinitely.

Enter Idle Animation Fix, a pair of meshes that correct the bug.

You can place these two files under the following path of your game disc

Data Files\Meshes\xbase_anim.kf
Data Files\Meshes\xbase_anim_female.kf

These will override the broken mesh files stored in Data Files\Morrowind.bsa.

Finally, if you are using Game of the Year Edition and want to experiment with loading .esp plugin mods but you run into dependency issues, you can create two text files next to Data Files\Morrowind.esm, and name them Tribunal.esm and Bloodmoon.esm. Their sole contents should be the following string:

TES3

(This is the magic num at the beginning of .esm and .esp headers.) These should spoof relatively simple .esps into accepting that their dependencies have been met. However, you will want to make sure that the file modification date stamps match your desired load order, with the oldest dates being earliest to be loaded. In Windows, you could use something like BulkFileChanger, or perhaps PowerShell:

Get-ChildItem  "C:\path\to\extracted\morrowind\Data Files\Morrowind.esm" | % {$_.LastWriteTime = '20/10/2003 22:23:00'}

Or using a *nix environment:

touch -m -t 200310202223.00 "/path/to/extracted/morrowind/Data Files/Morrowind.esm"

Oh wow, I almost forgot! To force the game to read its data from the disc path (D:) instead of the cache path (Z:), you should change a few offsets in Morrowind.xbe:

Yikes, I really got into the weeds on modding Morrowind, huh? Well, let's get back on track, then.

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Even More Hacking

A handful of games used the EEPROM's HDD key to restrict save sharing. If you find yourself stuck importing a save from real hardware or somewhere on the internet, you may have to resign it for your current virtual or physical Xbox.

If you are on Xemu and transferring from physical hardware, one thing you could do is dump that Xbox's hardware EEPROM and then use it to boot Xemu.

On the other hand, if you do not have access to the physical Xbox from which the save was retrieved, you may be able to resign them with the help of some tools.

You will need a few things first:

1. XSaveSig, an original Xbox save resigner program.

2. Xemu's HDD Key, which you can fetch from its generated eeprom.bin, using XboxEepromEditor

3. The particular game's SigKey and AuthKey. You can fetch/generate these keys from the respective game's default.xbe file or see if they are either already in XSaveSig's list or this GitHub archive of expanded XSaveSig list entries.

If you have to manually fetch these all important keys for your particular game, you need to dump your game disc with extract-xiso. Once you have a copy of your default.xbe file, open it up with XBEExplorer. To find your SigKey, navigate to XBE Header > Certificate. The entry you are looking for is bzSignatureKey.

To obtain this .xbe's AuthKey, grab a copy of xboxsig.py, a python tool. If you're on Windows, ensure you have a version of Python3 installed and available in the $PATH for your command-line of choice, then run the script like so:

python3 C:\path\to\xboxsig.py -i c:\path\to\default.xbe

This will generate your AuthKey.

What you need to do next is grab your Xemu eeprom.bin file, open it with XboxEepromEditor, and fetch the HDD Key. (Note: if you have nulled your HDD key for some reason, you can use the 32-char 0 value instead.) Copy that HDD Key into XSaveSig's xbhddkey.ini file.

Lastly, you need to add the SigKey and AuthKey to XSaveSig's resign.ini file. After that, you should be able to run it and resign your save.

There's also a set of easy-to-use command-line tools for resigning the gamesaves of particular titles, if your needs are more specific and limited:

Original Xbox Gamesave Resigners

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Kernel Building

Unpacking and microcode patching not enough for your thirst? How about building the Xbox kernel from source? Have a look at this (hosted by M$'s very own GitHub):

Easy-Build for Xbox

If you are interested in amateur kernel development and want to get some overview on the NT 5.0 kernel that serves as the xboxkrnl base, have a look at:

Inside Microsoft Windows 2000

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Xbox Lives

Learned what you like from the hacking scene and ready to hop back online? Sign up for an account on this Xbox Live replacement:

Insignia

IMPORTANT: Your HDD key must not be nulled. Also, if you are using an older softmod or a hardmod whose kernel blocks Xbox Live, you will either need to update your exploit or disable the block by means of the BIOS tool appropriate to your modchip.

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EDIT: Fixed some spelling errors and clarified a few sentences.
EDIT2: Added SHA-1 sums of files, and byte offsets for all other Morrowind versions.