The blog & portfolio of Matthew J. Rogers

The X(box) Files

I haven’t had a game console since the original Nintendo back in 1993, and I am opposed to them in general because I think $300 goes a lot further in a PC than it does in a console, on which the only thing you can do is play games. At least a PC is multi-purpose, upgradeable, etc. So I was as surprised as anyone when I found myself buying an Xbox on eBay in early 2006 (albeit for $100, not $300). Why? Because it turns out an Xbox doesn’t have to just be a game console. If you care, read about what compelled me to buy an Xbox.

The X Plan

Once I had spent several quality days reading the tutorials and forum posts at Xbox-Scene while waiting for my Xbox and mod chip to arrive, I had learned a great deal about what I intended to do — and I learned about many things I hadn’t even known the Xbox was capable of. I’m also a sucker for clean-looking equipment and customizing stuff as much as possible, so I figured I’d paint it too. Here’s my list of projects:

As I complete a project, I’ll put up a page about how it went. I will attempt to have pictures of each process as well, but no promises at this point! I hope that this log in some way helps others who might be interested in doing some of these things. As I said, I’ve found some other guides on the Internet to be less than complete, so maybe this will complement other information you find, but I’m going to try not to repeat a lot of it. At any rate, thanks for reading!

Updated on May 5, 2006

7 comments

  • Ben Freeman August 2nd, 2006 at 7:32 am

    Nice to see you got a console, so now you can beat todd in halo at anypoint :P Just a quick question, have a ballpark total cost for this project? I noticed you said you got the actual Xbox for 100. what size HD did you go with?

  • Matthew August 2nd, 2006 at 7:37 am

    Hey Ben, long time no see! Well yes, I got the Xbox for about $100, the modchip for $50 (although I have since found modchips for $20 that would work just as well), the hard drive was just laying around but that would be in the $70 range. The rest of the stuff — paint, relays for internal controllers, etc — has trivial cost in money but a lot of cost in time (man I sound like such a CS nerd). Really to get the same functionality as I did it’s just the cost of the Xbox plus a modchip plus a hard drive.

    Because I’m in the middle of Project X2, I had to cannibalize the WhiteBox (as we call this Xbox), so as you see it here it doesn’t actually exist anymore. I’ve removed all the cool stuff — relays, internal DVD kit, etc — for use with the X2. It has been slow going though for numerous reasons; I hope to finish it sometime this fall.

  • Ben Freeman August 2nd, 2006 at 7:45 am

    Good luck on it! both projects work great. I’ve though of doing modding, but I think I’m going to wait until I get another one (so I have a working one incase I screw something up) or get a 360. But in any case, it looks great, as does the concept for the new one! Timely response too haha, thought it would be a day or two before a respones :P

  • Matthew August 2nd, 2006 at 7:48 am

    Ah, the benefits of having a BlackBerry ;)

  • Law September 19th, 2007 at 9:32 pm

    Oh yea, I did an XBOX mod back in 2006. I have at least 30 games backed up, I love it and its easy to use.

  • n1kon November 27th, 2007 at 4:59 pm

    How did it go? I’ve modded so many boXes i have it down to a fine art your mod should take about an hour

  • BLaZiNGCROsharky April 26th, 2008 at 1:32 am

    You are a rich nerd. I admire you for using your abilities to good use and being helpful, instead of slaving over WoW all day. thank you so much for setting an example for people who are like you. i can not say how much i appreciate you. continue hacking, doing your stuff, and thank you.

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