Classic Xbox Hack
minus points for No duct tape involved ;)

As with most gamers I have old consoles around my house gathering dust for an occasional retro game session. To be honest the only one that came out with any regularity was the N64. The big black box that was the classic xbox didn't get a look in

Then I read the following article

lifehacker.com/299809/transform-your-classic-xbox-into-a-killer-media-center

Intrigued I gave it a go. I'm a bit of a klutz but I managed to do this without a hitch. Teamed up with a 1TB network drive full of films & all of my music.

It is fanfuckintastic. My only criticism is the menu system is a bit too complicated for Mrs Duck so I occasionally have to talk her through it but other than that it's awesome.
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Tue 25 Aug 2009, 13:39, 8 replies)

Ahh
good old XBMC. That was pretty much the only reason I bought an Xbox all those moons ago (it was called XBMP then though).
(dchurch bah, Tue 25 Aug 2009, 13:43, closed)

homebrew
i can't resist tinkering with any new console to get homebrew nonsense running on them. I've now played Monkey Island on my PSP, DS and as of this week, Wii. My Wii also has a HD attached to it now with all of my games on so i don't have to ever get off the sofa. by far and away the best use for it though is the Amiga emulator - purely for playing all the tech demos from the early 90s. aaah, memories.
(Alphabet Soap boshboshboshbosh, Tue 25 Aug 2009, 14:01, closed)

I
am exactly the same.

My (old black) xbox has a much larger HDD in it that the orig for the same reason as you and your Wii. There's a USB extender cable hanging out the back where I drilled through the case and wired a new female USB plug in so I could use a keyboard for XBMC.

My Wii was hacked within about 15 minutes of me owning it. Never use it now though. The fun was working out how to crack the bugger.

In fact, you could pretty much replace Wii and/or Xbox for just about any console over the years and this would still be true.

I only just got a broken Xbox360 for £20 thinking that I might be able to fix it...and....I could. Works perfectly now.

I'm going to probably sit down this weekend and work out how to crack that one too.
(dchurch bah, Tue 25 Aug 2009, 14:11, closed)

You're the sort this QOTW was aimed at
;o)

I have built every computer I have owned but droping a CPU into place & slotting a video card into a PCI express slot is the absolute pinical of my technical ability. My soldering looks like big blobs of bird shit.

I thought I'd post this article to show the non soldering but not scared of a bit of tinkering crowd this great little mod
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Tue 25 Aug 2009, 14:19, closed)

Excellent.
I knew it was worth not getting rid of the old Xbox. Having said that, I've never got rid of a console. I sometimes get the old NES out for a bit of nostalgic Duck Hunt and Solar Jetman.

I have Splinter Cell so I guess I just need an Action Replay. Thanks for this!!
( M3rx likes the Asian ladies, Tue 25 Aug 2009, 14:45, closed)

I have...
... XBMC running on a small form-factor PC, and Mediatomb running on my (hacked) Linkstation. This is a surefire recipe for awesome and win.
(gordonjcp, Tue 25 Aug 2009, 20:45, closed)

Sadly my old X-Box died - wouldn't read disks very well, then at all, then it refused to power on.

I gave it a proper viking send-off and dumped it at the coup (that's coup as in 'kowp', not 'coo').
(Pope Jamiroquai III, Tue 25 Aug 2009, 22:46, closed)

Plex
www.plexapp.com/

i believe this is a port from the xbox media centre. got a macbook pro hooked up to my tv via hdmi with this running on it. it's ace. automatically downloads covers, synopses, reviews and background music for all of your movies/tv series, links up with your itunes (even remotely from another computer on the network) and can stream pretty much anything from the interweb that you'd want - youtube, iplayer, 4od, TED, apple trailers.

Best of all it's freeeeee. thoroughly recommend it.
(Alphabet Soap boshboshboshbosh, Wed 26 Aug 2009, 10:34, closed)