buying a second-hand xbox -- worth it ?

Post by **glossy** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 10:32 am

a mate of mine is selling his xbox since he's trying to scrounge up some money for a car, so he's offering his xbox with one controller, unchipped or modded with four games (Project gotham racing 2, Splintercell 2, halo and burnout 3) for AU$200.

I wouldn't usually consider it, except that I'm running out of patience with my PC, it'd be nice to have a project to work with over the school break coming up (i'll definately be chipping it, changing the dashboard and probably putting in a new harddrive) and being able to comfortably sit on my ass in front of the tv playing burnout 3 or some MAME emulation thing.

do you reckon it's worth it?

(also, how easy/possible is it to put MAME and GBA emulators and roms, FTP servers etc. on it?)

Post by **FragaGeddon** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 10:52 am

Go for it.

Post by **DiscoDave** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 10:52 am

I've got a mate at uni thats chipped his xbox, installed a new hard drive and all that malarky and its pretty good. After its chipped you can do a lot to it, i know some other people installing all their MP3's on it and whacking on windows media centre. Good stuff.

Putting chipping aside and whatnot, i beleive the Xbox 2 is coming out late this year so you have some idea of how much lifespan the xbox has/

Post by **glossy** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 10:58 am

i'm not much of a console kind of guy, so i don't think it'd bother me if the xbox 2 came out soon enough... plus $200-$300 is a lot different to what the xbox will likely be released at ($500-600+)

Post by **DiscoDave** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 11:02 am

Go for it then :icon14:

Just for reference, i beleive a chipped xbox won't let you log onto Live. Although I think there are workarounds and different chips you can get to get you on.

Post by **U4EA** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 11:24 am

Go for it for sure (though depending on its condition, I'd try bringing down the price a bit). It's piss easy running emu stuff on it.

Post by **glossy** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 11:59 am

it'd be in great condition (he's not the kind of guy that would ever take a chance on something -- he probably sits in on foam and puts a dust cover over it when it's not in use), i'll pick it up off him on wednesday

thanks bros for your speedy and helpful advice

Post by **MaCaBr3** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 12:01 pm

It's not a question if it's worth, because it definately is, but you wanna ask yourself if you really need one.

I don't care if a xbox is new or second hand, if it's in a good condition for a decent price, I would buy one too, since the xbox is an awesome console to mod.

Post by **rep** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 12:25 pm

I dunno. I've seen sales locally where Xbox consoles with two controllers and Halo were $120. I think the rest of the games listed, except Burnout 3 are in the $19.99 price tier now.

Post by **Dekard** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 12:46 pm

I wouldn't do it.. the new xbox's and ps3's are supposedly coming out in December anyhow... wait until then.

Post by **Giraffe }{unter** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 2:57 pm

Get him to drop the price down to $150.00 it will be worth it. My buddy goes to Local pawn shops and buys Xboxs for about $100 - $150 with games and controllers.

If your pal needs the money he'll eventually come around, although even at $200 it's a good deal with the games. Burnout 3 pwnes.

If it's a version 1 Xbox, and you know someone who has the solderless mod you can unscrew his mod, pencil 1 "jumper" together and flash your original xbox BIOS and give it back. Now you have a modded Xbox for free

Post by **MaCaBr3** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 3:09 pm

Giraffe }{unter wrote:Get him to drop the price down to $150.00 it will be worth it. My buddy goes to Local pawn shops and buys Xboxs for about $100 - $150 with games and controllers.

If your pal needs the money he'll eventually come around, although even at $200 it's a good deal with the games. Burnout 3 pwnes.

If it's a version 1 Xbox, and you know someone who has the solderless mod you can unscrew his mod, pencil 1 "jumper" together and flash your original xbox BIOS and give it back. Now you have a modded Xbox for free

AUD$200 = USD$150 btw

Post by **PhoeniX** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 3:17 pm

Sounds like an ok deal; but maybe get him to drop it a bit, as that equals £82 and new xboxs are £99 now.

Also: it sounds like the modchip is a softmod, as propper mods aren't as easy to remove, softmods aren't very good and a friend of mines crashes all the time.

You would probably want to buy a propper one: http://www.teamxecuter.com/ the Xecuter 2.3b (2.6 I think they renamed it to) would be all you need.

Post by **Giraffe }{unter** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 4:25 pm

Them mod I am talking about is the one the spring contacts connect to the solder joints and can easily be removed. You use that to initially flash the Xbox BIOS with the modded BIOS of your choice and remove it.

It does not crash, or suffer from some of the usual problems like faulty solder joints, ruined traces, etc.

IMO it's the easiest and safest way to Mod your Xbox. Mine's been running this way for months no problems what-so -evar

Post by **PhoeniX** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 5:25 pm

Oh right; but theirs different kind of soft mods; I'm talking about the ones where you use hacked game saves to exploit the xbox.

Post by **losCHUNK** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 5:28 pm

well worth it if you got the spare dough

picked my second x box up for 40 quid with 2 pads and 3 games, was well chuffed

Post by **SOAPboy** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 6:35 pm

PhoeniX wrote:Sounds like an ok deal; but maybe get him to drop it a bit, as that equals £82 and new xboxs are £99 now.

Also: it sounds like the modchip is a softmod, as propper mods aren't as easy to remove, softmods aren't very good and a friend of mines crashes all the time.

You would probably want to buy a propper one: http://www.teamxecuter.com/ the Xecuter 2.3b (2.6 I think they renamed it to) would be all you need.

Softmods are fine..

UDE, UDE2 and UXE are perfectly safe, and never crash..

Post by **+JuggerNaut+** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 6:40 pm

Dekard wrote:...and ps3's are supposedly coming out in December anyhow... wait until then.

nuh uh.

Post by **saturn** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 6:50 pm

I would get one, it's a great console

Post by **glossy** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 2:18 pm

excellent, thanks for your continued replies.

just curious, how much would i expect to pick up a controller for, is it worth shopping around for second-hand/cheaper controllers (or do they commonly suffer the usual abused gamepad syndrome of fucked up joysticks, sticky buttons etc.)? I don't mind cracking 'er open to solder a chip on, but should i maybe fork out more for a Xecuter (reading up on them now).

Also, how would I go about changing over the harddrive? Unless I can map network drives or something (i highly doubt this) it looks like more harddrive space will be needed (movies, copied games etc.). Thankfully i have a mate who's done the dashboard, softmods, etc. to his xbox so i might get him to lend me a hand if i need it...

thanks guys

Post by **Giraffe }{unter** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 3:47 pm

Changing the drive is cake 40 gig and above should be fine unless you plan on loading every game you have on the drive. The hardware part is the same as changing a computer drive.

You can download "Slayer's EVOX installer" burn it to a cd-rw or DVD-R and boot from it, follow the prompts and in about 3 minutes you have a nicely partitioned drive with a few dahsboards to choose from, including the xbox media center. this is all you need to setup your drive, once finished you will have everything needed for ftp and running your newly modded xbox.

it also comes with DVD2Xbox which allows you to store those xbox games you own on the hard drive in about 4 button presses :icon26: no need to carry around the discs anymore.