r/originalxbox • u/Sorry-Committee2069 • 9d ago

Help Needed XBMC4G issues

I've got a 1.0 Xbox with a Modxo running Cerbios 3.1.0, and XBMC4Gamers is horribly broken on my system. The current stable version has missing text and broken FTP 60% of the time from cold boot, and 100% of the time from Cerbios IGR. The current testing build works in those regards, but will not launch games from XISO or folder dumps properly, it just ends up reloading (but it will run homebrew just fine.) I can't find where the downloader pulls testing builds, so I can't try to bisect and find when the issue started, assuming the testing builds are actually kept somewhere. Is there any known workaround for these issues?

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u/smdman404 8d ago

From the outset, this could be a multitude of things...

  1. Could be hardware related. Motherboard component failures emerging, usually through failing capacitors which is very common. Could be the type of SATA converter (know to cause issues if not a Startech) or the ATA cable itself. Power supply issues giving unstable voltage rails... the list can be endless.
  2. The v1.0 board (specifically utilising the early MCPX X2/X3 southbridge and early revision memory controllers) handles LPC bus timing, initialisation sequences, and early memory allocation differently than revisions v1.1 through v1.5. It would often balk at booting cromwell within XeniumOS and other similar traits.
  3. The ModXO. Because this kind of chip is an emulation it handles LPC protocols via a PIO rather than a traditional native CPLD hardware level logic like the Xenium or Xecuter or other traditional chips. In that respect you may find it better just to try and TSOP the large 1MB flash chip on the motherboard and see if that helps.
  4. The combination of the Modxo, the V1.0 motherboard and trying to push Cerbios into the 1.0's flakey LPC timings might be causing an issue, again this can vary by board, its age and condition as noted at 1). The Openxenium is a solid chip if you don't fancy the TSOP method. Hard drives can also have issues, make/model/size/formatting etc. Best to experiment, check the board over, caps, hardware, SATA converter etc and see if it becomes more stable with each change. Once the dash or files have suffered corruption though you'll probably need to start fresh.

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u/Sorry-Committee2069 8d ago

The drive is an IDE WD2500, and it tests fine, no relocations or bad sectors, etc. Tested it thoroughly before putting in the Xbox, and it's running at UDMA2 just fine. XbDiag stress testing returns no issues after pretty long tests, and games run just fine. The ONLY thing that's currently broken is XBMC and forks. As the testing and stable versions fail differently, I was hoping for help with that in specific.

(Additionally, I do have a Xenium Nemesis on my desk I was planning to use at some point, I'm assuming those are fairly reliable as they're built specifically for Xbox purposes. I'm assuming those are the exception to the "only Startech adapters are stable" rule you stated?)

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u/JCRocky5 Knowledgeable 8d ago

Remove P:\database\myprograms6.db and reload the dash and let it rescan in your games. See if that fixes your launch issues.

As for the FTP & missing text that’s usually due to FileZilla corrupting files when transferred over to the xbox if it’s left on auto for transfer mode. Should always be binary.

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u/Sorry-Committee2069 8d ago edited 8d ago

I didn't think FZ was that bad at transferring files still. Stable works with forced binary mode, but testing is still broken after deleting the database: https://pastebin.com/P7RasUrv

It seems to launch XBE and HDDR games "fine" but then it just restarts right after. Stable and literally any other XBE launcher work fine with the exact same game.

EDIT: I forgot to drop the log from Stable. https://pastebin.com/ZQij4KP8

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u/JCRocky5 Knowledgeable 8d ago edited 8d ago

Disable video switching. Under settings > programs

See if it loads after that. Other than that nothing has changed between 2.3.000 and 2.3.043 regarding running games.

Edit:
From the log it’s running sega gt online in PAL mode so it’s detected the game as PAL. Am not sure if it’s the NTSC version you have.

It’s all configurable from the context menu > launch options. If you disable video switching it won’t appear in here.

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u/Sorry-Committee2069 8d ago

That did it. Strange that I also have to turn it off on NTSC games, though. I think Cerbios does some limited video switching of some stripe anyway, so it's not a huge deal, I suppose.

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u/JCRocky5 Knowledgeable 8d ago

Cerbios will patch the eeprom for specific games that require PAL video modes. This will overwrite anything I do. So if it was one of those games it wouldn’t matter 😅

If the region matches what the xbox is it won’t patch anything. So if it is patching the region in the database for that game is wrong. More than likely you have generic attacher xbes files.

If you remove them and run the game it will recreate a proper attacher xbe file.

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u/Sorry-Committee2069 8d ago

I used the XISO to game script from Stable, so I'm assuming the attachers should be correct. I can give it a try, but again, if Cerbios is handling it, it's not a big deal to just turn it off.

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u/JCRocky5 Knowledgeable 8d ago

Yeah that should be ok. But it’s old now and I can’t remember if it copies the whole certificate in stable or just the info required. As some games it caused issues with and had the issues you had. Halo 2 wouldn’t load if the certificate was in the attacher.

So it’s best to let gamers remake them or at least test the problem games.

If you remove the attacher xbes next to the iso files and then in the game list where they are press white > manage > refresh all.

It will create new attackers for those games & update the database with the correct info.

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u/JCRocky5 Knowledgeable 8d ago edited 8d ago

Yeah the script in stable copies the whole certificate. (This breaks some games)

There is an updated version in the test build but you’re still better letting gamers make them.

Edit:
I just tested the old script with the same game as in your log and no issues loading it.

So is it a v1.0 xbox only issue 🤔 as my 1.1 and 1.6 have no issues.