Talk:Xbox Linux USB HOWTO

From Xbox-Linux

I've noticed one possibility missing for the usb to xbox connector. Would it be possible to remove the female end of the inline release cable and replace with a type A female USB connector? With this application you could keep it plugged into an alternate controller port and insert a usb stick directly, or a hub, keyboard, etc. - Tsyn

Macintosh and XBOX

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience connecting the XBOX controller via USB to a Mac, running OSX. (Specifically I have an iBook G4.) With an XBOX memory card in the controller, will that card be accessible, writeable, in the OSX interface? Do all the buttons, analog controls, d-pad, etc. work?

Also, what's the story on networking between the XBOX and OSX? simply connecting a standard network cable between them seems to have no effect. Is it possible to write to the XBOX hard drive remotely, either for transferring music, game saves, or the Linux set-up files?

Thanks

Paul

REPLY: If you're connecting you XBox to Mac computer DIRECTLY without a hub, then you can't use a standard ethernet network cable: you need a so-called "cross-over" cable. Yes, if you can telnet (ssh?) into the XBox while it's running Linux (Xebian or Emergency Linux), you can view everything on the hard drive, etc from the command line.

   Another possibility seems to be to make a USB adapter that plugs into the xbox memory card slots.
 This should work since the memory card slots are nothing more than USB flash drives.
 Thus, why couldn't you plug some other USB device (USB keyboard, mouse, flash drive, etc) into the same plug?

Formatting Memory Sticks Questions

Q: Okay, Ive been looking everywhere on the internet, and I have to admit, im getting kind of fed up with it. The problem is, I really need to get my xbox working as a pc. I have a Lexar Jumpdrive Secure 512mb, and my xbox does reformat it when I hook it up though my usb adapter. I think that this problem that I am having is actually the same as some of these other posts, but it has yet to be answered effectivly. The drive is formatted to FATX, and now when I put it into my computer, it is not recognized as a drive, but I am able to locate it under the device manager. I tried what sombody else here said, and tried clicking update drivers, Nothing. It just says that it can't find any drivers that are older or somthing of that nature. So either I repatetion it, and have to go and reformat it again on my xbox, or I try to use the ozxmemory, which for some sweet reason, doesn't have the option for a 512mb drive. But no worries, because this is where I think a lot of people are getting lost at. The computer MUST recognize it, or the ozxmemory program doesnt have it in the list, but in order to make it be find-able then we have to take it out of FaTX format, and then it tells us that it has no fatx format on it. Wow. Annoying. Okay, hope your bearing with me here, and not taken away by A.D.D. or boredom. I am trying this on Windows XP and I think that if this question could get a somewhat informative answer, then it would help a huge sum of people who possibly have this same question. What do I do to get the mechinstaller on my jumpdrive, and still keep it in FATX format?

A: This question is "How can I write to a FATX device from my PC". The best solution is to get to grips with the Linux commands, cd, cp, ls, mkdir and mount, mkdir and use the Xebian 1.1.3 Basic Live iso in your computer. First use the Xbox to format the device to FATX. When you put the Xebian disk in your PC, type "24" as the boot option, as this includes the FATX drivers. Then login (user: root, password: xebian) and mount your windows harddisk and your usb drive. Then copy the files across with the cp -r command. You need a basic understanding of the Linux Bash commands listed here. Google "mount disk in linux".

If you want to use your USB flash drive on your PC as a FAT device again you can simply format the device by right-clicking on it in Windows 2000 or above.

Q: i have a question. i been lookin at this website lately and i saw that u could use memory sticks with xbox, but du u have to format ur memory stick in a especial way, please help i have a jumpdrive secure 128mb -anonymous edit

A1: Your Jumpdrive Secure is unlikely to work, due to the mechanism that Lexar installed to allow security (even if you don't enable it).

A2: My 128mb jumpdrive secure worked just fine. The security appears to be software based, not hardware. -anonymous user

Q: I have formatted my 128Mb Lexar Jumpdrive Secure on my Xbox and the Xbox identifies it as a memory card however now my computer doesnt identify it as a drive just as a usb mass storage device. I was trying to put on the mechinstall images with ozxmemory however it doesnt allow me to write to stick, can someone please tell me how to get the mech image files on my usb drive with my situation. -anonymous

A1: It shouldn't matter that you can't access your usb drive under Windows: just run the ozxmemory program. If ozxmemory still won't write to your drive, try formatting in under Windows (back to FAT), then put it back in the XBox (reformats it to FATX), and try again.

A2: A usb drive is always a mass storage device... -anonymous user

Q: Hope it's okay to post question here. Anyway; I am in the same boat as the person above, but I will go in to detail. I also have a Lexar JumpDrive Secure (256MB) and am having difficulty. When I insert it into the xbox, the xbox gives me the appropriate message telling me it needs to format and does so. I then plug into my PC and it does recognize new hardware, but it can't assign a drive letter. When I attempt to OzX it requires me to choose a drive (by letter) to write the file to. I cannot select the jump drive since it is not listed in the drop down. I then initialize the Jump Drive and give it a letter designation. I can now choose this drive from teh OzX dropdown, but it is listed as not containing FATX and will not allow me to write to it. I have found no information on how to get Windows to recognize FATX, what am I missing?

Q: I'm having the same problem as this guy, the xbox recognized my JumpDrive 512MB and worked perfectly for the soft-mod but now I can't get my windows PC to recognize it anymore. If you have any suggestions/solutions I would be very thankful.. I'd like to avoid purchasing another one and I've no need for a 512mb xbox memory card.. --O

A: Actually, you question is coming from the opposite angle.
Windows Instructions: First off, are you using Windows ME or XP? Win 98 SE is okay too, but you'd have to download a driver first to support USB Mass Storage Devices. Now, assuming you are using Win Me or XP, just plug in your mem stick to your computer: Windows is unlikely to do anything on its own, so go to My Computer and attempt to open the drive. Windows will ask if you want to format the disk, and you should tell it YES. Windows should format the drive (more than likely to FAT32 a.k.a. VFAT) and you should be good to go.
Linux Instructions: the general idea should be available at this website (http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/Flash-Memory-HOWTO.html#partition).

A2: In regards to putting a MaxDrive Xbox memory card into your computer, which is the Action Replay formatted version of a usb memory key or the format that xbox will accept, you need to "update driver" in windows device manager in order to use the memory card as a PC usb key again. -dzmoore(at)gmail(dot)com

Q:What if i used an xbox memory card to make a female usb slot(by taking out the memory inside and soldering in the female slot) and attached a male usb end to the remaining memory? it all works fine, i can use it with the AR software, but it's a pain to keep "burrowing" files into a previous gamesave which is the only way to transfer non-gamesave files to the memory card, will the ozxmemory card reader allow me to transfer files other than gamesaves to the memory card? If so, do i need the AR drivers for the memory card to be able to access the card from OZX? any input would be appreciated, as ftp'ing to the xbox to transfer files can be a pain when at a friend's house that has a neat file, but no ethernet card! ;)

Explanation and a Little Theory:

A very relevent page is USB Storage to XBox memory Card How To (http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/USB_Storage_To_Xbox_Memory_Card_HOWTO)

Lets get one thing straight here XBox uses FatX and the PC uses Fat16 or Fat32. if an xbox see's a memory stick thats not in FATX it formats it if the Pc see's a memory stick with fatX it formats it. At least with the standard driver it does ;)

The linked article explains very well how to read an xbox formated card I don't know a way of reading anything other than fatx on an xbox but it can be read on the Pc you just need a driver for it. Thanks to the creaters of the action replay and similar devices, there are drivers. If you go to Datels website and look around for updated action replay drivers. you should be able to download the software. ok but this will not support your device! lets pause to talk about usb a little each usb device has a product code pid and a vid vender id number (its what identifys the device to the system) if you open the inf file for an action replay driver you will see a number of them under devices. Your device isnt listed so what you need is to find the vid and pid of your device. this is quite easy. you need USBVIEW (http://www.usbman.com/WebDrivers/USBview/USBVIEW.EXE) this will identify the device when plugged in. well let you traverse the usb tree to the unknown device and give you the pid and vid numbers. anyway armed with this information edit the inf file for the action replay i just copied and pasted the first line of devices and changed the 4 digit pid and 4 digit vid numbers.

now you can tell xp about this driver and this time hopefully when you point xp where this inf file is it will install the actionreplay driver for this device. you should then be able to use the action replay software to copy software to and from the pc.

I am kind of at a halfway stage with this game since what I have done so far is convert an xbox controller to a standard usb fitting. XP recognises this as a microsoft usb hub. you need additional drivers for the joystick functionality. I have used this pid vid technique to get a driver to read a standard xbox memory card plugged into an xbox controller (usb hub). where your going to be a bit different is that the usb stick will probably have a driver already on your pc in which case you will have to get it to update its driver with your modified driver inf from the action replay. hopefully it will then be recognised. in theory if you can identify the inf file your pc is using to identify the driver for your usb stick. then you should be able to remove the vid and pid from the inf file so its not recognised by the standard driver and uses your modified one instead. as for the macintosh in principle this should also apply however is there an xbox action replay or similar for the MAC if the answer is no then you will have to use a pc.

PC users might try this out boot the live xebian Cd and see if it can recognise a usb mass storage device with fatx. It might not coz I think that xebian live comes with both version 2.4 and 2.6 of the linux kernal and boots using 2.4 for the xbox and 2.6 for the pc unfortunately i don't think there is fatx support built in to the 2.6 kernel version.

someone really needs to build an updated xebian build with either a 2.6 core for the xbox with xfat built in or make a version of xebian that will boot the 2.4 kernal on the pc.

sorry this is a bit rough its all from the top of my head while i am waiting for someone hope it helps.

USB TV Tuner

Q. Would it be possible to use a USB 1.1 TV tuner to add recording capabilities to the Xbox?

um maybe. In theory if there is a device driver for your device already in linux then you should be able to use it in xebian. You might even be able to adapt an existing driver. there are tv card drivers for linux i just don't know about usb ones. I was reading about usb wireless drivers the other day and i heard about wrappers to make standard windows drivers work maybe this could be applied to a usb tv card I don't know but its worth looking.