Chip Installed, BIOS Flashed. Now.. connect Xbox & PC via Crossover and on from there
Ok, so this is a question I had when I reached this stage and I thought i'd post up some next steps for those who are new to the game (like me
)
The next logical step is to install your chosen dashboard (dash). This doesn't come with the X2 BIOS (although you can still load the default MS dash by default).
Now, I presumed that I could simply FTP into the box and transfer my chosen dash. No. There is no FTP server included with the BIOS (there used to be but not anymore). So first things first...
1. Setting up FTP to the xbox.
The only way to get an FTP server setup at this point is to burn a dash onto CD and boot the xbox from it. Luckily a friend of mine had a copy of Evox on disc so I just used that, if you don't have such a friend you're going to need to burn a copy.
Stick the disc into the xbox and restart it, when it loads back up it will boot into the Evox dash. As we're running off a CD we can't change the IP for the FTP server, so you will have to work around it (i think by default it was running under 192.168.100.10).
Now, as you probably know there are a number of ways for connecting the xbox to your network. I use what appears to be a less popular method than most which is with a crossover cable. I have 2 cards in my PC, a wireless card which is connected (wirelessly) to a router, and an old LAN card which I used to use but now sits dormant...
2. Connecting the xbox to the PC via a crossover cable [2 x Network Cards].
This part is two fold really, firstly we need to connect the xbox and the pc to enable FTP, but also we really want to connect the xbox to the internet at some stage also. This can present a problem if you don't know anything about networking and subnets, etc; so i'll take it from the ground up.
Ok, i'll assume you have the crossover cable plugged into the xbox and the LAN card on your pc. If you open up your Network Connections panel in Windows (in XP go: Start > My Network Places > View Network Connections. In Vista go Start > Network > Manage Network Connections [i think - i'll verify that when i get home]). You should be looking at a screen showing your LAN/Wireless connections (plus any internet gateways etc you have setup). One of these will be your internet connection (wireless in my case) and the other will be for your xbox connection (feel free to rename this from Local Area Connection to Xbox if it makes your life easier).
Now, there are so many variations on how people setup their connections i'll just describe mine and hopefully you should be able to apply it to your own setup...
My router is setup on the following IP 192.168.10.1, my wireless card obtains an IP automatically via DHCP which today is 192.168.10.65. The third number (10) is effectively the router's 'subnet', dont worry too much about what this means, just understand that my wireless card (and all the other people in my flat that also connect to my router) must have this subnet as well.
Anyway. We now have to setup another subnet between the xbox and the LAN card, and as before I am limited because the IP on the evox dash is fixed at 192.168.100.10. This is fine, because this subnet (100) is different to that of the wireless network. The other LAN card cannot be on the same subnet as the wireless card, for reasons that are out of the scope of this thread..
If you are unlucky enough to have your wireless network on subnet 100, well then you have a problem. My advice would be to look for another dash which has a different FTP server as default, or reconfigure your wireless network on a different subnet (believe me the former is by far the easiest).
Ok, so what we have to do now is configure the LAN card which is connected to the xbox. Remember the xbox FTP server is 192.168.100.10, so the LAN card IP can be any number from 1 - 254 (except 10) on subnet 100. For example 192.168.100.1 or 192.168.100.99 or 192.168.100.254... you get the picture.
Now we should have connectivity between xbox and pc. You should now be able to connect to the xbox via FTP from your pc. As far as I can remember you should also now have telnet, filesharing and even remote desktop access too but I have never bothered to test any of these.
So, all things being well we can no FTP our chosen dash onto the hardrive of the xbox. The dash I use is called UnleashX; I tried lots of dash's and this one suited me best. I also downloaded a new skin for it called Project Mayhem III which looks like the XBMC skin - nice .
The X2 bios comes with a config file called X2config.xml, you can now FTP this into the E or F drive of the xbox (it was E for me (couldn't access F) I believe it depends on version). If you edit this with Notepad you will see a section that has 5 dashboards listed in order of preference, why there is 5 i dont know, perhaps somebody else can explain that. I simply edited the first one to point at the UnleashX dash i had just FTP'd.
Incidentally, I created a directory in the xbox C: drive called customdash and dropped the UnleashX directory in that. So the path I put into the X2config.xml read 'c:customdash\unleashx\unleashx.xbe'.
Voila, reboot the xbox (without the Evox CD) and we are into the new UnleashX dash....
Ok so the final step is to get the xbox onto the internet. This is a very simple step and simply involves going into the properties for your internet connection (the Wireless LAN in my case) and sharing the internet connection. If this trips you up, go to google and search for Windows Internet Connection Sharing (ICS).
I can't remember for XP bit in Vista this forces you to reset the IP on the LAN card to 192.168.0.1 - obviously you can leave this as is and then change the IP on your xbox so that it is in the same subnet (192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.254) remember - the xbox and the LAN card must both be on the same subnet; however if this subnet is already being used (by the wireless router for example) or you dont want to change the xbox for whatever reason then we must change the IP on the LAN card back to what it was. In Vista to do this we need to make the LAN card part of a 'Private' network (by default it is Public). If you don't make it Private you will not be able to change the IP. Again, this setting is in the properties of the LAN connection.
I hope this helps somebody save some time, as it took me a few days to do all this, which was quite frustrating as I want everything to work, like NOW!
Feel free to ask me any questions if I have been as clear as mud to you...
Ok, so this is a question I had when I reached this stage and I thought i'd post up some next steps for those who are new to the game (like me
)The next logical step is to install your chosen dashboard (dash). This doesn't come with the X2 BIOS (although you can still load the default MS dash by default).
Now, I presumed that I could simply FTP into the box and transfer my chosen dash. No. There is no FTP server included with the BIOS (there used to be but not anymore). So first things first...
1. Setting up FTP to the xbox.
The only way to get an FTP server setup at this point is to burn a dash onto CD and boot the xbox from it. Luckily a friend of mine had a copy of Evox on disc so I just used that, if you don't have such a friend you're going to need to burn a copy.
Stick the disc into the xbox and restart it, when it loads back up it will boot into the Evox dash. As we're running off a CD we can't change the IP for the FTP server, so you will have to work around it (i think by default it was running under 192.168.100.10).
Now, as you probably know there are a number of ways for connecting the xbox to your network. I use what appears to be a less popular method than most which is with a crossover cable. I have 2 cards in my PC, a wireless card which is connected (wirelessly) to a router, and an old LAN card which I used to use but now sits dormant...
2. Connecting the xbox to the PC via a crossover cable [2 x Network Cards].
This part is two fold really, firstly we need to connect the xbox and the pc to enable FTP, but also we really want to connect the xbox to the internet at some stage also. This can present a problem if you don't know anything about networking and subnets, etc; so i'll take it from the ground up.
Ok, i'll assume you have the crossover cable plugged into the xbox and the LAN card on your pc. If you open up your Network Connections panel in Windows (in XP go: Start > My Network Places > View Network Connections. In Vista go Start > Network > Manage Network Connections [i think - i'll verify that when i get home]). You should be looking at a screen showing your LAN/Wireless connections (plus any internet gateways etc you have setup). One of these will be your internet connection (wireless in my case) and the other will be for your xbox connection (feel free to rename this from Local Area Connection to Xbox if it makes your life easier).
Now, there are so many variations on how people setup their connections i'll just describe mine and hopefully you should be able to apply it to your own setup...
My router is setup on the following IP 192.168.10.1, my wireless card obtains an IP automatically via DHCP which today is 192.168.10.65. The third number (10) is effectively the router's 'subnet', dont worry too much about what this means, just understand that my wireless card (and all the other people in my flat that also connect to my router) must have this subnet as well.
Anyway. We now have to setup another subnet between the xbox and the LAN card, and as before I am limited because the IP on the evox dash is fixed at 192.168.100.10. This is fine, because this subnet (100) is different to that of the wireless network. The other LAN card cannot be on the same subnet as the wireless card, for reasons that are out of the scope of this thread..
If you are unlucky enough to have your wireless network on subnet 100, well then you have a problem. My advice would be to look for another dash which has a different FTP server as default, or reconfigure your wireless network on a different subnet (believe me the former is by far the easiest).
Ok, so what we have to do now is configure the LAN card which is connected to the xbox. Remember the xbox FTP server is 192.168.100.10, so the LAN card IP can be any number from 1 - 254 (except 10) on subnet 100. For example 192.168.100.1 or 192.168.100.99 or 192.168.100.254... you get the picture.
Now we should have connectivity between xbox and pc. You should now be able to connect to the xbox via FTP from your pc. As far as I can remember you should also now have telnet, filesharing and even remote desktop access too but I have never bothered to test any of these.
So, all things being well we can no FTP our chosen dash onto the hardrive of the xbox. The dash I use is called UnleashX; I tried lots of dash's and this one suited me best. I also downloaded a new skin for it called Project Mayhem III which looks like the XBMC skin - nice
.The X2 bios comes with a config file called X2config.xml, you can now FTP this into the E or F drive of the xbox (it was E for me (couldn't access F) I believe it depends on version). If you edit this with Notepad you will see a section that has 5 dashboards listed in order of preference, why there is 5 i dont know, perhaps somebody else can explain that. I simply edited the first one to point at the UnleashX dash i had just FTP'd.
Incidentally, I created a directory in the xbox C: drive called customdash and dropped the UnleashX directory in that. So the path I put into the X2config.xml read 'c:customdash\unleashx\unleashx.xbe'.
Voila, reboot the xbox (without the Evox CD) and we are into the new UnleashX dash....
Ok so the final step is to get the xbox onto the internet. This is a very simple step and simply involves going into the properties for your internet connection (the Wireless LAN in my case) and sharing the internet connection. If this trips you up, go to google and search for Windows Internet Connection Sharing (ICS).
I can't remember for XP bit in Vista this forces you to reset the IP on the LAN card to 192.168.0.1 - obviously you can leave this as is and then change the IP on your xbox so that it is in the same subnet (192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.254) remember - the xbox and the LAN card must both be on the same subnet; however if this subnet is already being used (by the wireless router for example) or you dont want to change the xbox for whatever reason then we must change the IP on the LAN card back to what it was. In Vista to do this we need to make the LAN card part of a 'Private' network (by default it is Public). If you don't make it Private you will not be able to change the IP. Again, this setting is in the properties of the LAN connection.
I hope this helps somebody save some time, as it took me a few days to do all this, which was quite frustrating as I want everything to work, like NOW!
Feel free to ask me any questions if I have been as clear as mud to you...
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