Newbie question on Flashing 2.6CE BIOS

[vincentn2k2]

I have a v1.6 xbox with a 2.6CE (1MB Flash) installed. I've read in the forum that the 2.6CE comes with default 3.0.1 on bank 1 and 3.0.3 on bank 2. What I'd like to do is to load either "Evox M8plus_16.bin" or "x2_5035_v16plus_512k.bin" on bank 1 and eventually try to put the original 3.0.1 onto bank 2 for backup purposes (in case I'd like to go back to original BIOS). I've ordered the 2.6 Programmer already and was wondering whether it's:

1. Advisable to do the above or not (have bank 2 with 3.0.1 and bank 1 with hacked BIOS)
2. To put the hacked BIOS on:
- A: the "x2_5035_v16plus_512k.bin" is 512KB in size so I guess that X2 BIOS Manager will automatically fill up the entire bank 1 with the file
- B: the "Evox M8plus_16.bin" is 256KB in size so do I have to "doubled" the file before putting it onto the Flash (the procedure is "type Evox M8plus_16.bin >> Evox M8plus_16.bin")
3. I'm planning to do the above 2 processes using the Programmer.

Assuming that it's OK for me to fill bank 1 and bank 2 with different BIOS as mentioned above, would it be avisable to have XBMC to work on bank 2? That is load a hacked BIOS (one of the mentioned above BIOSes) and play around with the default.xbe file to have the BIOS load the appropriate dashboard.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

 

[Dreamreaper]

Not sure what you are trying to achieve here mate.

Yes you can stick any bios you want on bank 1+2, so long as they are 512, which X2BM wil do for you.

As far as booting different dashes use the X2 ini to achieve that.

 

[Fantmx]

Make a 1 meg bios with 5035 v16Plus in slots 1 and 2, and flashbios 3.01 in slots 3 and 4 in X2 Bios Manager. Then, if you use Avalaunch as your dashboard (I'm sure others can do this as well) you can set it up so that holding different buttons while booting up will cause different software to be booted. That way you can avoid dealing with M8, as it is a bad bois anyway.

 

[vincentn2k2]

Thanks for the advice from both of you. My 2.6CE on the outside of the box says 1MB Flash. I'm guessing that this is the TOTAL amount of Flash that's on the chip. That is (256+256) = Bank1 and (256+256) = Bank2. If this is true then I'll have to make a 512KB X2_5035 bios file instead of 1MB right? Similarly, I'll have to make a 512KB X2_3-0-1 Cromwell bios and load that onto bank 2. This way, I can use the external switch to choose which bios I'd like to load.

I would also love to find out how I can go about modifying things so that by pressing different combination of buttons, I can load different stuff. Please point me to the tutorial of how to go about doing it. Thanks.

 

[Fantmx]

5035 is already 512k. But, you are correct that you will have to resize Flashbios.

This is taken from the Avalaunch manual, which can be found HERE

9) Quick start:
Quick start basically enables you to launch any application just while your Xbox is booting up by holding a button.
<righttrigger enabled="1">
<path>
F:\Games\Connect4\
</path>
<filename>
default.xbe
</filename>
</righttrigger>
As you can see in the example, I enabled it and pointed it all to the correct place. Now when I hold down the right trigger while booting; it will immediately go into Connect4 without needing to do anything within Avalaunch, or even seeing it.