v 1.6b complicated situation

[roninva]

I just installed a 3 ce chip in a v1.6b xbox. I fiddled with the dip switches, and eventually got a black screen while booting from off,on,off,off,off. I've tried starting with off,on,off,off,off and switching to on,on,off,off,off. No luck.The 5th switch has always been off, so this means it's possible that I flashed over the one working bios(should be v3.03) that I had in bank 5678, right? I have never seen the boot screen. Can I have a friend reflash it on his earlier than v1.6b xbox? BTW, I have not loaded any third party bios, I'm just trying to get to the preloaded one. Thanks!

 

[islander223]

Check your install first because if you haven't flashed a X3 bios yet, then flashbios 3.03 on banks 5-8 is still there.

 

[roninva]

Everything lights up

Thanks for the quick response! The install seems to be good due to the fact that I can vouch for all the lights on the remote switch panel (except for maybe the Lan activity light, since I have not connected it to a Lan yet). They all seem to be working as they should, and it's not FRAGging. ¿Does anyone have an idea which pins/ situations would lead to this specific problem? (see original post) ¿Is it definitely impossible to have rewritten the flash bios based on what I've done so far? Thanks for any help!

 

[roninva]

I'll give that a shot

Great info, thanks. I'll try that tonight, and see if that does it.

 

[rockclimber]

Take the top off and remove the harddrive and dvd rom. power up and make sure that you have two blue leds lit up on the chip. There should also be a red or green led.(red = protect off, green= protect on )
If 3.3 volts led is off check soldering on pins 9 and 15.
If 5 volts led is off check the extra red wire that you soldered to the top of the motherboard.
If you never got a flashbios screen up then you can't have deleted your flashbios on 5678. Moving the switches after powering on will cause no harm.

 

[toxickiwi]

hey there fellow X3 fans,
If you guys all say the linux based flash BIOS is 1mb and is factory flashed to banks5 6 7 and 8, Then what is the backup flash 3.0.3 256kb bios that I always see when I boot the console with power and eject pressed at same time. As far as I've always understood, it's the same 256kb linux based flash bios thats used to initially flash the chip and it is stored in the seperate backup bios memory chip. It's NOT stored as part of the 2mb bios flash memory. If you check the size of the 3.0.3 bios, it's not 1mb but 256kb.

Check this out guys as I'm sure I'm correct.

 

[rockclimber]

Yes, the cromwell flashbios 3.01 and 3.03 are 256K.
The backup bios is stored in it's own 256k area on the chip. The cromwell bios on the 1mb switch settings only use the first 256k of the 1mb bank, but you need to have it set to that setting to flash with an x3 bios.