DIY: Hack the Xbox

By Steve Kovsky, Special to CNET.com on 20 September 2004
DIY: Hack the Xbox

You may have an Xbox, but you probably don't know what all it can do. Locked away inside is the power of a PC. We'll show you how to let it out.

Tip 1: Create custom soundtracks
Tip 2: Xbox modifications
Tip 3: Exercise your parental controls

Tip 1: Create custom soundtracks

It's amazing how great music can enhance any game, particularly action games. As the movie industry has known for about a century, music can make a bad video experience seem a lot better. Xbox is the only video game device that lets you add your own custom soundtracks to your favourite games. Here's how:

  • Insert an audio CD into the Xbox optical drive.
  • Access the Music menu from the Xbox dashboard display.
  • Select Music > Audio CD > Copy, then choose the Copy menu.
  • Select the tracks you want, using Play or Pause commands to audition songs.
  • Choose Copy, and Xbox will store the songs on the hard disk. Then insert your game disc and load the songs using the game's setup menu.

Not all Xbox games support the custom soundtrack features, but many of the most popular ones do.

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Tip 2: Xbox modifications

This secret is potentially dangerous and is provided for informational purposes only. In other words, don't do this at home. Some eager gaming hackers out there wanted to get more out of the Xbox, so they developed mod chips. Here are a few of the things they promise to let one do on one's Xbox:

  • Play copied and imported games that an unmodified Xbox won't allow.
  • Upload games into the system and save them locally on your hard drive.
  • Replace your Xbox hard drive with a bigger one.
  • Turn your Xbox into a PC and even write your own programs for it.
  • Turn your Xbox into a versatile media player, with support for DVDs, VCDs, MP3s, and more.
  • Emulate other game consoles, such as Game Boy Advance, Game Boy, NES, SNES, Atari, Genesis, and so on.

Mod chips cost up to AU$120. Installing one of these chips would void your warranty while the legality of fitting a chip under Australian law is murky.

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Tip 3: Exercise your parental controls

Violence, sexuality, and all-around bad behaviour abound in many Xbox games. That can be fun for adults but scary for children. Here's how to activate built-in parental control features.

  1. Turn on the Xbox console without a disc in the disc tray.
  2. From the dashboard display, choose Settings > Parental Controls.
  3. Select Pass Code and press buttons on the controller in any sequence. Remember what buttons you pressed and the order in which you pressed them.
  4. Select Games and choose the maximum rating level you want to allow.

Xbox will also allow you to set maximum rating levels for DVD movies.

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Steve Kovsky Submitted by:
Steve Kovsky
Author, High-Tech Toys for Your TV

Obsessive gadget freak Steve Kovsky has almost no impulse control when it comes to electronics. Steve now lives at an undisclosed address so laden with tech toys, it puts the Bat Cave to shame. He's a 20-year veteran tech reporter, a contributing editor for ZDNet AnchorDesk, and a regular technology commentator on KFWB radio in Los Angeles and Fox TV in San Diego. He has also written High-Tech Toys for Your TV and Absolute Beginner's Guide to Windows XP Media Center.

Keep up to date with the latest games news, reviews and features by signing up to CNET.com.au's free Games Spotlight weekly newsletter. Sign up now!

Topics: tips, mod chip, modification, soundtrack, xbox, controls, custom, parental

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Comments (35)

  • Dominator commented on 15/04/2009 18:14

    First off this guy is a tool. "How to hack a Xbox. Yay normal system features and woo mod chips." No, really it's called the internet you may have heard of it, it's on computers now! Anyone who would buy any gaming console knows about all this already.

    Now to deal with this:

    "You know, Technically, all software really is is a series of 1s and 0s, which in turn, is a number, and guess what? It is illegal to copyright numbers( at least in the us), meaning that the game producers are breaking the law, not the game pirates. We humans live in a backwards world, don't we?"

    The studio and/or microsoft does not own a copyright on the "code" you dip. They own the copyright to their ideas. Just like a patent works for devices, they don't own the patent on the materials just the idea. You can't patent lead solder because you made a computer with it, but you can patent the computer.

    Also stop trying to justify ripping off a game/music/anything else. At the end of the day it is against the law.

  • bum_hole123 commented on 02/01/2009 14:47

    xbox live is gay

  • jus e fin google it!!!1! commented on 06/07/2008 13:28

    modchips=lame/crap
    i just soft modded my xbox without even opening it up for free. It could do anything an xbox modded with a chip can do and its almost impossible to destroy the xbox this way!
    JFGI!!!!

  • Skull0Inc commented on 19/04/2008 13:10

    *POWER* TO THE PEOPLE!

  • Iwant T O MODDDDDDDDDD commented on 29/01/2008 13:35

    Umm... im tired of getting my **** kicked on Xbox live and I.. dont want to spend my money on something to use on the Xbox any advice pls message back-

  • xboxxboxxbox commented on 29/01/2008 00:17

    why is it so hard to use punctuation?

  • shaft commented on 30/12/2007 18:23

    F@&K bill gates, F%@K steve allen, and F@%K microsoft as a corporation. 'nuff said

  • Guest Dood commented on 27/12/2007 23:11

    Yeah.. I had this modded x-box right? and liek.. I just killed everybody in my school with it. So don't do it, it's real dangerous.

  • Guest2007 commented on 17/12/2007 00:47

    Guns!?! How can you possibly compare owning a gun to modding an xbox? I reckon too many 1st person shoot em' ups for you. Thank god Australia's gun laws keep guns innaccessible and protect us from freaks like you mowing us down in shopping centres.

  • DylTharoker commented on 02/10/2007 20:35

    is there a way of making my external hardrive save games. lol i bought my xbox yesterday and i got external hardrive didnt realize that i couldnt save games on it???

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