Hardwares to Play Your Video Game Backups

Spoofee

Spoofee

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Easybuy2000 is selling some equipment to make your video game play backup copies of your games.

Gameboy Advance - X-Rom 512mb - $139
PS2 - Magic V Chip - $39
Xbox - X-Chip - $70

You can get detailed help on their forum or just by contacting their customer support.
 
I have a cart for my GBA and it works absolutely great. You can even watch about 30 min. of a video on a 256Mb card. This one is 512Mb which is really great. It's worth it and risk free.

Modding your PS2 or XBOX is not recommended if you don't know how to solder very small pinhead sized contacts. Have a professional do that for you.
 
These devices are not "risk free" as a previous post said. They are illegal under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act in the USA.

That being said, the risk is small. Myself, I've got a modchip in my PS2, Xbox, and recently got the X-Rom. The Xbox chip and X-Rom both came from Easybuy2000.com and I recommend them pretty highly. I have heard stories of some people ordering from them and it taking a long time to ship, but no such thing has ever happened to me. Even the Matrix chip for my Xbox (which they no longer sell) was backordered when I placed my order and I had it within a week.

As for soldering, for a PS2 chip it is required unless you want to fiddle with swapping discs back and forth and other such stuff. For the Xbox, though, there is the Chameleon chip which is no-solder... and the chips that do require soldering on the Xbox are easy to do. For the PS2... even a professional will have a hard time with them. I had mine installed by a friend who works on surface mount components all the time and when he was done he remarked that he can't believe they sell those chips claiming that even skilled solderers can do it.

If you pop a modchip into your Xbox, running backups is the least of the benefits you will get from it. There is LOADS of software on the net for modded Xboxes that let them do all sorts of useful things. My favorite is Xbox Media Center which allows you to play videos of pretty much any type streamed over your LAN from a PC. If you've got the HD pack for the Xbox and an HDTV, it will play them back in HDTV modes as well. A modded Xbox is the best media playing device flat out. Other devices are struggling with playing Divx or WM9 on standalones... forget them, they're more expensive and don't do nearly as much. The list of formats XMC supports is ridiculous and growing often.

Anyhow, if you decide to get any of these devices for any of your devices... educate yourself about them first! You can easily get yourself banned from Xbox Live with a modchip, and you can easily fry your PS2 with a bad modchip install. The X-Rom is pretty foolproof, don't see how it could really ruin anything, worst that could happen there is you might lose your savegames.

OtakuCODE
 
they are not illegal under the DMCA unless you use them to circumvent copyright protection schemes. simply installing the chip voids your warranty but is not illegal
 
Two of my friends have modded his PS2 with great success... but the soldering should be done by a pro as OtakuCODE said... those connections are TOO DAMN tiny for anyone but a pro... I tried to mod my PS1 and fried it...

OtakuCODE, I really want to mod the XBOX for all the reasons you mentioned... I've seen screens of the Media Desktop you can get for the XBOX and I started drooling. I would really appreciate your advice on the mod though... EasyBuy didn't seem to have the matrix or chameleon, just the
X-chip... which, as you said, I can get with the adaptor so it is solderless (right?). Is that a good MOD? I mean, is it the kind of mod that will allow me to install all the cool features you talked about? and do you think it is a fair price ($65)? Also, I would like to get XBOX Live eventually, but I'm worried about the mod being detected, or screwing up the on-line gaming. if it's not a back-up game, will xbox live work then?

Thanks for all your help... I know that was a lot of questions.

SRok
 
I don't have any experience with the X-Chip... actually, checking their website it seems that the chip hasn't been released yet so I suppose NOBODY has experience with it ;) I am supposing, however, that it will be very similar to the Matrix and Chameleon mods which are all the same type of mod. There are two types of mods for the Xbox. The no-solder ones and the ones you have to solder do not differe merely in how they connect but also where. If you wish to get Live, all modchips have a method to turn them off temporarily so you will not have any problems as long as you remember to turn them off before you launch Live. On the Matrix, you just hit eject once an original game is inserted and the LED on the front of the Xbox turns from green to orange to let you know that it is disabled and it's OK to get on Live.

I am sure the X-Chip will allow you to run XMC and all the software you've seen. The only thing these modchips do, really, is allow you to run code that has not been "signed" by Microsoft. $65 seems quite reasonable, I believe my Matrix was about that much when I bought it and I think it has been well worth it.

And about the legality, head88316, if only the DMCA were that nice. The DMCA is an extremely broad and vague law that makes illegal anything that *CAN* be used to circumvent copyright protection. This is why the deCSS code was such a big deal when all people wanted to do was play some movies on Linux. There was never any allegation that the creators or anyone using it was making illegal copies of movies, they simply cited that they put a protection there and deCSS could be used to undo it. In the StreamBoxVCR vs Sonic Blue case, they were determined to be violating the DMCA simply because they ignored *ONE BIT* that said "this is copyrighted". Under the DMCA, such an act is illegal. The modchip itself is illegal under the DMCA, purchasing it is illegal under the DMCA, installing it is illegal under the DMCA (oh yeah and of course it voids the warranty, I should have mentioned that...), etc...

The DMCA is Bad Law and will be struck down by the Supreme Court once someone has the money and cahones to take it that far. Streambox should have taken their case that far years ago since they had an iron clad argument behind them, but they wussed out and gave in and subsequently died a slow death after their main product became useless.

But like I said before, risk is small. If they want to take someone down, they will go after easybuy2000.com itself (and believe me, I am certain it is in the works since they have started producing these chips themselves, they will go the way of liksang.com and other businesses that did the same thing).

OtakuCODE
 
Easybuy is in canada & customs sometimes holds orders up which can delay shipping.
 
I've heard that to copy a XBOX game I need to hook the XBOX up to my computer...not sure if I want to go through that....isn't there some kind of XBOX ripping software? Thanks for your help!
 
for xbox information go to xbox-scene.

If you need a backup then you need to burn in your PC. If you just want to keep your original safe, you can add a bigger hard drive to your xbox and copy the game to it.
 
xbox games are in xfat format which you can't read directly. Much easier to fetch them from usenet.
 
Man, I know nothing about that stuff. Thanks for your time and advice!
 
Modding your xbox to FTP takes a lot of time & even to put games on a HD you still need the game.

The GC can play games streamed from your computer. All it needs is Phantasy Star & a BBA. There is a working emulator for it called the Dolphin.
 
I really wish people didn't post about things they don't know about. There is no working emulator for the Gamecube. "Dolphin" was a hoax that came out right about the same time the GC hit the stores. Streaming GC games from the PC to the GC is very difficult compared to what is done with other consoles. In my opinion, its not even worth the effort for any reason.

I was going to discuss what you do to rip an Xbox game, but we really should NOT discuss this here. Already things have been said in this thread that I suspect could get this message board shut down if the "right" people were reading. If you want to know about modding and such, go to a modding website.

OtakuCODE
 
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