JTAG an Xbox 360: Writing Custom NAND [Part 5]

Welcome to part 5 of my JTAG tutorial! Last time I showed you guys how to wire up the JTAG mod, now we're going to exploit the software =)

First thing you need to do is hook up your Xbox 360 to your computer again via the NAND cable you created in part 2.

 

 Download the following program, Auto-Xbins, in order to connect to the xbins FTP. This FTP contains all sorts of useful Xbox software!

Download Auto-Xbins

Run the program and navigate to and download the Xell image for your particular motherboard. For the XENON board that I have, it's called:

xenon_1921_hack_20090911.rar

Unrar the file, rename the new file to xell.bin, and place it in your nandpro folder you used back in step 3. Shift + right-click on the nandpo folder and hit:

Open command window here

This should look familiar!  Type the following command to write the xell.bin file to your board:

nandpro lpt: -r16 xell.bin

It should go through a very similar process that it did before when reading the NAND, only this will only take a few minutes!

When it's finished, unplug your Xbox 360 from the computer and hook it up to your TV.

When we turn the console on, it will display a blue screen with a bunch of information. It goes by pretty fast, so grab a digital camera so you can snap a picture of your screen for later use.

Open up notepad, or some other text editor, and type out the combined fuseset 04 and 06. This is your CPU key. So to get my CPU key, I will combine lines 4 and 6,  and my resulting CPU key is:

e75c8f9818e13e5c48a783745f81399c

Make a backup or two of this - as it will be needed for future updates! Download the program, Jtag Tool, from the link below. This will be used to create our modded dashboard!

Download Jtag Tool

Install the program and let it update. Run Jtag Tool and set your console type to the appropriate motherboard. See the image - I put XENON. Also, make sure Device type is set to USB at the top. Paste your CPU key into the long text field.

Click "Create FB". You should see the following screen.

It should then ask you to save the file. Save your freeBOOT.bin in your nandpro folder. Load up nandpro 1 last time and type the following command:

nandpro lpt: -w16 freeBOOT.bin

It should go through the now very familiar process of writing to your NAND. This will take awhile!

Once it's finished, you can now disconnect your Xbox and desolder the NAND cable - you won't need it anymore! Just store it away just in case you want to JTAG another Xbox 360 in the future!

You now have a Jtagged Xbox 360. When you push the power button, it should boot up normally to our JTAG dashboard. When you turn it on with the eject button, it should boot into that blue screen we saw earlier so you can do some low-level maintenance.

Warning, though - do not connect to Xbox Live and DO NOT UPDATE IT if it asks you to... at least not yet. In my next tutorial, We're going to go through some security measures to ensure your console will be safely Jtagged forever :)

Until next time...