NandPro: LPT and USB nand flash programmer with only 7 wires

[l_oliveira]

Check for fan mods ?

How would they do that ?  (I could think of checking temperatures onboard but then they would ban people in Alaska and in Canada because their consoles would be too cold)

And more important ... Why would they waste their time with that ?

No, there's no FAN SPEED monitor hardware on the XENON XBOX360. There's 4 wires and each pair is + and - for each fan.


Inexplicable bans ? Perhaps people were playing with hacked saves/profiles and got banned for that instead of fan speeds.

[maximilian0017]

Check for fan mods ?

It's "hear say" and i havent checked it(maby wrong to say) but people mentioned it a few times.
I removed the line from my previous post as not to spread rumors.

But its pretty evident that MS wants to protect their assets, and i can't blame them.
Maby the checks they do with the DVD drive are a better example of how far they are willing to go.

Checking a few gpio's would not be hard at all, so why take the risk.

Sö:

If you want to restore your xbox to play live and you do not want MS to find out you modded your console, remove the 3 resistors to make sure MS cant detect them.

Otherwise you can leave them, they cant heart(new updates could check this without live so please take that in consideration)

Edit: better explination

[l_oliveira]

I was not specifically replying to your statement... More like making fun of those "conspiracy theories"... I suppose you mentioned it with the same intention, right ?

My XBOX LIVE console has cooling mods. Nothing beyond that and I would never tinker with the storage devices I use with LIVE.

I see no reason for bans over fan/case mods. At most they may refuse to service the console if you send it in, I think.

Again, I think some kid got banned for tinkering with his HDD and then started to spread this rumor as back then MS would not disclose
why one got banned (If it was due to modding/hacking) 

Now they do...
Good top avoid this kind of crap from silly/shameless kids.

[maximilian0017]

Again, I think some kid got banned for tinkering with his HDD and then started to spread this rumor as back then MS would not disclose why one got banned (If it was due to modding/hacking) 

Jup, probably right.

One of the problems here is that people believe everything they read here, "Hey just leave the 'optional' resistors out, you'll be fine", but in the mean time 1 person has a blown/dead xbox and 3 others cant use the lpt port mod anymore, and that are only the ones i read/discussed with.

I hope one of the moderators will pick this up as it is causing damage for some people,

We need to get someone here who has problems with the resistors and can try lower value ones (beginning with DB25.2 and else all the resistors) so that a fullproof mod can be made with lower value resistors.

[GyTe]

Personally i would remove the resistors if you plan to use the xbox for live(just snip through one of the wires of each resistor and leave them for easy reattachment) because MS could check for any mod to the xbox.
This would be perfect for them to look for XELL modded xboxes.

Sorry for the long delay... From my personal point of view is the same because the Xenon that I have it's already banned

Maybe you're right maybe not... At the moment we don't know what M$ check... but just to be sure it's better, to non banned user with xenon, to perform a little circuit to switch off the resistors...

[mabcom]

i need a little help of you guys

i have wired  a lpt to the flash and if i start up nand pro the nand is detected and i receive the message dump nand now
but when i press a key all i have is Errors  like Error in sector 1 Error in sector 2 etc etc etc

do i miss something ??
i tried 3 xbox 360's and also 3 computers with a lpt port
changed settings on the lpt but nothing seems to give a better result

with regards
MABCOM

[kew1701]

Did u use diode?I have falcon board and i used only diode,without resistors,without diode i was getting same error...

[Blackaddr]

We need to get someone here who has problems with the resistors and can try lower value ones (beginning with DB25.2 and else all the resistors) so that a fullproof mod can be made with lower value resistors.

The buffered LPT should eliminate the need for all this guess and test as well as protect both the computer and the xbox.

If you're in a  hurry, do the standard LPT and then it works, well great.  If you have problems, it makes the most sense to switch to a buffered setup.

[mabcom]

Did u use diode?I have falcon board and i used only diode,without resistors,without diode i was getting same error...

  the diode did the job thnxs

[billak]

Finally got this thing working . An advice keep the lpt in about a meter long or else you will be getting wrong  image dumps of course it depends on many other things. And one more thing I have dumped my nand with infectus too but they are not identical with the dumps I made with LPT just some characters are differen. they both can be opened with degrader or nand flash tool. My two nand dumps done with LPT are identical. Thanks evreyone Involved. Keep UP the homebrew going.

[duggyuk]

i got the same issue (lpt dumps match each other, infectus match each other but lpt dont match infectus).

in any case i killed my nand and had to use badflash recovery using the infectus dumps and the xbox restored  just fine! :-)

[logi]

An advice keep the lpt in about a meter long

lie.

[l_oliveira]

The LPT method is the best way to write/read the nand but yes it seems to not work for everyone. My PC has no printer/ printing software installed.
I am wondering if people having consistent problems with NANDPRO software might be facing conflict with their installed printer software.
I don't think anyone ever considered this during troubleshooting. 

Now, if you have infectus installed properly, you're familiar with it and it works for you, keep it.
But keep in mind that being able to flash only portions of the NAND is a given and helps BIG TIME.

[parasven]

dont most new printers use usb ?

[duggyuk]

The LPT method is the best way to write/read the nand but yes it seems to not work for everyone. My PC has no printer/ printing software installed.
I am wondering if people having consistent problems with NANDPRO software might be facing conflict with their installed printer software.
I don't think anyone ever considered this during troubleshooting. 

Now, if you have infectus installed properly, you're familiar with it and it works for you, keep it.
But keep in mind that being able to flash only portions of the NAND is a given and helps BIG TIME.

thats a limitation of the infectus s/w not the hardware. you CAN do partial flashes with amoxiflash and flashinfectus (bonx) 

[l_oliveira]

dont most new printers use usb ?

Yes but most of the printer software support the "legacy" designs and keep pooling the printer port.
Think a bit about "purpose" and you will see that the parallel (Centronics) port has been present on computers since 1979/1980 and the purpose of that port aways been printer port connection. If we're using it in more creative ways nowdays, the printer vendors never thought about that (and never cared either) so we have to be defensive here.

[l_oliveira]

thats a limitation of the infectus s/w not the hardware. you CAN do partial flashes with amoxiflash and flashinfectus (bonx) 

Slightly off-topic but...

I have an Infectus 2 here and it's a hassle to move it from a console to another. I've used amoxiflash (hey Bushing ! Thanks man you aways had patience and been very helpful to me on #wiidev) and Bonx's tool which again is based on amoxiflash code. Even when I needed the Infectus to repair some Wii consoles it failed. A hairy hack with a dual NAND Wii and a big help from Bushing (Bootmii) solved the problem the Infectus was unable to.

Dual nand Wii:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/FKKg3p0eqkdvd5-0io5TVw?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/MLz5n2jxCfyVvKQHQ3cPOw?feat=directlink

Now, back on topic:
Nothing against infectus but it was cumbersome to work with it. The chip freezes sometimes, leaves the system in unexpected state sometimes (the need to unplug the 360 console after flashing) and other minor issues.  Having to erase to re-write the nand is a little annoying as well.

From a practical standpoint if you can get NANDPRO interface working, it's more flexible and usable if you're on the repair business.

With the Olimex devkit or with Darkstar's PIC interface NANDPRO is a Infectus killer.


Now there's only one option for the Origa people. If they want to keep selling their flasher chip, they should sit down and fix it's bugs then improve it a bit further.
They need to make it interesting again...

[maximilian0017]

Yes but most of the printer software support the "legacy" designs and keep pooling the printer port.

Windows XP already polls the printerport, that could give problems with some LPT devices, but with NANDPRO they probably lock the LPT port, just like the serial ports, otherwise we would have more problems over here.
(for disabling the polling in XP just use the search engine, or look at old posts of mine)

Maby printer utilities could give problems if they do not ask nicely if the port is in use (you know the ones that live in the system tray and bugger you about new cartridges)
With some other LPT devices it was often suggested to install a text printer, that would stop the polling, and that was often the cure.

The problems i heard of with NANDPRO were 90% solved with wiring, resistors, diodes and one with a NAND that had bad unused area's.
This is ofcourse excluding the people who took apart their repaired or borderline Xboxes, or messed up their MB with scratches and solder splashes, but these aren't NANDPRO problems...

If we were to find a resistor setup that would work with the 5v, 3,3v and 5v/3,3v LPT ports almost all the problems would go away.
As i have had no problems here i cannot find these values myself and as everybody until now was happy to try and fry their Xboxes without the resistors (as a couple managed to do) so it will probably take some time.

[billak]

An advice keep the lpt in about a meter long

lie.

At least this was cause of my problem. I don't have reasons to lie. Just trying to share my experience.

[maximilian0017]

An advice keep the lpt in about a meter long

Interesting, do you have the ability to measure the lpt voltage's , data(d0-d7) and control?
And what kind of pc did you use, age/motherboard model.
Did you use the resistors and the diode?

Is it possible that you misswired the first time or that there may have been a loose contact?(did you measure it with a multimeter?
Even if you think it is soldered perfectly you can never rely on your eyes, i once had a logic board that didn't work and i could not find the problem for 2 hours, after measuring i found a miniscule crack (using a magnifying glass) in the circuit board that snapped a pcb track, it was impossible to find without a multimeter...

Logi: Its not very nice to say something like that especially if someone takes the time to share their experiences to help someone else, electronics can do strange things especially if you dont know every aspect of it.
If i take one of your old posts, you say that in your setup the diode had to be placed directly on the motherboard, this is a very small difference and that should not matter, electronically speaking cable length is a bigger change.

Tiros built the cable with 1 or 2 meters if i remember correctly, so it is not that far fetched that that would work better than like say 30 cm.