The original Xbox shipped with 64MB of RAM, which was quite a lot for its time in 2001 but seems small by modern standards. A modder called Prehis2oricman has quadrupled the amount of available RAM to 256MB using a custom RAM module that consists of two parts: a RAM chip and an interposer allowing use of all eight memory slots including those typically empty on the console’s motherboard.
This modification was achieved through months of reverse engineering, hardware engineering, software hacking, and perseverance. However, there’s little reason to install this mod currently as existing applications don’t utilize it. The potential for new BIOS updates that unlock additional features could change the situation in the future.
Do you think modifying console hardware like the Xbox to quadruple its original RAM is worth pursuing, considering the current state of software support?
Hasn’t 256mb of RAM been possible for a long time, but only accessible with developer builds/ custom patches of specific games?
Nah, your thinking 128, which matches what the devkit system would have had.
With that mod, you had to add additional RAM chips in the unpopulated traces and installing a new BIOS.
The new mod requires you to remove the old RAM and install new RAM chips that have an custom adapter board on them. Plus an even newer BIOS.
The problem now is that no software is built to make use of it.
According to the person who developed this, doesn’t seem like it. From quick research, it does appear that 128mb mods were somewhat common, through installing an extra chip, and modifying the software as you mentioned, but this is new
To my knowledge the biggest benefit for this mod was emulation on the Xbox getting a performance boost. In most cases there are far better platforms to run those emulators on now.
I vaguely recall there being an uplift in fps on some titles - but in general it was a cool thing that had limited uses.
Well, we won’t know until people try this out, and make modifications to what’s needed, but the creator himself says that this mod is essentially pointless, as no homebrew uses this much ram, and most definitely no games do. This is a really awesome proof of concept though
Unless someone starts making new games for the thing, I don’t think this is for anything other than the dude who actually made the mod and the reason was “he could.” Which, don’t get me wrong, is pretty cool.
I mean, why? It’s an outdated system and the games won’t even use the extra memory. I get that people have hobbies and all but this just seems extremely pointless and a waste of time.
The old modded Xbox runs XMBC.
It also allows you to install various emulators. I guess N64 and above would benefit from it.
I mean why do that when you have raspberries and Kodi…
Still cool though.
kodi runs on XMBC
Kodi evolved from XBMC
Correct.
It would be nice if we could install the extra RAM and then boot Morrowind from the hard drive. We could disable the game’s config flag that forced it to soft reboot the console on load in order to free up leaked memory. Load times for that game would be so much faster.
