If you’re a Facebook or Twitter junkie, you should be happy to know that tomorrow’s update for the Xbox 360 dashboard, will bring Facebook and Twitter. Also with this update, will be FM to Xbox Live.
Xbox Live general manager, Marc Whitten, has gone on the record saying that these aren?t merely PC ports of the popular social networking sites, but entirely new entertainment experiences:
?We look at things like Facebook and Twitter as amazing social experiences, but also entertainment. We didn?t want to copy and paste from the PC.?
If you’re a console junky, and want all the latest news on your favorite console, then NewdGamez.com is your site. From blogs to tweets, you’ll find a vast array of information at your fingertips, just a click away.
Featuring categories such as the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii, PSP, Infinity Ward, and yes, the list goes on.
And if you don’t know, Walmart is offering the Xbox 360 arcade, for $199, with a $100 gift card. Folks, not bad if you’ve been wanting to get a Xbox 360.
Rock Star Games has just released the new trailer, for Grand Theft Auto IV. The trailer depicts some new vehicles, including helicopters, as well as the ability to parachute out of a helicopter. The new Grand Theft Auto add on will only be available exclusively for Xbox 360 owners, sorry PS3.
This information was taken from a comment found in another one of the post here. I feel it’s worth mentioning. Apparently, ixtreme 1.6 firmware is making some good progress. Thanks to everyone involved in it.
I’m thinking we should start a Chipin fund for them?
Update for iXtreme 1.6 Firmware
The best deal with 1.6 ixtreme is that you can back up your games directly from your xbox through your sata with the 0800 function integrated. You used to have to flash the 0800 firmware to back up your games, then flash again back to ixtreme to play them. NICE
Stay tuned for further information about the New iXtreme Experience (NiXE) !
1.
[19:54] ix1.6 for benq is complete and in testing,samsung/liteon soon to follow, then there?s hitachi last!
2.
[20:05] ix1.6 – Strict Wave 3 compliance! hybrid(modified disks) will not boot!
3.
[20:06] ix1.6 – Strict drive speed compliance – 12x only for game discs!
4.
[20:07] ix1.6 – Support for SS V2!
5.
[20:07] ix1.6 – Integrated 0800 for game dumping including SS v2!
6.
[20:09] ix1.6 – Full support for all known game exceptions! eg ddr etc!
7.
[20:12] ix1.6 – One shot boot mode! – allows a one off boot of gamedisc without stealth/partition checks (will still use stealth), use activate.iso disk to activate each time!
8.
[20:15] ix1.6 – Support for easy drive key/version info cmd, same as liteon!
9.
[20:18] ix1.6 has strict stealth/wave checking, one shot boot mode will boot wave(x)!
-> The new iXtreme 1.6 won?t load modified Disks with hybrid StealthSectors (e.g. Games with 1.51 modified to work on 1.5). This is because of your own security.
-> There?s an option with what you can turn of/on the StealthCheck on iXtreme, which means you can now load NON-Stealth Games. Though you have to activate this option everytime you want to play a NON-Stealth 360 Game. Activate it with the ?activate.iso? coming with iXtreme. But iXtreme is of course still Stealth.
-> You can now dump your original 360 Games through your 360 Drive with 0800 Dumping. No need for the Kreon Drive anymore!
-> The new iXtreme 1.6 will now support StealthSectors V2, which is probably safer for you. More information about this new feature will follow soon. (!)
-> Drive Speed for games is set to 12x due to less ban-risk.
-> The new iXtreme 1.6 is finished for BenQ?s and right now in testings. For Samsung?s and LiteOn?s it is almost finished and Hitachi is going to be the next.
Before we begin this tutorial, on how to flash a stock Liteon drive with iXtreme 1.51 firmware, you have to have a connectivity kit. A connectivity kit allows you to dump the firmware, which contains the key that will be used in spoofing your drive to iXtreme 1.51 firmware.
There are a couple of connectivity kits out there that you can buy, I recommend purchasing the CK3 Lite with the Probe. If you don’t purchase the probe, then you’ll have to solder a bridge on R707 on the drives pcb. So to make life easier, just fork out the extra 15 bucks, and purchase the probe.
So, first things first. You should download this tutorial, read it, to become familiar with what you’re going to be doing. Some say you need the VIA-6421 card for flashing, while it’s nice to have, it’s not necessary, so don’t waste your money on it unless your SATA chip set will not work. Most new chip sets work fine.
Now, let’s get started. First you need to remove the drive from the Xbox console, to do so, watch the following video.
Now you have the console open, continue to remove the drive. Unplug the Sata cord, and the power connection, on the back of the drive.
If you’re planning on soldering R707, look at the image below. You have to create a short between the two pads for R707. Thanks to Team-Xecuter.com for the following images. First, you need to unscrew 4 screws on the drive itself, see image below.
When you open the cover, look for R707, it’s near the bottom of the PCB.
Now, if you don’t solder that, and have a probe, we can move-on, if not, solder that connection, making sure you use a small tip on your soldering iron, and connect a piece of wire between the two pads. It’s always good to verify your connection with a Ohm Meter if you have one.
The next process is to hook everything up. As you can see in the image below, the CK3 Pro is being used. If you’re using the CK3 lite, just plug that into the RS232 Serial port, typically in the back of your PC. Then, connect the SATA cord, from your Xbox drive, to your VIA 6421 card, or built in SATA port. Last, before you connect the power cable to the CK3, make sure the switch is in the OFF position.
Now you have everything hooked up, go ahead, and turn on your pc, with the drive still turned off.
Next, make sure you install the PortIO32 drives, which is included when you download JungleFlasher. If you’re using the CK3 Pro, install the USB drivers.
Go ahead and turn the power switch on the CK3 on, and you should see a blue light. Verify everything is working, and press the eject button, to verify the drive opens. Turn the CK3 power off, then on. With the drive still fully open, push the drive in half way.
Let’s get to work!
Before you open JungleFlasher, go ahead, and copy the iXtreme 1.51 Firmware into the “firmware” folder, located inside the JungleFlasher folder.
Open up JungleFlasher, you should be presented with a screen like this.
Now, click on the Tab DVDKey 32. You need to select the correct I/O Port and Com Port. The I/O port as you scroll through them, will show the Vendor as PLDS, and Name as DG-16D2S when you select the correct port. With the Com Port, typically, if you only have 1 serial port, it’s going to be COM1.
Now go ahead, and if you’re using a probe, connect the spear to the R707 contact. Looking at the image below, touch the tip of the spear where the red circle is. If you soldered this connection, then disregard this step.
Time to get the key, click on Get Key, Create Dummby.bin Open as Source
JungleFlasher will then dump the key 6 times, verifying your key is good. You’ll be prompted to save all 4 files, the key.bin, inquiry.bin, identify.bin, and dummy.bin. You can save them anywhere you want, typically, I create a folder on the desktop, name it Liteon, and save the files there.
After you save all the files, JungleFlasher will prompt you to auto-load the iXtreme firmware. Select yes, as long as you copied the firmware into the firmware folder, earlier in this tutorial. I’m guessing you did, so just hit yes.
You’ll then be taken to the main FirmwareTool 32 tab. Before proceeding, it’s good to verify that the source firmware key matches the target firmware key. Look at the image below, to get an idea on what to look for.
Once everything is verified, click Save to File, as shown in the image above.
Time to erase the firmware off the drive. Now, if for some reason your PC freezes while erasing the drive, don’t worry, just take a look at the end of this tutorial.
Now, click on the MTK Flash 32 tab, and click on the Lite-on Erase button.
It will prompt you asking if you are sure, just click yes. It will then show 1 more prompt, read it carefully. Basically, you need to power the drive off, then on, at a certain step in the erasing process. When you see the following in the image below, this is when you want to power cycle your drive.
If everything was successful, you’ll see under Drive Properties, Drive in Vendor Model, and under Flash Chip Properties, the type listed with a status of ox72.
Now, if your pc froze during the erasing process, no worries, this happens to the best of us. All you have to do after you restart your pc, open JungleFlasher again, and in the the MTK Flash tab, click on the Intro / Device ID. See image below.
Also, you’ll have to click on the Firmware 32 tab, and load the original firmware, by clicking on Load Source Firmware. Just select the dummy.bin. Then, below that, click on Open Target firmware, and select ix151-liteon.bin. Then, click on the button, Spoof Source to Target, and lastly, Save to file. Click on the MTK Flash 32 tab.
Now you should be all caught up.
All left to do is just write the firmware, so click on Write, which is located under Flashing Task, on the bottom right.
Once you see Write Verified OK!, click on Outro/ATA Reset, and you’ve just flashed a stock Liteon drive.
Grand Theft Auto IV’s Xbox 360-exclusive DLC, The Lost & Damned, “would have outsold Killzone 2″ in the shops if it was a traditional retail product, Microsoft has boasted.
Xbox 360 product management director Aaron Greenberg claimed that the Xbox Live-only GTA episode is now “the most successful game add-on content we’ve ever launched.”
He added, “If that content was sold at retail, it would be one of the best sellers across all platforms. It would have outsold Killzone 2.”
Analysts have put sales figures for the DLC at above one million. Killzone sold 323,000 units in February – but that’s limited to North American sales.
“It’s another example of a great way to leverage Live to provide content that’s very timely. You could never really deliver that kind of experience at retail,” Greenberg added.
“When people get [their games] in the Spotlight channel, it’s in the millions of people who are clicking and looking and downloading. With our community being over 17 million, the scale when we get into some of those featured items is pretty big.”
In the same interview with Gamasutra, Greenberg claims that the PlayStation business is “haemorrhaging” at retail, partly because PS2 owners are migrating to Xbox 360 instead of PlayStation 3, he claims. Not that he’d say it’s doing brilliantly, anyway.
I’ve been seeing a lot of talk lately from individuals wanting to know how to properly verify that your Xbox 360 Backups are Stealth Patched and Verified. It’s a pretty easy process, that involves the use of ABGX 1.0, a program that can make Stealth games from a ISO dump, and can also be used to verify that your backups are 100% Stealth.
The first thing you need to do is download ABGX 1.0 for your current platform – Download them here. This is also the latest version, which supports iXtreme Firmware 1.51 with Wave3 support.
Now, install it and let’s get started.
Next you need to have a Xbox 360 Backup already downloaded, you can always find them for download from a Pirate in the bay.
This is how it should look on a PC when you first open the program. What we’re going to do next, is create two settings for use. One of them will be just to verify a ISO image, and the next, is only to be used, if the game does not come back Stealth Verified.
The first thing you need to do, is click on the AutoFix tab, and select Level 3 (Autofix is stealth passes but fails verification).
Once you have done that, go to the top left of the program, click on File -> Save Settings. Name is anything you want, I named it “FixingISO”.
So now we have two settings, a Default, which should be used on all backups you get, and a Second one, to patch them if you run into issues.
Now were going to load a iso image. And if you’re wondering, if the .dvd file is incorrect, both settings will automatically create a new one, that you can use IMG burn with.
Go ahead and click on the folder, to select your iso image.
Okay, the next step once you have loaded the file, is to click on the Launch button on the bottom of the program. Let this cycle through all the way. If for some reason you get an error, this is when you want to load the custom settings you created earlier. So for this first pass, let’s just keep it on the default settings.
You should see a screen similar to this. Let it run all the way through. Typically, if the stealth passes, once it gets to checking the Game CRC, i just hit Q to quit the process. But in your case, let it go all the way through.
As you can see from the image above, this Backup failed verification, there was no verified rip of the Xex/SS in the online database. This is when you’ll click on load settings, or just click on Autofix level 3. Then, just re-run the program, and it will automatically download and update your Backup ISO. Other types of failures are you might get are error’s in the SS, DMI, or PFI, thus it will automatically quit.
And that’s pretty much it. The only step you have to do next is burn it with IMG Burn, which can be found here. Also, make sure you’re using good quality media, such as Verbatims 2.4x DL, those are the only Dual Layer Disc that I recommend for burning Xbox 360 backups.
So you already have iXtreme firmware 1.5 on your Xbox 360 drive, and need to update to 1.51? It’s not that hard. I did it the night iXtreme 1.51 was released, and it was a pretty easy process. I updated my Liteon DG-162s drive without issues.
For this, I still used the CK3 Connectivity kit, which in my opinion, makes it easier for connecting it to the computer, getting the key, etc.
If you are using the VIA 6421 card, make sure you remove the drives first. Okay, let’s do that. Right Click My Computer, select properties, then click on the Hardware tab. Click on “Device Manager” and scroll down to “SCSI and Raid Controller”, click the + sign to expand the list. Right click on your VIA card, and click “Disable”. When prompted with a yes/no message, click yes to disable it.
Now you have to remove the driver viamraid.sys, which is found in C:\windows\system32\drivers. When you find it, just right click, and delete the file. After you delete it, go back to the device manager, and right click your via card, and enable it. Next, reboot your pc.
After you have rebooted, go ahead an install the PortIO32 drivers. Just click on PortIO32.exe, which is in the same folder as JungleFlasher ( if you haven’t already downloaded JungleFlasher, do it now – JungleFlasher 0.1.55)
Another side note, is that JungleFlasher requires the .NET 2.0, get it here.
Now you can go ahead, and hook up your drive, making sure it’s turned off to your pc. Theirs no need to have your PC turned off when you plugin in the SATA cable to your drive.
Once you have everything hooked up, the first thing it to power on the drive, open the tray, then turn off the power. Next you want to push the drive tray in, half way, then power the drive back on.
Now you can go ahead, and open up JungleFlasher. When you’re at the main screen, click on the DVDKey 32. Find the correct I/O Port and Com Port. It should be listed as PLDS DG-16D2S. Just in case your PC freezes during the Erase process, write down with I/O Port your drive is connected to.
Now theirs two ways you can go about this, you can use the “Dummy from Ixtreme” button, or, if it make you feel more safer, you can go about the same process if you were dumping the key from a stock Liteon drive, getting the key, inquiry, identify, and dummy.bin files. It doesn’t matter.
Let’s just get the “Dummy from iXtreme” button, and save as prompted. JungleFlasher will prompt you if you want to auto-load the firmware. Make sure your firmware for the drive is placed in the folder “firmware”. Click yes to auto load the firmware. When that completes, click the button, “Save to File”.
Now, the next phase is to erase the drive. Make sure that you’ve completed all the steps above, you’ve read over the PDF Tutorial, and feel comfortable proceeding.
During the erase process, if for some reason your PC freezes, don’t worry, you’ll still be able to continue flashing your drive after you reboot.
Now as long as you haven’t quit or closed JungleFlasher after you got your key, you should be good to go. If you did, make sure you have the correct I/O Port listed. Again, it should be shown as PLDS DG-16D2S. Now, let’s proceed. In JungleFlasher, click on the MTK Flash 32 tab, then click on the Lite-On erase button. Don’t be scared, do it
When prompted to continue, click yes. You’ll now be presented with another warning message. It’s telling you, that after it’s been erased, you need to power off then on, in a quick cession.
When you see the following status as shown below, go ahead and run the power cycle. If for any reason during the erase process, your computer freezes and you start splurring kuss words, no worry, just go ahead an reboot your pc.
Now your drive is erased, you should be able to see that it is shown under Drive Properties as “Drive in Vendor Mode”
Oh, if you had to re-boot your pc, lets get you caught up. Go ahead, open JungleFlasher and go tot he MTK 32 tab. When there, make sure you drive is powered on, and select the correct I/O Port. It wont say it found anything, so I hope you wrote down what I/O Port you were in. If you didn’t, just go through each one following the next step.
On the right hand of the screen, there is a Flashing Task section, click on Intro / Devide ID. This will load your erased drive. It took me about 20 minutes after I had to reboot my pc due to it freezing. Just click that button (sorry, don’t have a screen shot for that, trust me, it’ll work). Also, since you had to reboot your pc, you’re going to have to go back to the FirmwareTool 32 tab, load the dummy file, and create your hacked firmware again. It’s pretty easy, if you need more specific help on this, just post a question in the comments area.
Now you’re all caught up, lets write to the drive.
When the process is complete, click the Outro / ATA Reset button, which will then reset your drive, and display it’s properties. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I clicked that button, and mine still worked fine. But for sakes of sanity, click it to be safe.
