Virtual C drive and CD/DVD drive utilities v1.0.1 ------------------------------------------------- The following utilities are to be used in connection with nkpatcher version 8: * ISO image ripper * Shadow C drive maker * Virtual disc attacher * Virtual disc detacher None of these have any kind of a user interface; they work silently. So wait while the software does it's work. :) Nkpatcher version 8.1 is included in the nkpatcher8.1.zip file of this package. It is considered a separate program from this package. However, you should install it before using these utilities. Installation ------------ Copy everything under the apps directory in this package to your Xbox harddrive. Usually a good place to copy to is either e:\apps or f:\apps so a dashboard such as EvoX finds the utilities automatically. ISO image ripper / CD&DVD ripper -------------------------------- Insert a game disc into the drive and run the utility. There's no display output or sound or anything, but just wait. For example, ripping a 6.7 GB game will take about 40 minutes on my Xbox. After ripping, the utility returns to the dashboard and you should be able to see the game in your games list. The ISO image will be ripped to f:\games or g:\games depending on free space. These directories can be changed by editing backup.cfg. In addition to the .iso files, a default.xbe will also be created. This is the virtual disc attacher utility. The title name is automatically copied from the game d:\default.xbe. The same attacher file is included in the component directory of this package. Shadow C drive maker -------------------- This will create a one-to-one image of your current C drive to the file e:\shadowc\shadowc.img. Nkpatcher version 8 will automatically mount this image instead of the usual C drive. You can then install and update MS dashboard without modifications to the retail booting C drive. You should make sure that the shadow drive is actually mounted before deleting or modifying key files. To test, create a file, say test.bin, to the root of the supposed shadow drive. Then, using PBL, boot a bios without shadow drive support (there are no released bioses with this feature :) ). Is the test file there? No? Good. Then reboot the Xbox so that you get nkpatcher version 8 patches. Is the file there now? Yes. Good. The shadow drive is working. Now you can let games update your MS dashboard as they please. Virtual disc attacher --------------------- This is the file automatically created by the ISO backup utility and is also contained in component\attach.xbe. When this xbe is run it will attach all files with .iso extension in the same directory in alphabetical order using an nkpatcher 8 system call. In case there are several .iso files in the directory, these are assumed to be parts of the same big ISO file. Since Xbox FATX file system has a file size limitation of 4 GB, big ISO files need to be sliced into smaller parts. The ISO backup utility will do this automatically. After attachement, this program will quick reboot the system. If the attached ISO image contains a default.xbe in it's root directory, the kernel will execute it as is usual. Running the attacher on game ISO images will therefore launch the game. Virtual disc detacher --------------------- This will detach a previously attached set of sliced .iso files. If you for example do IGR (In-Game Reset) and get back to dashboard, the game disc will still be attached. You can browse it using e.g. boxplorer. You can run detacher to be able to use your DVD drive again. Of course, doing a full reboot will achieve this aswell (a dashboard option or nkpatcher with Full reboot -mode IGR.) Miscellaneous ------------- * If you choose to edit and slice some .iso files yourself, note that the slice sizes MUST be multiples of 2048 bytes (sector size). * The number of .iso slices is (compile-time) limited to 8, both in nkpatcher and in the attacher application. * The maximum file size for MS kernel FATX implementation appears to be somewhat less than 4 GB - 1 bytes. Probably 4 GB minus cluster size, but I recommend you keep it well below this (a megabyte or so). * The ripped .iso image is unnecessarily large in this initial version. No processing is done to the iso. A future version of the backup utility may contain user selectable automatic optimization. * The backup utility writes also an errorsectors.bin file. It contains 64-bit sector numbers of those sectors for which read failed. Seems like all Xbox game discs contain several unreadable (at least via the interface the backup utility uses) sectors in exactly 8 MB runs, so don't panic if you get a 0.5 MB errorsectors.bin. * You can also backup ISO 9660 CDs and attach them. MS Xbox kernel doesn't support the file system, but the contents can be used with Xbox Media Center. Changes ------- From v1.0 to v1.0.1: * Includes the fixed nkpatcher 8.1 instead of version 8. No other changes. Software License ---------------- This software is released under GNU General Public License version 2. See the file COPYING for license details. There is absolutely NO WARRANTY. Some source code is from Phoenix Bios Loader, which used parts of Xbox-Linux project's xbeboot program. Please note that the modifications are heavy and impractical to detail. This software is not embraced or endorsed by either Phoenix or Xbox-Linux. -rmenhal