<div class="header-image"></div> <table class="table-header"> <thead> <tr> <th colspan="2"></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>2026-07-07</td> <td style="text-align: right;"><a href="About.md" class="internal-link">About</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> # A Brief History of Xbox Modding  My favourite gaming console of all time has to be the original Xbox. Though I think the Sega Master System might come close, it was the Xbox that revitalised my love of video games, which had really languished ever since arcades started dying out. The weird thing is that I didn't even get one to game on, initially. I specifically wanted to modify it so that I could use it to watch movies I'd downloaded on a TV. This was technically possible already with a PC and a TV-Out card, but it wasn't practical. Back then, it wasn't common to have multiple devices all connecting to the Internet at once. There was generally only one computer per household, if a family owned a computer at all! The Internet was really only just beginning to transition from a mysterious "cyberspace" that was the subject of science-fiction thrillers, to a common tool that everybody used. Smartphones didn't yet exist, and laptops were too expensive for common people to own. There was only the central, unmoving, family PC that was kept away from the TV. And even then, only about 60% of households had a PC, and 50% had Internet access. But in 2001, Microsoft introduced the Xbox--a gaming console that was really just a PC, had actual ATX components like an IDE DVD Rom drive and a hard drive, and connected to the family TV with regular RCA connectors. Even the controllers, while having a proprietary connector, were just normal USB 1.1 devices. And for what it was, the cost was very reasonable. To buy a PC with the same specs would have been about twice as much. As a matter of fact, Microsoft lost money with every unit sold, betting that they could make up for that via gamesales (which they did with the Xbox 360). The only issue was that, while it technically was a high-end PC, you couldn't run any normal software on it. The OS, or "dashboard," didn't install anything, and only ran software that was loaded from a DVD. (Essentially, every game was an OS unto itself. The dashboard wasn't running in the background while playing a game. Loading a game was giving the system a soft reboot and then another OS was loaded from the disc, so that only 1 process was really ever running at a time). Each game had to be cryptographically signed with a key that only Microsoft had in order to run, otherwise the system would just return a "dirty disc" error. To skip past some of the details, it did not take long at all for someone to crack that key (this was [the infamous Bunny hack](https://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf)). Once that happened the system was wide open. A full on Gentoo-based Linux distro was even released for it, utilising the machine as a full-fledged PC. Now, while I did experiment with that distro, as I said above I was really only interested in watching movies with it. I had learned to use the Gordian Knot software suite to rip DVDs into the common .avi format using the DivX and Mp3 codecs, and I wanted an appliance-like machine to watch them with. Now that anyone could run unsigned code on the Xbox, this was very possible to do. By the time I actually got that first Xbox, all of this had already been accomplished, and the software was shared freely. Modchips were plentiful and cheap. These bypassed the onboard Microsoft BIOS (which both loaded software and expected it to be cryptographically signed) and let users run a BIOS of their own choosing. The first thing to do (after installing the new chip of course) was to install a replacement dashboard that would allow programs to run off the hard drive, rather than only from a disc. There wasn't yet much to choose from; Evox was really all there was. It was a simple text-driven interface, but it got the job done.  To play movies (and music) the common app to use was Xbox Media Player, or XBMP for short. It also did very well at what it was designed to do. I could burn off those .avi files to a cd and watch them on a tv. There was enough space on the factory hard drive, too, to store the XBMP program, so I was done! This was exactly what I wanted.  *XBMP splash screen* Of course, though, I wasn't done. Software kept improving, different mods became available and by now I had tried a game or two. And my success was driving me to try more. Eventually I replaced the hard drive, which was 10 GB in the stock Xbox, with an 80 GB drive. This was plenty of space to store more apps, and a good number of games. Over the few years of the Xbox's existence, before the Xbox 360 was introduced, a pretty massive scene built up around it. The software created for it got pretty sophisticated. Different dashboards were created, one of which is still commonly used, though not on the Xbox any longer. XBMP got a massive rewrite and became XBMC, or Xbox Media Center. This was not only used as a movie and music player, but could also serve as a dashboard, keeping everything in one package. It could also browse network shares to play movies, grab stored games, etc. It could also display the weather, run scripts, show RSS news feeds and more. It was really blurring the line between a dashboard and a true OS, or at least a Desktop Environment!  *XBMC's default skin "Project Mayhem"* It was rumoured that Bill Gates himself [was shown a modded Xbox running the Avalaunch dashboard](https://gizmodo.com/bill-gates-intrigued-by-xbox-mod-community-182766), and after seeing what it could do, the first thing he said was "can we sell this to people?" Its influence over the Xbox 360, I think, is obvious. The 360 was already in stores in its "Blade" dashboard version, but it was about to get a major revision that was intended to engage with the modding scene. Eventually, after the OG Xbox scene started to die out, Xbmc got ported to Linux and the project continued. It later got rebranded as "Kodi" and that's how the project exists today, 20+ years later! Two other important pieces of software to come out were XBConnect and Xlink Kai. These both accomplished the same thing, which was to use the Xbox's "system link" capabilities to play with other people over the Internet. It should be noted that XBConnect actually *predated Xbox Live*! It was created primarily to play Halo Combat Evolved over the Internet, but could be used for any system-link capable game. What it did was fool the Xbox into thinking your PC was another Xbox on the same LAN. It achieved this by running the XBConnect software on the PC, which then bridged the connection over the internet to other PCs also running the software from anywhere in the world. In short, it connected your home LAN to others' also running the XBConnect software. Xlink Kai worked the same way. So obviously, when Xbox Live was introduced and charged a monthly fee, XBConnect users had no need for it and continued using the service they were already using. Not to mention that Xbox Live would detect, and ban, any Xbox that tried to connect without a stock bios. XBConnect allowed those with modded Xboxes to connect and play, and that included any mods or homebrew that supported it. User-created Halo maps were a favourite. Xlink Kai started their service not long after the Xbox Live service started, which offered a smoother interface and also made some technical improvements over XBConnect. Most users moved over to Xlink Kai soon after this. After the Xbox 360 came out, the OG Xbox scene lived on for a number of years, as the 360 had much better security and copy-protection schemes. A DVD hack did come out a year or so after the 360 first went on sale, allowing for burned games to be played, but there was still no way of installing custom software, like running game mods or emulators. This allowed the OG Xbox scene to live on, but it couldn't compete with the 360. Microsoft killed it off as quick as it could, and ended its access to Xbox live in 2010, just 8 years after it was introduced for the system. By contrast, Xbox live services still exist for the 360, 21 years later! There's been much interest, lately, in [returning to older systems, and preserving older games and consoles](../Blog/2026-04-24%20Bring%20on%20the%20Retro%20Console%20Revival.md). With the recent news of [Sony abandoning the physical disc format in January 2028](https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/sony-playstation-games-end-physical-disc-releases-9.7255967), and of course the recent presale of SNK's NeoGeo+ revival console, which I, myself, am eagerly awaiting, I dug out my old Xbox which I modded ~25 years ago. Through a number of decisions about what I would do with it, I ended up relearning quite a bit about modding the system, and found out there is still quite a scene surrounding it, with improvements made, and dedicated hardware still being produced for it! I ended up buying a second box purely for parts but now have a 2nd fully working Xbox set up side-by-side my first for old-school LAN gaming via the system link feature. Xlink Kai is still going strong, and there is also an Xbox Live drop-in replacement specifically for the OG Xbox called [Insignia.live](https://insignia.live). These each work extremely well, though I found Insignia to be a little finicky to set up. Once done, though, it works flawlessly. I'm planning to write a 2nd post to follow this, mostly to go through setting up an Xbox step by step, to have a complete picture of what's required with links to instructions and needed files. There is an [emulator for this console](https://xemu.app/) too, called Xemu. The software mods can be used with it too, including Insignia.