So I got myself original Xbox (I hate calling it OG Xbox) after scouring eBay for some time.
First impression: damn, it’s huge. Compared to PS2 Slim I have it’s eight times bigger.
Second impression: damn, the gamepad is also huge. I wasn’t sure if I want the original “Duke” gamepad or the more modern “Japanese” one, but in the end I lost the bid for the Japanese one, and got the Duke. It is not just wide, but also very thick. My hands are average, but I have to stretch my fingers to reach the buttons.
I didn’t remember it had two slots for memory cards in the controller. Just like Dreamcast. And in general, it reminds me of Dreamcast so much I wonder if they took an inspiration. But whereas the Dreamcast controller was bulky because of the VMU, here the huge Xbox logo doesn’t serve any purpose.
Of course I wanted the console softmoded. It is done with a USB drive, but there is a catch, or even two. First, Xbox doesn’t have USB ports, only proprietary gamepad ports and the memory slots inside a gamepad. So you need an adapter that plugs into gamepad port. Those are widely available, though, so getting one is not a problem. The problem is to get a USB stick it would recognize. I tried creating small partitions, I tried microSD card adapters, nothing worked, except a single no-name USB stick I got with my jailbroken PS4. So now I have a magic USB stick that jailbreaks both PS4 and Xbox. Although with Xbox, it’s a persistent softmod, so I don’t expect to repeat it.
After softmodding the console, the easiest way to get games on it is to connect it with a network cable to your router. Here’s a thing, though. The original Xbox had a HDD, but it was 8GB IDE, and if you know what that is, it’s time for your pills.
So the next project will be to install a larger SATA drive, possibly even SSD.
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