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Installing 1838.1 recovery on Xbox Test Kit

janslota

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Sep 3, 2020
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Hi Obscuregamers,
i am friend of tjd2 from Slovakia, who has got a cheap Xbox Test Kit (Xenon) from some gypsy man, who probably picked it from trash.

Since i already do have RGLoader console and i found out about the prerelease recoveries leak, i would like to convert this xbox into a Xenon Development Kit by installing 1838.1 on it. It seems someone has done it before me and it worked. However i'm not sure how am i supposed to do it. Both 1838.1 Remote and DVD recoveries fail and i can't even install some of the final recoveries (2417 and lower)

Tjd2 told me, that apparently it might not work on test kits, because they apparently have some stuff disabled. Is it possible to convert it into a full XDK with all features? Then the 1838.1 downgrade might work. I saw someone getting it working on a Demo Kit though so idk.
 

XboxSurgeon

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Is your xdk an actual beta kit? Most release xdk cannot be dropped below 1888.0
 

janslota

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Is your xdk an actual beta kit? Most release xdk cannot be dropped below 1888.0
It's Xenon Test Kit from 2006. I saw someone installing 1838.1 recovery on a Demo kit though.

Earliest dash, that works is Flash: 2420.0 XDK 2571.2
 

Riley541

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Yup that's my video. It installed perfectly for me. Not exactly sure why it's not working for you.

Apparently it works on all final xenon kits and some earlier zephyrs.
 

RtFM

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Hi Obscuregamers,
i am friend of tjd2 from Slovakia, who has got a cheap Xbox Test Kit (Xenon) from some gypsy man, who probably picked it from trash.

Since i already do have RGLoader console and i found out about the prerelease recoveries leak, i would like to convert this xbox into a Xenon Development Kit by installing 1838.1 on it. It seems someone has done it before me and it worked. However i'm not sure how am i supposed to do it. Both 1838.1 Remote and DVD recoveries fail and i can't even install some of the final recoveries (2417 and lower)

Tjd2 told me, that apparently it might not work on test kits, because they apparently have some stuff disabled. Is it possible to convert it into a full XDK with all features? Then the 1838.1 downgrade might work. I saw someone getting it working on a Demo Kit though so idk.

I haven’t done recovery research yet on the beta recovery.
However, you always have to consider your motherboard revision, type of kit dev/test as well as your manufacturing date.

It is very common that some xenon and Zephyr kits bitch around with recovery thresholds. That’s either because they came on stock with a higher Recoveries than 1888.X as well as other recovery specifics...

Best way to figure out why - is a nand dump and your cpu key and Begin research on that.

There are ways to bypass these issues. If I would find enough time.
 

Bazatree

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I can confirm that efuses do not burn after upgrading or downgrading the recovery. I used both disc and remote recoveries. All "Lock-Down Values" are zeros. Tested via HvxDump-1.3.

But anyways, I have a Zephyr demo kit, manufactured on 2007-04-19 and it didn't allow me to use recovery lower than 7776 (both disc and remote). The interesting thing is, someone who has a "newer" Zephyr demo kit could downgrade it till 1838. No clue why.
 

Lehvak

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I can confirm that efuses do not burn after upgrading or downgrading the recovery. I used both disc and remote recoveries. All "Lock-Down Values" are zeros. Tested via HvxDump-1.3.

But anyways, I have a Zephyr demo kit, manufactured on 2007-04-19 and it didn't allow me to use recovery lower than 7776 (both disc and remote). The interesting thing is, someone who has a "newer" Zephyr demo kit could downgrade it till 1838. No clue why.
I’ve discussed this a lot. Certain zephyrs will work but it will need to be a zephyr with a 90nm GPU not a 80nm GPU. 1838 will not work on anything above a zephyr with that gpu. So no falcon stress kits, jasper boards, or GB jasper boards...

EDIT
It does work on final xenon boards. Just brought a xenon demo kit down to 1838. Board rev 011 (final). I still can’t run the sep 2005 crackdown build even being on 1838.
 

janslota

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I’ve discussed this a lot. Certain zephyrs will work but it will need to be a zephyr with a 90nm GPU not a 80nm GPU. 1838 will not work on anything above a zephyr with that gpu. So no falcon stress kits, jasper boards, or GB jasper boards...

EDIT
It does work on final xenon boards. Just brought a xenon demo kit down to 1838. Board rev 011 (final). I still can’t run the sep 2005 crackdown build even being on 1838.

Do the demo kits also have stuff disabled like the test kits do have? Because idk why, but it doesn't work on my test kit. That guy, who ran it successfully had xenon with mfg date 2006-04-06 and i have 2006-04-21.

If i tell you my cpu key and give you nand dump on the 2520 recovery, can you try to somehow build the beta nand? I can flash it, because i have parts to build LPT nand programmer
 

RtFM

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Do the demo kits also have stuff disabled like the test kits do have? Because idk why, but it doesn't work on my test kit. That guy, who ran it successfully had xenon with mfg date 2006-04-06 and i have 2006-04-21.

If i tell you my cpu key and give you nand dump on the 2520 recovery, can you try to somehow build the beta nand? I can flash it, because i have parts to build LPT nand programmer

just a small hint from me to start reverse engineering. Extract the 1888.0 ISO Recovery and look for the shadowboot file xboxromtw2d.bin if that file is present and your kit is for sure a test kit it should initialise the recovery procedure.
The same applies for the 1838 recovery.
 

Lehvak

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Do the demo kits also have stuff disabled like the test kits do have? Because idk why, but it doesn't work on my test kit. That guy, who ran it successfully had xenon with mfg date 2006-04-06 and i have 2006-04-21.

If i tell you my cpu key and give you nand dump on the 2520 recovery, can you try to somehow build the beta nand? I can flash it, because i have parts to build LPT nand programmer
DEMO kits are all full dev boards. When I say full they have all the headers for a sidecar. Xenon stress kits are the only dev board that is missing the sidecar power header by the psu port, and I think falcon stress kits are missing it too. Zephyr and jasper stress kits have full dev boards too.

Anyways, this recovery just doesn’t work on test kits cause of the bootloaders. But as RtFM said he’ll look into it getting it working on a test kit.

EDIT
The build didn’t work cause it’s already a broken build.

EDIT 2
I can confirm that efuses do not burn after upgrading or downgrading the recovery. I used both disc and remote recoveries. All "Lock-Down Values" are zeros. Tested via HvxDump-1.3.
this is interesting. I haven’t tried brining my final xenon up from 1838 yet. But my 008 kit doesn’t want to go up from 1838 anymore. It throws exceptions when using a disc and a remote recovery and I’ve tried going to 1888 from 1838.
 
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janslota

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Sep 3, 2020
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I took a look in both 1838 and 1888 recoveries and i can't see xboxromtw2d.bin file. It seems that the early recoveries simply weren't made for test kits. I also looked in other recoveries, that didn't work for me (i think 2099) and there also were't any testkit files.

just a small hint from me to start reverse engineering. Extract the 1888.0 ISO Recovery and look for the shadowboot file xboxromtw2d.bin if that file is present and your kit is for sure a test kit it should initialise the recovery procedure.
The same applies for the 1838 recovery.
 

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