Considering the Xbox 360 Reset Glitch Hack

Many people aren’t comfortable with cracking open their console and voiding their warranty.  With the original Xbox, softmodding was the big deal.  You could enable backups to be played from burned discs, or even off the hard drive.  You could watch DVDs as well as movies off of a USB thumb drive or movies that were FTPed over to the HDD, which was upgradeable after softmodding to enormous sizes.  It was taking the easy road to customizing your Xbox experience and making it possible to do more with your console than what was intended, but less than what was provided.

The Playstation 2, on the other hand, was a little trickier.  It required opening the console, soldering a modchip onto the motherboard, and then you could play games from burned discs or the hard drive.  Even the easier Switch Disc method required the case to be opened.  As well as extra crap to be purchased, even cases that allowed the top to open just so you could switch discs and play backups.  Honestly, I these methods seemed so stupid that I didn’t even bother.  My PS2 remains unaltered, sitting in my living room right above my modded Xbox, and below my flashed Xbox 360.

It would have been easier, I suppose, to just pay someone to do it.  I am far from a soldering master.  I can barely meld wires together.  My first attempt at soldering a 360’s DVD drive to make it play backups failed so miserably that the drive was irreparable.  The 360 still works however, and I decided this would be a prime candidate for something I have always been interested in.  JTAG-ing.  It’s not for the faint of heart.  It requires taking your Xbox 360 completely apart, soldering a wire here, a wire there, and installing a  menu that allows your Xbox 360 to play backups from the hard drive.

On the next page we tell you if your Xbox is a candidate…

But, much to my chagrin, I found that my spare 360’s current dashboard has been updated too far to be JTAG-able.  Before I go any further, here’s a little info on what JTAG really is.

1. HAS to have a manufacture date before June 18, 2009
2. Dashboard HAS to be 7371 or Lower

To determine the manufacture date is easy, simply look at the back of your console, it will have that date stamped on the back of it.

To Determine the dashboard version you hook it to a TV and select the following:

1. Turn on your Xbox and go to console settings.
2. Go to system info, the kernel version is on top right.
3. it will look something like 2.0.12416.0
4. The 12416 is the part you look at, if that number is higher than 7371 you cannot JTAG

Now, my 360 was made in May of 2009, but the dashboard was sitting above the 7371 mark.  Somewhere in the 12416 range.  So I stored it away, hid in a box of unused computer parts and various screws and bolts.  And then I found out about the reset glitch hack.  This is something that was discovered late last year, and has been a savior for those who have had a DVD drive go bad and were not able to extract the key that is required to install a new one.  It is also a big deal for those who want to do away with their DVD drive altogether.

On the next page we tell you how the Reset Glitch Hack works.

The Reset Glitch Hack is a new type of method which allows the running of unsigned code. Explained by free60: “We found that by sending a tiny reset pulse to the processor while it is slowed down does not reset it but instead changes the way the code runs, it seems it’s very efficient at making bootloaders memcmp functions always return “no differences”. memcmp is often used to check the next bootloader SHA hash against a stored one, allowing it to run if they are the same. So we can put a bootloader that would fail hash check in NAND, glitch the previous one and that bootloader will run, allowing almost any code to run.”

This hack requires a “glitch chip”, which will send the signal. These range from the original Coolrunner-II made by Digilent, the Matrix by Infinity Mod, Team-Xecuter Coolrunner, X360Glitch Chip by SoulHaven, and the Stinger by Maximus. These chips have an Xilink chip which is capable of sending the signal fast enough for the glitch to properly function. The benefits of the RGH is that it doesn’t require a non-updated dashboard to run unsigned code, meaning you could run 2 or more NANDs, which allows you to run it as a retail with one, and run unsigned code with the other. It is also able to work on the Trinity motherboard (original slim motherboard), which the SMC exploit is not. Since this hack runs on almost any Xbox (some have CB_Bs, which don’t allow the hack to run, and others have unglitchable CBs: 5772 and 6752; for now), which means that the only limiting factor is the number of Xboxs produced by Microsoft.

So what does this mean for people like you and me who just want to be able to play backups of our games off a hard drive, or have a destroyed DVD drive?  It means that you will have the standard Xbox 360 dashboard, with the ability to load a custom menu that allows playing games that you have backed up to the hard drive without having to use a disc.  And not just that, it means that you can do away with your DVD drive altogether.  Gone.  People are now using flashed drives from Xbox 360s in their computers to make full, perfect copies that can be transferred to external hard drives, and from there, plugged into the 360 and transferred to the console’s hard drive.  Which, by the way, can be upgraded using any SATA-II HDD laptop hard drive up to 2TB when the reset glitch hack is installed.

Now, no one here is stupid enough to think that this won’t be used as a way for pirates to share games without having to go through the extra work of burning a disc.  But for those of us who like the idea of having our entire game library backed up on a hard drive and playable without a disc, the option is there.  It’s more reliable than the JTAG, and you don’t have to use only the menu provided with the hack.  You still get to look at your dashboard.  It can be a little spendy if you don’t have a basic nand programming knowledge and decent soldering skill.  I’m paying $65 for the service, including the price of hardware.  Not bad to keep my discs scratch-free for years to come.

The RGH hack is compatible with Phats and Slims with dashboards below the 14717 update.  If you check your dash and see it is this version or above, don’t fret.  The teams that developed the first RGH hacks have been working on 14717 and 14719 dashboards since February, and are extremely close to getting it done.  More good news, the once unglitchable CB motherboards in Phat consoles have now been RGH’d, and the Xenon motherboards are now being outfitted with the hack.  Thanks to the Xecuter DemoN, a mod chip from Team Xecuter, older JTAG machines all the way up to the newest Slims will be able to be RGH’d, running a dual NAND, which allows you to get online without being banned.  The future is here folks.  The 360 has been officially beaten.