Of Modchips and Harddrives
 

Well, I have been reading the chip comparisin charts

I cannot decide between these two modchips:

Xecuter 2.2
Chameleon v1.3

I definately want a solderless mod, since I broke my psx applying a simple 7 wire mod

I am not sure which one to pick, the Chameleon seems to have more mod options but the Xecuter has an external interface

I dunno if I will get LIVE, currently there arent really any games I would care about that have it, but I definately want to keep that option open. So its important to me that I cannot mess up the original xbox's bios and be able to switch to it.

Are there any other limitations of these chips I should know about?

Also........ I heard that the Chameleon requires a no-solder addon, but that the Xecutor comes with one pre-installed, right?

My xbox's manufacture date is 2002-10-17, so its safe to assume that its a V1.0 or V1.1 right? Any other information I can find out about it without opening it? (DVD drive, HD, etc)

And finally......... I havent found a guide on installing a new harddrive and formatting it/duplicating the old HD. Is there one you can give me a link to?

And just to make sure........... once I replace the old Xbox HD can I can use it in a PC?

I'm going to lean to the X2.2 over the Chameleon only because a lot of people are very happy with the X2.2s and I haven't read much on the Chameleons.
Theres two ways to go solderless with the X2.2. One way is to buy an X2.2 and a solder add-on or buy a X2.2plus. As for the Chameleon I'm not sure about, but I think it needs to have an add-on.

As for limitations on these chips, there really isn't one I can think of right now. Maybe a little while down the road…

As for finding out your XBox's version there isn't any 100% positive way other than to open it up. But this should worry you b/c you're going to have to open it up to install the modchip any way.

Any here is the link to a guide on how to upgrade the HDD. It will give you a lot of other info as well. The Ultimate XBox Newbie Guide

And yes you can use the old XBox HDD in a PC but it has to be unlocked first. I would strongly suggest you not do that. If any thing happens to your upgraded HDD you are more or less SOL.

I dont know. Maybe I'm just old skool from waaayyy back in the day where you pretty much had to solder but I'm a firm believer in soldering the mod.
Maybe the newer designs stay in place better but at least with solder I know its not gonna work loose.

Considering I broke my PSX applying a simple 7-wire chip

I do NOT want to trust myself to solder another chip with 4 times the wires on a much more expensive and complicated system.

And the no-solder chips are some of the most popular out there now. There are rumers of the chip becoming loose, but peopel haev said that when properly screwed they were not able to shake the connections loose even by force.

Besides, this will make replacing and upgrading the chips a snap! (literally)