How I put 256MB of RAM in the original Xbox
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- čas přidán 29. 07. 2024
- For a video on the installation, see Macho Nacho's video: • Giving The OG XBOX Qua...
This is a detailed and technical explanation of my journey through upgrading the Xbox to 256MB of RAM. It required many months of reverse engineering, hardware engineering, software hacking, and perseverance.
I previously published a mod to upgrade the Xbox 1.6 to 128MB so going for another double was natural.
00:00 Intro
00:25 Proof of concept
16:15 Production
30:14 Software - Hudba
The solution you've developed, using the hybrid flexPCB with FRP to make an interposer for QFP packages will abolutely be so useful to those of us in the vintage mac community - there are numerous glue logic chips there that may not be possible to interpose using standard castellated holes because of the pitch - brilliant, brilliant solution!
i just watched the macho nacho nacho guy do this. cannot wait for the second revision! great to see people making this system keep growing!
@@markaz2kk this video is the guy that made the mod for macho nacho to make his video.
I like how innovative that this guy is.
@@garystinten9339 czcams.com/video/R2hvSL30Rlg/video.htmlsi=UON4vnKqanJ0VOJq
@@garystinten9339 development is in alpha phase but they are working on a fix with the chip to solder to, due to the fact the first revision does work, but you have to be gentle in bending the flange of the solder points. 👍
Hey, I suspect that the memory clocking issues are due to the interposer pcb you made _not_ length matching the traces on the data and addressing pins.
Even at the slow clockrates of DDR memory, length matching traces is absolutely critical for avoiding random data corruption.
You can see on the xbox mobo how some traces tend to snake back and forth for no reason, and length matching is pretty much always the reason why.
I encountered this issue personally when I worked in QA testing. I was getting random frame corruption on our prototype's gigabit ethernet port. Gigabit ethernet is actually clocked at only 250Mhz, so neither engineering or I thought that length matching would matter, especially since the traces only differed in length by 2mm. But after testing and a new PCB prototype with correctly matched traces the problem disappeared entirely.
I did notice that the chip he has picked has a datastrobe for each byte to align the transmission unlike the original chips that have a single datastrobe pin for the whole databus, I do wonder if this is causing an issue?
@@professor_jonny newbie here. Would the result be random data corruption or is there a way to measure desynchronization?
@@yeezusjesus7617 yes, a logic probe but even connecting a logic probe can cause corruption high speed signals if not integrated properly.
Not only was this process interesting, but it appears to be extremely useful for many different groups! Lots to take away and learn from here. And the irony of how sadly useless the end product was makes it really funny.
Bravo! What a well paced, informative, and comprehensive video you made. Please do more.
Did this gentleman just literally build his own RAM?
Good work 👍I bet the homebrew scene never grew mostly because of the lack of memory so your contribution might kickstart something
I'm hoping to see something like PS2 on Xbox..
This would concrete Xbox as the most moddable console in history..
Side not.. not a fanboy
@@garystinten9339 not going to happen, the xbox doesn't have the grunt even with upgrades to emulate the PS2, maybe some level of HLE might get you part of the way, but emulating the emotion engine/graphics synthesizer is a complex ask even for modern PCs, hell even modern PCs struggle to emulate the RCP in the N64.
Absolutely brilliant work! You took this project to a whole new level I never thought was possible.
I was searching for your channel from machonacho and couldn't find it. Then bam, it shows up in my feed. Just sub'd.
Keep upgrading, man!
I heard that there are some Xeon CPUs from the Xbox era that should be socket-compatible.
It’d also be cool to upgrade the DVD drive to a faster model, or to find a better GPU.
This is so cool, especially also how you figured these things out :D great video
Fantastic work my friend!
Random Voultar moment. (Sorry to hijack your vid OP, great vid btw :) )
Came here from nacho nacho channel, cool stuff dude
Hi friend, great video.
I'd like to share some tips and considerations for you to keep in mind.
I think you made the memory testing part more complicated than it needed to be. With good soldering technique, you should be able to achieve a perfect solder on the first try without any issues. Compared to other packages, FBGA-144 is actually quite large.
Some tips:
Avoid using hot air for soldering. The best technique for soldering these types of components is to use a hot plate. It provides better temperature control and ensures uniform soldering.
If the soldering process takes too long, it might be because the manufacturer used an alloy with a high melting point. It's best to replace the memory solder with a low-temperature alloy. 183°C paste solder should work well and reduce heating time. There are stencils available that allow you to do reballing relatively easily with enough practice.
Considering all these points, you should be able to fabricate the memory modules much faster and without needing to test them extensively before installing them in the console.
I have plenty more tips, but this is getting quite lengthy. If you need any help, I'm here. Cheers!
Thanks for the advice. I'd still need to test the memory chips on their own. Oh and my hot air technique for these chips was to heat the PCB from the bottom side, so it's a bit like a hot plate just less controlled. Also, it's good to test the chip after soldering because the heating could induce a failure. I got a few failures from the soldering step until I started baking chips first.
@@userPrehistoricman I understand, but using hot air isn't the right way to solder the memory modules. With hot air, you can't control the temperature or timing accurately. The correct method is to follow a temperature and time profile to avoid stressing the memory. I get that you need to test the memory modules, but with the right technique, you wouldn't need to check if the soldering was done correctly each time.
mom, I'm on TV!
dude, thank you very much for this.
YT 😉
So much scope for future applications and emulation on the OG. Cant wait to see where it goes. We are at a pivotable point in OGXbox history where we can all look back to this time and remember where it all started.
Fantastic video man
Excelent work done here. Congratulations
My God! This was a true labour of love. Congratulations!
Such an amazing video and educational content and well explained 👏
This is so extremely overengineered. I love it.
Awesome work!!
Speaking as someone who's experienced in BGA work, I wouldn't mind assembling my own modules to be honest :) 👍
Good work, that is just awesome.
Man I'm so freaking excited about this! I've been wanting 256mb of ram for quite a while now! My God!
What are you using the ram upgrade for??
@@garystinten9339 mostly my skin on the dashboard 😂😂 This means I can make it as fancy as I want. One thing I tried to do wouldn't quite work with 128mb of ram so 256 would be nice to stretch it a bit further! Also 256mb of ram + a cpu upgrade would be huge for media. I've got 800+ movies and 100+ TV series on mine and it would be amazing to be able to squeeze the most out of the Xbox I could.
@@JoshLineberry well decoding 8k at 1 frame should allow for 4K 60 frames easy.. meaning Xbox (unless a GPU/CPU combo can be found that would allow 8k) mean it's the most modded console to date.. imagine if more memory could be found for other consoles and update them also.
@@garystinten9339 Why would you bother rendering a movie at 4K when the maximum resolution that the xbox supports is 1080i?
Joshua this is going to be a game changer for the ogxbox scene
This is Microsoft level of engineering, but without the bloat that MS usually adds nowadays. Great time to be alive.
love it! this is amazing
AMAZING work bro. Seriously. The R&D, the execution, the video. All of it. Bravo Man.
Awesome achievement. Would the modified BIOS with the RAM test of the first 4 modules be useful for say fixing a Fragging Xbox? If so, would you be willing to share it?
Where can we buy the ram from ? That’s the big question and what an amazing project, well done 👏This is going to change the ogxbox scene and your going to make some serious money dude when these ram sets are for sale
Could this work to get a 1.6 up to 128 a LOT easier than just stacking the chips?
fully watched your video -> really impressive what you achived here
even thow i don't have not a lot of Know-how hardware or software you explaned it so well that even i understand quite a bit
i would love to see if claude or chatgpt could like help for software understanding modding to support more ram
This is legendary.
I saved my og Xbox. Very cool mod. Would love to give it a little better performance if all the bugs get worked out
At some point, it's going to make more sense to just create a replacement motherboard that implements various modifications including accepting BGA memory directly.
Only problem is that transferring the BGA parts from the original motherboard (especially the MCPX chip) won't be easy.
Just curious what you can do with 256mb ram. I'm assuming custom linux distro
What about using one of those soft vertical conducting strips that are used behind the screen of plain old calculators. They can work as a conductor and as a pressure source. Although not sure how much current they could handle 😅
I thought about that but you need a mechanical setup to apply pressure to the strip which would complicate the whole thing a lot.
I should not be laughing at the text on screen with the "--> balls" at 14:37 but as a Vegas user, that was too funny to me
hehe
Vegas only crashed twice during this, pretty impressive really.
Did they change that wiki page that said the max mem was 128mb
Hello. where can I order these modules?
I'm the Thousandth sub! Congrats!!
I would love to get these chips to install on my 1.6 ram staking is such a pain and this would make it so so much easier please let me know when they will be available!
could this work with just two modules to get 128MB on the 1.6 revision xboxes without needing to stacck IC's ?
Yes!
@@userPrehistoricman Excellent my brother has a v1.6 model console and I may have to look into this at somepoint since it'd likely improve the snappiness of XBMC4gamers.
This guy is the next generation of superhero
When will the v2s be available for purchase??
sorry if you answered this in the video, but could you not make the whole thing flex rather than flex-rigid? seems like it would make things simpler
Yep, will try this out.
Would this be a good combination with an upgraded cpu? I’ve seen someone put a 1.4ghz processor on one.
Would you consider releasing the KiCAD files for your original BGA to TQFP interposer board.
yeah will do it some time
Would be interesting to see this in conjunction with a CPU mod, and what could be done with that combo. I would actually provide mine from Lukas Dietz to have it done.
Amazing job man! Do you happened to know if this kind of magic is theoretically possible on the PS3 also? That would be my dream come true.
Thanks. I have no idea
What is the practical advantage of having 256mb to play old games designed for 64mb
None
I think one great added value is having enough RAM to load (the latest xbdm) dll, and have full debug functionality on retail systems!
For what if the os or games are not made for more memory? Well done from a technical perspective but I don’t get it
They aren't made for this much memory, so they don't use it. They will still run though.
upgrades are mainly for emulator and collectors. not really for retail games.
Radical
quite interesting fab methods
Do you plan to realease these interposer files to the public? Or are you going to wait until you develop a better version.
I will definitely be releasing design files but not sure about which versions yet.
@@userPrehistoricman Ive been doing 1.4Ghz cpu upgrades not that long, and this whole modding scene is exploding! Cant wait to eventually install 256MB ram on top of the 1.4Ghz cpu. Keep up the fantastic work.
This is impressive as hell my only question is do you think you can go higher?
Nah, strongly doubt it
@@userPrehistoricman we had similar issues with the N64, on paper it looks like you can address more than 8MB of RDRAM but the silicon itself can't manage more than 8 1MB banks, although to be honest the biggest bottleneck is the 4kb texture cache in the RDP.
Isn't there a performance penalty because of the swapped address lines?
If I routed them directly, then no. But I do route them via some solder jumpers so that could have an impact, yes.
@@userPrehistoricman not the layout itself, but the way the DRAM works with swapped address bits.
@@simmydsimmyd I don't think that has any impact. The DRAM isn't aware of the swap
@@userPrehistoricman I imagine word operations would be fine, but wouldn't the swap cause issue for burst operations?
THAT XBOX IS A SPY
You madlad! Too bad this would also call for both homebrew and retail games to be modified to account for the additional memory.
Look into using ribbon cable headers for the motherboard contacts and then you can extend the length of your interposer pins and fold them down on the four sides and just plug it in ;)
Possible. Don't want to make them too long and delay the signals
@@userPrehistoricman amazing work by the way! I would have argued 256MB ram was impossible to address on the xbox.
There are also ribbon cable headers that lay flat on the board and have a fold down tab, if these 'fit' you would not need to bend the interposer sides.
@@userPrehistoricman would it be possible to make a single interposer and sandwich it between the nv2a and the motherboard with a sodimm on it ??
Your mad and I Love it
hey Prehistoricman, do you have any news on the boards ?
i got a few chips in advance to be able to do it by myself :)
im so fucking horny on this project to do it by myself :D
Im wondering if a cpu upgrade would assist the bottleneck i saw in macho nachos vid. Ive seen someone get a chip that runs 1400mhz any comments on this would be appreciated!!!
Overclocking the CPU does help offset the slowdown caused by underclocking the memory
I take my hat off man
bro needs to drink a glass of water 💀
1 like = 1 glass of water for homie
Bro he does all the soldering himself..
@@666skimes Love is temporary, lead poisoning is forever
could you run windows xp on this?
yeah probably
maybe via a PC emulator, but Windows XP won't boot without a PC compatible bios. ReactOS will and can boot though so you can have an XP like environment.
This type of RAM upgrade is only worth it for a faster CPU. The stock 700Mhz celeron that comes equipped with the XBOX will never utilize that size RAM for a pre render computation. I believe the fastest processor ever installed on the XBOX is pentium 1.4 Ghz and even then with that faster pre render that CPU doesnt even over load the 128 MB memory that was used for the XBOX debug kits. Essentially a dual core cpu with at least 1.7Ghz would be needed with bios modification to push that ram to its limit. I believe because of the polygon and vertex shading methods used by the GPU it wont ever use more than 128MB, possibly as tad more. Its still fascinating to see that this Ram increase was achievable.
It doesn't really work like that: processing speed isn't so directly related to memory usage. You can easily make a program that requires no computation but lots of memory.
In terms of games, sure, because you can only increase the memory usage by increasing the resolution.
I guess is more about getting a faster ram too with a cpu upgrade cause stock cpu on ogx are 128mb cache and tualatin p3 are 512k cache.
What is the pcb software that are you using?
KiCAD
I asked on Macho Nacho, and now I will ask here: Is someone going to try Xebian or Windows CE?
banger
Your interposer design could be adapted for a boatload of retro computing hardware...
Why not implement sockets of some sort?
Like what?
15:30 PCB Trace Length Matching?
Possibly, but I don't believe the length matching requirements are so strict.
@@userPrehistoricman
But I find it more interesting to install faster RAM instead of twice the capacity. in order to achieve a difference in performance if necessary.
@@ludger0815 That has been tried too. I think they hit a hard limit around 250MHz (25% faster than stock).
Were you recording this late at night and trying to stay quiet?
He probably isnt a youtuber, and this is just a deep dive into his work
I just sound like this, I'm not actually whispering
@@userPrehistoricman fair enough, it just brought back flashbacks from early yt. Especially as early in the morning i was watching the vid. Regardless it was an educational and interesting vid.
I came here from Tito's video. Amazing work and great in depth video.
Just one question, are you also @seytonic ?🙂
Thanks. Nope I'm @Prehis2oricman
Please look for a solution to upgrading the gpu.. surely there is a better gpu to upgrade.
Perhaps even make a socket to fit the ram rather than resoldering memory onto board.. like a socket that allows ram to be simply clipped into place.. ??? I know sounds slightly tedious but for those that arent confident.
installing a socket would likely be even harder than what he just did to fit the chips.
@@VivianDoremy but it's been done.. so socketed CPU and GPU and socketed ram.
@@garystinten9339 at that point its just a PC, in which case just chuck a mini itx board in the case and call it a day.
@@shemlesh no.. because we are modding an Xbox.. not building a PC..
If I wanted to see a mini itx computer being built. I'd go watch a mini itx computer being built.. this I find more interesting as it isn't just like add more ram, upgrade your CPU.. it's taking some actual risk and being more than Microsoft was. I like it.
@@garystinten9339 the reason for why is because there are no xbox compatible GPU upgrades, the only way to "upgrade" would be to replace the northbridge that contains the GPU and the bits that make it an xbox rather than a PC, with a regular PC nforce northbridge, at which point you are just using the PCB as a carrierboard to build a PC, you won't have the ability to run xbox games so it would just be a paperweight.
otherwise you can spend $10k to get a high end current FPGA evaluation board and design it yourself, or spend approximately $0.5-2 million to prototype completely new silicon using a faster process to build something that is faster from scratch.
This guy could probably do a 240p output on AV encoder to get proper retro picture on CRT after all these years of waiting...
Why do this of the software won't even use it?
fun
BRO. I thought I was making exotic retro p()rn. Id like to see Prey 2006 ported to X Box. Im reverse engineering texture streaming using an exotic unused solution historically. And its more CPU efficient than DOOM 3s texture streaming overhead.
Are there any games that can take advantage of this much memory?
no. 128mb was all that was on the table. the new ram is rated for faster but I don't know if that will mean higher FPS
no. xb games were coded with the logic that there is only 64mb. they do what they have to, to fit their code+graphics+audio etc in that amount, at each frame. modding a game to change that is nearly impossible, as large parts of the code have to be rewriten. most modding in xbes is for the games not to crach with >64mb. there is a very small amount of games that feel a bit faster, but that's about it.
Lovely Jubly
Sweet stuff. Be cool to see this utilized with emulators.
This is Freaking w!ZaRd!!
Well Done Sir!
New Sub, Detroit, Michigan, USA
i mean with emulators and maybe the pairing of a 1.5Ghz CPU things could work great... i know Surreal64 struggles with running 64MB ram for sure. i just wanna play my N64 games with no lag please...
also it could pave the way for someone to maybe develop a gamecube emulater or ps2 emulator or even spotify or something like save states
you know what could be really helpful is a Guide button like modern consoles have now... it would be mad fun to be playing OG xbox games smash into the guide launch spotify and listen to some bangers while chillin or having a lan party.
i wish i was this smart to do all this.
512MB next? x
ps2 isn't going to happen as emulating it on even recent hardware is a challenge, a console released contemporaneously is next to impossible as the architecture is too different, as for the guide button you would need to mod every single game to multitask for the guide, most modern consoles achieve that by leveraging hardware virtualization to run the dashboard separate from the game itself, the xbox CPU and compatibles predate that sort of hardware virtualization support.
but, why
excellent job btw
does the xbox actually utilise this ram though?
Not normally, no
What's next, we somehow make an IBM compatible BIOS for the Xbox?
its possible to a large extent, as there are open source BIOSes out there like SeaBIOS, GlaBIOS. however that won't mean DOS apps will run or Windows as they make assumptions about the hardware also being IBM compatible.
Now add a GeForce RTX 4090
jokes aside great work!
I wanted this done on my dvt4
now you will probably run virtual cop 3
I knew this was possible by piggy backing all the RAM chips.
Ok but come on what can we do with 256mb??? IDEAS!?
640kb is more than anyone will ever need
Test Emulators like MAME and games for the ZINC emulator STREET FIGHTER EX would be Great
I'm going to create an Xbox 360 emulator for the original xbox
😂😂😂😂😂😂.
Or dreamcast emulator why not❤.
Sega wanted for og xbox having support dreamcast Natively but Microsoft refused for increased cost
I honestly love dreamcast to run on xbox because in my opinion og xbox is true holder of the legacy of dreamcast.
4GB or GTFO
With a CPU upgrade _(maybe over 1 GHz such as 1.4 GHz),_ the extra RAM could be used for XBMC as Linux by also for building homebrew software and games _(indie games and demo-scene and benchmarking including office and hashing benchmarking or other cyclic-polynomial processing like VoIP or distributed networked XBox or connecting to a server rack for part of the processing done on that, even including such as a load-balancing or LLM)_ perhaps even with some RUST applications. A Xenoblade Chronicles style Wii game could be doable in theory and thereby help learning, including emulators on a PC to emulate a 1.4 GHz Xbox with 256 MB RAM. Existing titles or abandoned ports could have all manner of bug-fixes using the CPU and RAM to make it easier. Championship-Manager style and Civ 4X style games could use the RAM and CPU power increased for AI and maps across player 'turns'. Processing FFT and radiography/radioscopy and OScope using the CPU and GPU to some extent could be useful. Databases and spreadsheets could use the CPU and RAM improvements. Larger matrices could be used on it. New peripherals could be made especially with various BSD and GPL licences to demonstrate use case of low level drivers of an API to use a Hardware Abstraction Layer, or even a humble browser for file or internet. Then also probability estimation and vector similarity comparison for better gaming AI or machine-learning could be thereby implemented. Let alone vimwiki style po plugin/addon for translations, there are voice-recognition and voice-synthesis possibilities but additionally, other translation enhancements for languages like Battle For Wesnoth style games could use that.
New homebrew style Gameboy_EyeToy_Playstation style games _(or something like Kinect)_ could use the RAM and processing, but also so could music studio style creative games and apps, or sampling and synthesis _(or Gaussian Noise Elimination and Chebyshev polynomials in spectral analysis or Jones Polynomials in Reidemeister Moves in morphing can use it for larger samples and synth)._ Game editors _(like in NeverWinterNights or RPG or JRPG or OperationFlashPoint or HalfLife Mods and CounterStrike or UT2004 and FirstPersonShooters)_ or dynamic economy games such as RailroadTycoon3 and X2-The-threat _(or X3-Reunion)_ could use the RAM and CPU extra upgrades. OCR _(Optical Character Recognition)_ with translation via say Rosenblatt-Parzen Window method could help software that uses something like a Wacom tablet and or stylus or Microsoft surface pen or light-gun or Haptic interface input-and-output devices or Wii-Remote _(or Microsoft equivalent or Sony or homebrew),_ and GlovePie could be handy too like Joy2Key _(and a Bluetooth and LoRaWAN stack or NDISWrapper_Network_NIC_Wrapper_Class or Auth FIDO2 keys and SSH)._ Even though proprietary licences can help in business analysis, the notion of people making contributions as philanthropy to open source software with more open licences can also encourage different ways of solving problems and learning. So running DLib and Eigen maths libraries seems more probable now with the better CPU and RAM upgrading.
My comment has no hate in it and I do no harm. I am not appalled or afraid, boasting or envying or complaining... Just saying. Psalms23: Giving thanks and praise to the Lord and peace and love. Also, I'd say Matthew6.
wtf is this incoherent gibberish
@@Wasmachineman terry davis been real quiet since this guy showed up
do 1 gigabyte
You sound like you are dying.
Why are you whispering? The Xbox won’t be mad. It’s probably grateful for the attention.
I have 4 so the others would get jealous
Lol only 256mb in an Xbox 1 my Xbox one has 8GB
im not doing that.
I suppose if those chips broke.
Id rather emulate it. Less trouble.
Id probably mess it up.
Suppose you got it working.