I Did The Impossible 1.6 XBOX 128MB RAM Upgrade! | Piggyback Method!

[Applause] adding ram to an original xbox is a common well-documented upgrade which can be done on all xbox variants well all except for the 1.6 revision which is missing the unpopulated footprints for the additional 4 ram modules it has always been thought that the 1.6 variant of the xbox could not have the ram increased from its original 64 megabytes to 128 that is until a modder by the name of prehistoric man found an unlikely solution let's check it out [Music] hey everyone how's it going my name is tito and welcome to another episode of retro renew today we're going to be doing something once thought impossible and that is performing the 128 megabyte ram upgrade to a 1.6 variant xbox console it's well known that all xbox motherboards have four unpopulated footprints for additional ram modules of course that is except for the 1.6 revision now you may be asking why would microsoft leave these unpopulated pads on the xbox motherboard and the answer is it was most likely done as a cost-saving measure xbox debugging units as well as the sega shahira arcade machine which are based on the original xbox architecture both utilize 128 megabytes of ram and it was probably just simpler and cheaper to design one motherboard that they all could use and simply not populate those pads for retail xbox consoles now this brings us to the last variant of the xbox the 1.6 where microsoft curiously removed the extra 4 ram spots on the motherboard one would assume since it no longer has those free unpopulated ram footprints that it's probably not possible to add the extra 64 megabytes of ram right this is where og xbox forum member prehistoric man comes into the mix he is a software engineer and xbox enthusiast from the uk and he discovered a fairly novel way to add the extra ram modules to the 1.6 motherboard to give it a total of 128 megabytes and that method he found is simply stacking another ram module on top of each of the existing ones as it turns out each bank of ram modules although they are on their own set of pads share the same data lines so by stacking the ram modules on top of each other and soldering the pins together we can effectively achieve the same thing one caveat is that we need to keep one of the pins free on all the additional ram modules and that's pin 28 pin 28 provides a unique chip select signal allowing the xbox to identify each ram chip and allocate resources appropriately now this may all seem a bit abstract when explained verbally but once we get into the installation tutorial later in the video it'll all become much clearer alright so in this video i'm going to show you all the parts you need to give your 1.6 xbox 128 megabytes of ram then i'll demonstrate how to install the additional ram modules onto the motherboard go over the features of this mod review the pros and cons and of course provide you with my overall thoughts so the first thing you'll need is of course a 1.6 revision xbox and four authentic ram modules these can either be harvested from another original xbox or you can buy them online modsville usa sells them on his website which i'll have linked down below in the video description and the last thing you'll need is a mod chip i'm using an aladdin chip that i also got from modsville usa which actually already comes pre-flashed with a 1.6 compatible version of xblast this makes debugging the ram mod a lot easier alright so that's everything you'll need to do this mod now let me show you how to install it okay as usual the first thing we need to do is tear down the xbox and get to the motherboard i have a video showing you how to do this on a 1.6 xbox and i have that video linked down in the video description so here you can see the two ram modules that we'll be soldering to but before we do that we need to remove the heatsink from the gpu i'll explain why this is needed a little bit later in the tutorial the first thing we'll need to do is rebuild the lpc for the mod chip since microsoft removed some of the necessary connections to the lpc which were present on previous revisions of the motherboard now full disclosure i initially did the lpc rebuild with a really nice qsb shown here however for whatever reason i couldn't get the qsb to work so i actually had to remove it and rebuilt the lpc manually with some wires as you can see here this process i actually found to be a lot easier and certainly more reliable plus you don't need to buy anything you just need a few wires now like i said previously it doesn't matter what mod chip you use however you will need to flash a custom bios to it that prehistoric man made which can be found on his thread on the og xbox forum i'll also have that linked in the video description this is a modified version of xblast that works with the 1.6 revision xboxes and is critical for testing and making sure that each new ram module we install works anyway once you install the machip of your choice we can get to the meat and potatoes of the mod soldering in the new ram chips to start i tinned each leg of the already installed ram chip i added some flux and then just a small amount of solder to the tip of my iron and hit each of the legs once that's done i did a quick check with my multimeter to make sure there weren't any bridges between the legs now let's grab the new ram chip we need to slightly bend down all the legs to do this you'll need a perfectly flat surface such as a piece of glass i'm actually using a glass screen lens for a game boy color for this now what you want to do is firmly hold the ram chip and slowly bend all the legs on a single side as shown here you want to do this to each of the four sides doing it like this ensures that all the legs are bent to the same degree i'm essentially bending the legs until the chip is perpendicular to the glass you don't want to bend them too much more than that and here you can see what the bent legs look like compared to the non-bent legs shown on the left this bend will allow the legs of the new ram chip to contact the ones on the original chip already installed on the board next we need to bend pin 28 up since we will not be soldering it to the other ram chip this is the chip select pin which determines whether a chip is taking input and pushing output in other words it allows the xbox to identify each individual ram chip and this is what pin 28 should look like now drop the new chip onto the existing one ensure that the chip's orientation matches the one below it for example notice the orientation of the text samsung we want the new chip to have the same orientation see just like that now you want to very carefully adjust the position of the ram chip so that each of the legs are in perfect alignment with the ones below definitely take your time with this step once they're all aligned add some flux and then very gently hopefully without moving the chip tack in one of the legs then tack in another leg on the other side this will keep the chip from moving around as we solder the rest of the legs and then begin to solder in all the other legs you really just need to touch the legs of the top ram module to the lower one i added a very small amount of solder to the tip of my iron while doing this you may also find that you need to push in the legs of the top ram module with the iron to help make a better connection once all the pins have been connected go ahead and solder a wire to pin 28 then route the other end of the wire through this hole next to the gpu this is why we needed to remove the heat sink earlier to gain access to this through hole once the wire is routed to the other side of the motherboard locate this via here near capacitor c4 p21 this via provides the select signal to the bank 3 ram module we just installed great before moving on to the bios ram test let's first check the pins for continuity and bridging i like to check for continuity between the base of the bottom pin to the top of the top pin continuity means they're connected which is what we want i also want to check to see if there's any bridging on adjacent pins which we'll need to fix if there are once i'm satisfied that all the pins look good we can go ahead and conduct the ram test using xblast so go ahead and drop the motherboard back into the xbox you only need to connect one of the controller ports the front panel so we can turn the console on and off and of course the power supply you can also plug in the fan but it's not completely necessary since the console will only be turned on for a couple minutes just to run the ram test then power on the console once booted into the custom x blast bios go over to settings then tools and then 128 megabyte ram test it will check for additional ram modules and ensure they are working as you can see on screen the bank 3 ram chip came back with zero failures which means it passed whereas all the other chips which we haven't installed yet came back with massive amounts of ram read back test failures resulting in that really large number you can see on screen next to the other ram chips great now we just need to rinse and repeat the next ram chip we'll be installing is for bank 2. just tin the original ram chip legs bend the legs of the new ram chip drop the new ram chip onto the existing ones ensuring the orientation is correct solder in all the legs solder a wire to pin 28 and again route this wire to the other side of the motherboard through the hole near the gpu now the bank 2 pin 28 wire needs to be soldered to this via near c4 r13 [Music] once that's done again check your pins and then drop the motherboard back into the xbox and run the ram test again [Music] awesome the bank 2 chip also came back with zero errors so now let's continue the same process with the two remaining ram chips on the bottom of the motherboard we'll do the bank 1 ram module next the pin 28 wire for the bank 1 ram chip needs to be soldered to this via near c4 p10 then run the ram test again [Music] nice another successful install now the last chip we'll be soldering in is bank four the pin 28 wire for the bank 4 module needs to be soldered here close to c4 r6 then let's run the ram test one last time [Music] awesome all ram modules have been installed successfully and if you go back to the main menu screen on xblast you'll see that it registers all 128 megabytes of ram and that this is in fact a 1.6 xbox okay so we spent all this effort getting 128 megabytes of ram into our 1.6 xbox so now you may be asking why on earth would i go through all this trouble so let's discuss some of the things we can now do with all this extra memory the first thing we can do which i think is the most interesting is we can now play some of the sega shihiro arcade games which require the additional ram games like virtua cop are now playable on the console i think this is the feature that most folks will be interested in additionally the extra ram makes it easier to debug software if you're into game development for the xbox and if you still use the console for running emulators it'll most definitely help run some of the more demanding ones other than that there really isn't much else you can do with the extra ram this will not improve the performance of your regular xbox game collection now i have to mention everything i just explained can be done on any xbox modded with 128 megabytes of ram not just this one the only unique thing about adding ram to the 1.6 xbox is the more difficult installation so with that let's get into the pros and cons of this mod starting with the pros to be honest there aren't many other than the limited gains in functionality that i previously mentioned i think the average xbox user won't necessarily find this to be an essential mod really i feel the biggest pro is only if you currently have a 1.6 revision xbox and you really want 128 megabytes of ram there really isn't any other reason to go through the added effort of upgrading a 1.6 when the other revisions are much simpler to perform this type of upgrade but as i've mentioned in previous videos it isn't always a matter of whether we should do these types of mods but rather that we can no rational reason needed i mean it is quite the flex saying you have 128 megabytes of ram installed in your 1.6 xbox it's honestly amazing that something which was previously thought to be impossible actually has quite a simple solution now while this mod is simple in theory in reality it's anything but prehistoric man actually has a youtube channel where he made a video covering the more technical aspects of this mod it's definitely interesting so be sure to check out his channel i'll have a link to it down below alright now let's get into the cons obviously the biggest one has to be the difficulty of the mod itself like i said previously modding any other revision of the xbox would be far simpler as a sort of science experiment and proof of concept it's incredibly cool however it's not the most practical but that doesn't change the fact that i am so amazed that prehistoric man made this mod happen knowing now that it's possible to mod a 1.6 xbox with 128 megabytes of ram is just so cool so there you have it the 1.6 xbox 128 megabyte ram upgrade it's folks like prehistoric man that continue to push the retro modding scene forward with solutions to previously thought impossible mods no matter how practical or impractical the mod is anyway what do you all think would you do this ram upgrade to your 1.6 xbox console and if you're planning to how would you utilize it will you use it as a debugging system or play sega shihiro arcade titles let me know down below in the comments and as always thank you so much for watching and i'll see you all next thursday [Music] you

Channel: Macho Nacho Productions

Views: 191,800

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Id: esM_-4GTU9E

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2022