[admin]please use thread to coordinate the effort of developing a FAQ thread as noted below. questions and answers will be hosted in another thread[/admin]
Hello Everyone,
I have a suggestion for this section of the forums: I have spent 3 hours reading all over the place about firmwares, dashboards, NAND flashes, kernels, RGH, glass bongs, kitchen sinks, tramp stamps, and everything else in existence. I have yet to understand why you would do any of this. Pretty much every forum I have been in for the past week is completely mixed up with all of this information. Every single one is just a bunch of mixed (and mostly outdated) tutorials on how to perform these modifications, but little to no explanation as to why, and no organization.
Look at this from my perspective: A couple of years ago, the only thing that could be done was a modified DVD firmware, and the first liteon was impossible. BenQ was the last drive that could be firmwared. AP25 did not exist yet.
So today, I re-acquaint myself with whats what. So I see that there is AP25 checks that can flag you NAND for banning, theres a new firmware out called LT, you should update your dashboard before modifying your drive, but dont update to the latest dash or else you cannot Jtag, but you can still RGH, but maybe not. Then theres also a ton of products for dual booting? External drive switching? Expanded HDD and booting ISO from HDD? I start reading about JTAGs and quickly see Live is a no-no. I see that RGH seems to have replaced JTAG? Whats the difference between NAND and JTAG? What do you really get? You can get banned and crippled? Banned I understand, but its possible to have your xbox crippled from the ban so you can no longer install games? What hack gets you crippled?
What would be great is a single post that ties all of this together. A timeline of the history would be nice. This is really confusing, and frustrating, especially when you spend hours reading about hack method that was abandoned a year ago in favor of a new method, and there is still no explanation of why you would even bother to do any of this.
A suggested format would be the following:
If you have a Phat:
Modified DVD firmware: Allows you to do this, this, and this. You cannot do this or this. If you do this firmware, you can no longer perform RGH. Link to thread explaining different drives and firmwares. Link to tutorials. Link to Etc.
NAND: Allows you to do this. You cannot do this if you perform this mod. This works with this other hack to do this. A better method is to do this instead. Link to thread explaining different version, dashes, etc. Link to things you can do with this installed. Links to tutorials. Etc
OTHER HACK: Allows you to do this. etc etc
PRODUCTS: Xkey, Boxzii, etc etc. Whats they do. What they work with.
You can call me lazy, and tell me to go find out for myself like I see everyone else do. But it gets annoying reading through 20 pages of a thread about something to see a post say that nobody uses that method anymore because the new method is better. All of this information is so scattered, I cannot find anything that lets me know where to start. From my perspective, I am about to update my virgin pristine HDMI phat to the latest dashboard. I have the general sense that if I do, I will lock out the potential to modify it in the future. So do I update to a not-so-current dash instead of the newest one? How would I do that? Why should I care, what exactly am I going to lose? I said earlier, I have spent quite a bit of time already and seen tons of numbers that mean nothing to me. At this point, since the information is vast and disorganized, I dont :censored:ing care. Its one thing for people to read and learn on thier own, but this is rediculous. Every thread and tutorial shows the 'HOW'. It completely assumes you already know 'WHY' and 'WHAT THE CONSEQUENCES ARE'.
From the perspective of a newbie, there is just way too much to spend days figuring out reading 100 of pages of posts (mostly filled with poeple saying they messed things up, and once in a great while updating the information).
Just a thought.