ArchAngle V.I.P. Lifetime Xbox Version: v1.6 Modded: Xecuter 2.6 CE
Joined: Oct 03, 2014 Posts: 367
Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2020 3:41 am Post subject: Xbox BIOS ID Display
This is really an adjunct to my recent TSOP posts but it might be relevant to other users so I thought I'd post it here.
When I flashed 256K EvoxM8+ 137(F&G) using HexIns and then went to unlock the HDD HexIns uses a customised Evox dash to do this. I immediately noticed it was showing the correct BIOS information.
That got me thinking about why it could do that and why my chipped Xbox which I'm 99% sure also uses the same BIOS does not. I did not flash that myself which is why I can't be sure 100%.
The fact is BIOS Checker reports both the new TSOP and the chipped machine as having "Unknown" BIOS and the "MD5" hash ID displayed are both different. Neither MD5 hash ID code is in the BIOS Checker BIOS lists or any EvoX dash.ini. Only the HexIns Lock/Unlock EvoX dash tool .ini includes the TSOP one. That I assume is why it displays correctly there.
Questions:-
How do I determine the MD5 hash ID for my chipped Xbox or any other one for that matter?
Do I have to add that to the EvoX and BIOS Checker .inis manually?
What about XBMC? Under system Information listing it says BIOS: Unknown for all my softmods and these two other Xboxes. It also says add the MD5 from the xbmc.log to the BIOS ID.
To start with the MD5 ID is not anywhere I can see in the xbmc.log and where, precisely, is the "BIOS ID" meant to be located. I'd assumed you create a BIOS ID text document so that's what I tried on the TSOP using the information from the HexIns tool evox.ini mentioned.
No joy. Put it in the XBMC folder and it still didn't change the BIOS info from Unknown.
If someone here could explain how to get the correct BIOS ID info from a Xbox and detail how to use it I'd be grateful.
kaos_engr V.I.P. Lifetime
Joined: Jun 04, 2012 Posts: 192
Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2020 1:55 am Post subject: Re: Xbox BIOS ID Display
ArchAngle wrote:
Questions:-
How do I determine the MD5 hash ID for my chipped Xbox or any other one for that matter?
Evoxdash writes the computed MD5 hash of the booting BIOS to the evox.ini file. Look for the Current = line in the file.
Quote:
Do I have to add that to the EvoX and BIOS Checker .inis manually?
Yes, if there is no entry with a matching MD5 hash in those files - the distributed team's BIOS has been modified by a tool such as EVTool for Evox BIOSes or XBTool for X2 BIOSes - you'll have keep track of the MD5 hash of the modified version and add it with a name to help ID the changes made to the BIOS if you wish to display that for the BIOS's name.
If you don't use the evoxdash when you load a BIOS's dot bin file into the proper supporting version of either of these two BIOS modification tools, it will show the computed MD5 hash of the BIOS.
Update: I believe you can use a Windows MD5 hash computing application on the BIOS's dot bin file to obtain the correct value too. You need to know the base size of the BIOS. If the BIOS is 256KB or 512KB. Some dot bin files are 2x or 4x the base BIOS size to fill, for example, a 1MB TSOP. You need to compute the hash on the proper base sized dot bin file, not a 2x or 4x version of it.
Quote:
What about XBMC? Under system Information listing it says BIOS: Unknown for all my softmods and these two other Xboxes. It also says add the MD5 from the xbmc.log to the BIOS ID.
XBMC has it's own BiosIDs.ini file to add entries to. When running XBMC, look for it in the Q:\system\SystemInfo subfolder. If not running XBMC, look for that subfolder under the directory where you installed XBMC4Xbox to the Xbox's hard drive.
Quote:
To start with the MD5 ID is not anywhere I can see in the xbmc.log and where, precisely, is the "BIOS ID" meant to be located. I'd assumed you create a BIOS ID text document so that's what I tried on the TSOP using the information from the HexIns tool evox.ini mentioned.
For XBMC4Xbox, you may have to enable more detailed logging to have the BIOS's MD5 hash logged as the default setting is used to log startup errors, not all startup information.
Edit the <XBMC_Path>\UserData\advancedsettings.xml file to add an entry to change the debug log level to 1.
For more information, see xbmc4xbox.org.uk's wiki page at
No joy. Put it in the XBMC folder and it still didn't change the BIOS info from Unknown.
If someone here could explain how to get the correct BIOS ID info from an Xbox and detail how to use it I'd be grateful.
Hopefully, my answers to your questions above will help.
ArchAngle V.I.P. Lifetime Xbox Version: v1.6 Modded: Xecuter 2.6 CE
Joined: Oct 03, 2014 Posts: 367
Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2020 4:09 am Post subject:
Thanks. Very useful and helpful info as usual.
I've just spent some time actually identifying the chip in my hard-modded Xbox and from all accounts it looks to be a solderless Xecuter 2.6 or 2.6CE. I don't know what the difference is as that information seems to have been lost with the Team-Xecuter web site.
Anyway the evidence is that I have Evox M8+ 1.6 137 (F&G) on both Bank 1 and 2. Bank 1 has blue X and no Evox logo, Bank 2 has blue X with the pink Evox logo. I guessed and it seems you're confirming that means the original vanilla BIOS was customised using the EVTool explaing why the MD5 hash does not match any listed one I can find.
It is what BIOS Checker reports that is bothering me.
As I understand it each bank of this chip is 512K so a total of 1MB. If you check the bios.bin backed up at the same time as the eeprom it reports as 1MB in size. I used the tool HasMyFiles and it displayed a MD5 hash which matched one of the Bioses MD5 hashes listed by BIOS Checker but not either of the ones I was expecting.
I'd backed up the bios.bin separately for both banks. No BIOS MD5 reported by HashMyFiles or EVTool matches the 512K Bios.1.
All resized to 256K MD5 from both banks show:-
F8FBD6055D2DE3475E16CCE84CEE6C3D
the same as 256K BIOS Checker Bios.4
All resized to 512K MD5 from both banks show:-
1CD78045D2AB5559ACCC1B4FE8277075
the same as 256K BIOS Checker Bios.1/2/3.
No combination of BIOS resize is reported by the EVTool as the 512K Bios.1 MD5 hash or the HashMyFiles 1MB MD5 hash.
I'm not sure what all this means. Could it be evidence that each bank was actually flashed with two customised 256K Evox M8+ 1.6 137 BIOS rather than a single 512K BIOS on each?
If so why would they not use the same BIOS for Bios.3 as Bios.4? That is surely not normal practice so could it instead be a BIOS Checker reporting error?
kaos_engr V.I.P. Lifetime
Joined: Jun 04, 2012 Posts: 192
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2020 10:19 am Post subject:
See the differences between Team Xecuter's X2.6 lite and X2.6CE lite.
You can dump the BIOS using Evox's Backup menu option.
In the backup folder, you will find the file - bios.bin - along with several other files. This file is a copy of the currently loaded BIOS.
You can download that file to a PC and use one of several apps available to compute the MD5 hash of the file. Not that it's needed since Evoxdash already computed it. Stored in evox.ini's Current = line.
X2 BIOS Manager (X2BM) is a good Windows app to load this bios.bin file into to see if its configuration file can ID it. X2BM too has a file with MD5 hashes of a wide assortment but not all bios dot bin files.
If the BIOS is modified with EVTool or XBTool to change settings or colors, the MD5 hash will most likely not be found. Any change made to the BIOS changes the hash value. It's up to the user to add the new BIOS's MD5 hash value to such configuration files to be able to recognize/ID their modified BIOS.
Another Item to Check to ID an Xbox BIOS
If no replacement dashboard has been installed, look at the end of the stock MS dashboard's Settings > System Info scroller. Note the K value. This is the kernel version. Or, if a replacement dashboard starts, look for the kernel version in it. If not shown on the skin, it can be modified to show the value. Or, look in Evoxdash's Settings menu listing for the kernel value or UnleashX's System Info page for it. XBMC also shows the kernel version in its System Info page.
One problem with Evox BIOSes, if the Evo-X logo is disabled with EVTool, their BIOSes' kernel number matches the MS BIOS it was based upon, making it hard to know if it's really an MS stock or Evox modified BIOS. (If it boots a backup disc, definitely not stock.) For example, M8plus's kernel version is 1.00.5838.01. The same as a v1.6 stock MS BIOS. If it's not a 1.6 console, it's most likely the M8plus BIOS. However, I believe M8, not the plus version, also has the same kernel version - 5838.
Team Xecuter changed the kernel version of their BIOSes. Each X2 or X3 BIOS has its own unique version number. For example, the X2 4981's kernel version is 1.00.4981.LL (LL = 06 or 67 depending upon the default LBA48 setting in use).
Why two different 256KB hashes for BIOS Bank 2?
I'm not sure why the second bank shows two different 256KB MD5 hashes.
Does the console boot from this bank with two different MD5 hash values listed? Save the bios.bin file and post it for me to take a look at the content.
ArchAngle V.I.P. Lifetime Xbox Version: v1.6 Modded: Xecuter 2.6 CE
Joined: Oct 03, 2014 Posts: 367
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2020 2:49 pm Post subject:
A lot of very useful info. Thanks.
What I've found out since is that getting each source ie. Evox, XBMC, HeXEn or BIOSChecker to recognise the BIOS ID requires inserting it into each relevant document.
I had this idea I could just create one massive universal BIOS ID .ini file with all of the MD5 hashes from those multiple sources. Then just add my two Xecuter 2.6CE custom EvoxM8+ 137 v1.6 series BIOs IDs to that. Ideally at the top of the list.
Unfortunately each source seems to require a different syntax so you can't just merge them as I'd hoped. I tried mind you; I altered the XBMC one which I'd eventually found and added my Xecuter BIOS to that. But when I copied the same document over to BIOSChecker, changing its name of course, it did not work.
However it'll be easy enough now to add the two Xecuter ones and the recent TSOP I did using a HeXEn EvoxM8+ flash to each app/dash BIOS ID list.
Thanks ss regards the chip ID - it is definitely a Xecuter 2.6CE I eventually identified that myself but what was throwing me was the colour. All shots I found were of the chip not fitted. When its fitted all you see is the fairly featureless red topside.
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