RAM upgrades have become a popular mode for the original XBox – you can easily bump up your RAM from 64MB to 128MB. While it doesn’t give you any advantage over most games written to expect 64MB, it does help with running alternative OS like emulators, game development and Linux. The XBox PCB always has footprints for extra RAM chips, so RAM upgrades were easy – just get some new RAM ICs and solder them on board. However, in Hardware Update 1.6, these footprints were removed, and RAM upgrades to v1.6 were always considered impossible.
[Prehistoricman] Introduces a mode that makes it possible to upgrade RAM to v1.6 using an old technique from the first day of the home computer. He is stacking new RAM chips on top of the old ones and soldering in parallel. The overwhelming majority of the RAM line is divided into chips, which makes this mode possible – all you need to connect the extra chips is the magnet wire for the additional RAM chip selection lines, which, fortunately, are still on board. He shared a tutorial with lots of images, so it should be easier for you to perform this mode, if you are stuck with an old console that does not have footprint of RAM chip.
We’ve just covered an original Xbox SoftModing tutorial, so it’s just as timely as ever! If you want to read about 128MB mode, this is a good place to start.
We thank you [DjBiohazard] To share with us!