XBox360

XBox360

About

RetroNAS supports modded XBox 360s running a custom dash to be able to load games from an SMBv1 share. The process on how to mod your XBox360 and install a custom dash will not be documented here.

Loading games via SMB allows for lengthening of the XBox 360's optical drive laser's lifespan, and is also a way to continue using an Xbox 360 console that has a damaged optical drive.

Installation

Run RetroNAS and navigate to "Install things" then "Microsoft XBox 360 SMB config".

Note your RetroNAS IP address, as you will need it later.

If this is your first time installing SMB services, ensure you've set the SMB password for the main RetroNAS user as well. See the Samba documentation for instructions.

The installer will create a virtual SMB1 share under xbox360/games (exported as "xbox360" specifically for the console to hide non-XBox360 content) that links back to the Generic ROMs folder. You can use Samba, Netatalk, FTP or any other supported protocol to push your games to this location.

If you connect via a modern computer via Samba, it will auto-negotiate a newer SMB protocol for faster performance. This is the same whether you use the virtual "xbox360" share or the top level "retronas" share.

Inside this share, put your extracted XBox 360 games, one game per sub-folder (the top level directory of an XBox360 game usually contains a file called "default.xex" which is the main game executable). ISO images will not work, and games must be extracted.

Aurora Dash guide

Aurora Dash - enable ConnectX (SMB1)

Boot your XBox360, ensure it is connected to your network (wired is recommended, WiFi works but is slow) and load Aurora Dash. To find out the IP address of your console, from within Aurora Dash press the Back button for System information, and your console's IP address will be shown.

By default it should start the FTP service. If not, press Start to enter settings, navigate to Modules, locate the FTP Server module. Set it to be enabled with the default FTP port number 21. Set a username and password of your choosing.

Use an FTP client on any computer to log in and browse the contents of your XBox360's hard disk.

Locate your Aurora install directory, and beneath it a plugins folder. On my specific unit that was the FTP path /Hdd1/Aurora/Plugins.

Find the connectx.xex and connectx_patch.xexp files online. These are the plugins required to enable SMB1 access from your console. I located them on this site:

• https://digiex.net/threads/freestyle-dash-fsd-2-2-freestyle-dashboard-for-xbox-360-download-with-connectx.9773/

These are zipped up. Extract the contents to find the files. Checksums for the extracted files if you wish to verify them are:

# md5sum *
ee2f6f26d2fac92a9b7ea93955dc6fe2  connectx_patch.xexp
752f7fd096b14f97213036e98d94d0bf  connectx.xex

# sha1sum *
20f0f9d6999be65c506c0b5c27660e0306701ca4  connectx_patch.xexp
6fbceec8196550ad442180ff55fe52b36c8882a2  connectx.xex

# sha256sum *
92889b1d096afcd06201f372f54743113b3b7a35248dfa75d5e422ce16dc81a1  connectx_patch.xexp
7cace98c5a74891f78d2d6dd3b04d071c4d2c9f06dd6d8c796bfd9887a86f67b  connectx.xex

Copy the two extracted files via FTP to /Hdd1/Aurora/Plugins, then reboot your XBox 360.

Load Aurora Dash again, press Start to enter settings, navigate to Modules and locate the ConnectX module.

• Check the option "Always Load on Boot"
• Under "Share"
  • Set the "Computer Name" to retrosmb (if that fails to be located, put in your RetroNAS device's IP address instead)
  • Set the "Share Name" to be xbox360
• Under "Credentials"
  • Set the "Username" to be the Samba username you have configured (for RPi users, this is typically pi)
  • Set the "Password" to be the Samba password you have configured.

Once set, use the B button to back out of the menus, and reboot your XBox360 once again.

Aurora Dash - Configure content directories

With ConnectX configured, boot your XBox360 and load Aurora dash. Press Start to enter settings, and navigate to "Content".

• Under "Manage Paths", select "Add"
• Under "Path" and "Select location", select "Change"
• A menu should show "\Xbox360\System" with a number of options. Highlight "ConnectX" but do not enter the directory. Press Y (Yellow button) instead to select that path.
• A scan depth of 2 should be fine if you have extracted your games correctly into correct location on your RetroNAS mentioned above
• Select "Save" and exit out of the menu.
• Once back in the "Content" menu, under "Manage Paths", select "Scan now" to scan the network titles. You can optionally check "AutoScan" to ensure Aurora looks for new games on every boot, if you want to add more games at a later date.

In the main Aurora menu, games stored on your RetroNAS should appear. To filter only network games, press B (red button) and select "Filters & Sort", then scroll down to "ConnectX" and check that option with A (green button). Exit the menu with B (red button) to return to Aurora Dash and only see network titles. Select a title as normal, and press A (green button) to boot.

Freestyle Dash guide TBA

Performance

All models of the XBox360 shipped with a 100Mbit/s network interface. Some later models shipped with an 802.11b/g/n WiFi interface, however this is not recommended as it is quite slow.

The wired 100Mbit/s network interface tested under Aurora Dash seems to be limited to loading games at around 50Mbit/s (6.25MB/s). This limitation isn't the NAS, but rather the Xbox360 software side itself.

By comparison, the XBox360's 12x DVD-ROM has a maximum read speed of 16.5MB/s (around 130Mbit/s). The internal hard disk is attached via a SATA-II port with a maximum bandwidth of around 300MB/s (3Gbit/s), with actual speeds depending on the type of drive inside the console (2.5" spindle drives are much slower, typically around 50-80MB/s).

Network/SMB game loading currently the slowest method of loading games, however there may be some convenience in sharing titles across multiple consoles at the same time (say, for LAN games), or storing a large volume of titles that don't all fit on the smaller internal hard disk at once. Likewise XBox360 titles stored on RetroNAS can be loaded on both a real XBox360 and an emulator like Xenia at the same time.