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LGR - Unboxing a New In Box Xbox

https://youtu.be/hn3me6w_dE8

Ooh, fresh Xbox! I may not be a huge console gaming nut, but the original Xbox always stood out in my mind. I mean, Microsoft made a game console that's practically a specialized Pentium III system crammed into a black plastic shell. It's neat, being full of desktop computer-like components, even runs an API based on DirectX under the hood.

While I never owned one back in the day, I've had this new old stock Xbox console for years now, just ready to be unboxed and enjoyed. And well, with the 20th anniversary of the console coming up here soon it seemed like as good a time as any to dive in and experience the thing. That and I've been meaning to open it up and make sure the clock capacitor isn't dead/leaking, which can wreak all kinds of havoc on the motherboard.

And now it's back to the video I've been working on in the background for a couple weeks. Not sure if it'll be done by next Friday, but if not it'll definitely be good to go the week after that. Have a good one!

LGR - Unboxing a New In Box Xbox

Comments

I wasn’t aware about the clock capacitor… and I have the exact same model. Guess I’ll be breaking out the solder iron! Thanks for the tip Clint 👍 and great video as always

Woz Brown

Happy to hear it, Ryan!

LGR

This is a 1.5er, no need for a modchip, just a little jumperwire that reactivates the write line on the flash chip. Then an exploitable game, Clint has Mechassault, a modified gamepad that replaced the proprietary memory card slot with plain old USB, as the gamepad is just plain old USB itself, and a small USB stick, 64 MByte preferable. A modified savegame on the stick, either XST or SID at hand and off you go. And while you are at it, a larger HDD is not such a bad idea. :)

BastetFurry

Hmm... you have an 1.5 console, you have Mechassault... the path to the best retro media center has just opened! :D

BastetFurry

This is probably one of my most favourite LGR videos in a while. The nostalgia really hit me in the feels! Thank you so much for sharing, your enthusiasm is contagious 😊

The cases for Xbox games have always been so colorful and interesting while still having a degree of uniformity with the Xbox logo on the spine. Game cases have gotten progressively more boring over the years

Garoninja

I got the stupidest grin on my face when you pulled out the controller still wrapped in blue plastic. The Xbox was my first home console all my own back when I was a 7 year old girl in 2002, and despite its flaws and my critiques of the parent company it still has a soft spot in my heart to this day. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Deryn L.

I mod chipped so many of these things back in the day. A friends brother kept referring me to his friends. I taught him to tell what version hardware they had then order the chip, and I'd install them. I still have that spool of 30AWG kynar wire used to make the various jumpers for each board rev. I wonder if the OG Xbox would work with an IDE-to-SATA adapter and a modern SSD. Just loading games from a larger IDE HDD made loading a lot faster, and modern NAND flash is possibly faster than the RAM in the Xbox itself. Sure, you /could/ play pirated games, but the biggest driver for us was the faster loading, not having to carry around or swap out discs, and XBMC.

Kadah

Oh man, XBMC. I remember a guy I knew back in the day being obsessed with every new release of that, he had a HUGE library of... entirely legit movies on there, ha

LGR

Ah, good point on the port! I have one of those USB adapters for converting it over, which I used with a flash drive on the other one I had some years back

LGR

Fable is another one I've never played somehow! I have really gotta give it a shot someday, Lionhead's games were really somethin' else

LGR

Same same, I didn't get a PS3 until a few years after I grabbed a 360 due to the lack of Grand Turismo. Then I ended up not being terribly impressed with GT5 (prologue or the full game) so I went back to Forza and have stuck pretty closely with that series since!

LGR

So many of the visuals still hold up surprisingly well! I ended up finding my nicer cables too, can't wait to see what it looks like through the Retrotink 5x

LGR

Outrun 2 was an instant classic in my book! Even more so with OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast, which I still kick myself for not grabbing a physical copy of back when it was new. Darned thing became rather valuable.

LGR

Hey nice, happy to have brought some light to those memories! I've covered Midtown 1 and 2 on LGR before, might be worth a watch :)

LGR

Oh interesting, I wasn't aware of a recall!

LGR

That's awesome, I wonder far you can take things regarding the hard drive. It'd be fun to see an SSD of some kind in there.

LGR

My friend and I camped out in a Meijer store on the eve of the XBOX release in 2001. There was a long line of people sitting on the floor waiting for it to be released at midnight, if I remember correctly. Man, those were good times. I absolutely loved DOA3 and Burnout 2. My original XBOX hard drive failed at some point. Years later I bought another and modded it with a much larger hard drive with room for lots and lots of games.

Chris Wiley

Kinda weird seeing the original power cable. All the ones I dealt with back in the day had the chunky GFCI one from the recall. There was so many power cable and adapter recalls in the early to mid 2ks. What a strange time that was.

Kadah

I remember playing a bit of halo on one on launch day at a store. I think I was at the store to fix something to do with a windows XP demo setup that had a feature for getting digital photos printed online that I was working on at the time. XP launched a few weeks before the xbox so the timing makes sense for it. There was no one else playing with the xbox at the time (I guess late morning on a week day the kids were all at school) so I thought I would give it a go. Seemed decent at the time, but I already had a genesis and a PSone, so I wasn't looking for a new console. Next console for us was the 360 elite since my wife won it in a rock band (the video game) competition at university run by microsoft.

Lennart Sorensen

My friend had an Xbox and I have fond memories of playing Burnout with him. We did a trip once down to Oslo for a DDR tournament and the apartment we stayed in had an Xbox. We spent many hours listening to Apop's "You and Me Against the World" album and playing Burnout. Many fond memories and always wish I had one, so it's a console I plan on picking up eventually.

Alyxx the Rat

I remember when my friend got an Xbox, it blew my mind how massive the thing was. We would play tetris, star wars, any racing game we could find for it, but all that went out the window once we discovered Halo. My gosh that was such a mind blowing game for little kid me. So many happy memories staying up late doing couch co-op or endless slayer mode. I have an OG xbox somewhere in my storage too, I should do the capacitor fix too and see if my nephews wanna play Halo with me hahaha. (Sidenote: I think you just helped me ID a car game I once played in some random computer store as a kid but could never figure out the title for. The only thing I could remember is I was in a city and people would jump out the way if you drove at them, looks like I gotta pick up Midtown Madness 😅)

DFawlt Uzr

Oh and Outrun 2 is a fantastic game. It’s like a $20 game and well worth it

Myles MAN

RIP that time capsule, but it was worth it for the video!

Jeffrey Pierce

Good idea to replace the clock capacitor. I replaced a few over the years with one that leaked every where, some bloated and leaking, and one that was perfectly fine. That last one was weird to me. I removed it anyways.

Myles MAN

I honestly never played an original xbox other than maybe one game of halo multiplayer at a friends house. My family had playstations up until later in the xbox 360s lifespan when we got one. Im impressed how good the graphics look, I could easily be convinced they were much newer titles

Zachary Outen

This is right up my alley, the original Xbox was the first (and only) console I got as a Christmas present. I also remember back then my cousin having the PS 2 and my sister having the GCN. I knew I chose wisely, since the two of them were always asking to play on my Xbox

Hernando Heilbron

Great to see one fresh. I've never actually played an original Xbox, everyone I knew had a PS2. I also started with Forza 2 when I got an Xbox 360, purely because there wasn't a Gran Turismo to encourage me to buy a PS3 instead.

Matt Tester

Woah! This was great to watch Clint. I remember my brother buying one in 2002 from his hard earned money. My favorite game on the platform is Fable for sure. Hours were lost in that game.

Joerie Brugts

I had the original Xbox when it was first released in 2001 - and it had the Duke controller! At the time, I detested it because I wanted a PS2 but my dad got me the Xbox. However, as soon as I started playing it, absolutely loved it. Many hours were lost playing Project Gotham Racing, RalliSport Challenge and of course Halo: CE. I'm back in the Xbox ecosystem with my Xbox One and I'm having a ball playing the Xbox originals on it. Also watched this video on my Xbox One too, haha. Thanks for the nostalgia trip Clint! Interesting tidbit - the Xbox's controller port is USB-based despite the proprietary connector.

Mark Zita

Its amazing to see how well those games hold up after literally TWENTY years! I bought one back in the day for Halo and Fable which were exclusive xbox titles... dont think I ever bought any other games but it still feels in hindsight like it was worth $450 to only play those. Really really amazing games for the time (and even todays standards imo). Clint...... PLAY HALO. Its amazing. ;)

Jason Foster

Slaps Xbox, this baby can rip so many borrowed CDs and xbmc was the bees knees. Man... Being 15 years old and playing Halo all day and drinking mtn dew code red. Or was that last week? Srly playing custom soundtracks in games needs to come back.

PiraTed

This is amazing but as a collector it also breaks my heart a little bit. Love the original XBox, and glad to see it's been getting some more love with the 20th anniversary. Some forgotten gems on there, like the FromSoft Otogi games.

Tom Roseman

Definitely! The Cybiko comes to mind as the most recent, as I had two of them brand new in box and each of them were dead. Corrosion from internal batteries in that case.

LGR

Those always looked rad back in the day. And now they look even better IMO, haha. I'm a sucker for colorful translucent plastics.

LGR

I discussed this in the video, but this unit is the last revision with the clock capacitor as far as I've been able to tell. This one is from March of 2004 and is a revision 1.5, whereas they changed the clock in revision 1.6 -- according to what I've read at least :) I'd be happy to be wrong!

LGR

Have you ever gone to use one of these old new old stock items for a video and found it DOA?

I always loved the original Xbox design. I had a Halo edition with a dark green see through shell. I kick myself constantly for selling that thing to friggin Game Stop

Jacob

As that Xbox you have there was produced in 2004 and is likely a model 1.5 or 1.6, you DO NOT need to remove the clock capacitor, as this was the model that employed a different style of capacitor that generally does not leak. It's required on these models to be present to function correctly. Edit: sorry, jumped the gun there, replying while watching the video.

Tktagmedia


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