Regular readers may have already read about my newly resurrected XBox 360. Having a console (for free) is A Good Thing, but having something to play on it is even better.
The Xbox 360 can allegedly play some XBox games. Some, but not all. Unfortunately for me, you need to have at least the 20gig hard drive for this to work, and all I have is a 256meg memory card.
Also, just to make life that bit more fun, I didn't have a controller either. My USB keyboard works the 360 Dashboard, but does sod all in games. Something I've got to say about the 360 is this - the controllers for it are bloody expensive, even second hand. After a bit of shoping around I managed to snag a wired controller for it for £15 (a wireless one would have been around £25).
As for cheap games, there are a couple of places that you can get cheap software. Aside from your friendly neighbourhood back-street games shop, there are a couple of places on the highstreet that specialise in second hand stuff.
Game (formerly Electronic Boutique) sells a mix of new and second hand gear. This was my first stop to get something to test my 360 with. After a brief hunt I walked away with a copy of Blue Dragon for £4.
As it turns out the game is, essentially, Final Fantasy 7 with Dragonball Z artwork. Spread over three DVDs it is a really nice, well paced little RPG, I'm actually surprised at just how good it is.
Of course, one game is never enough, so for our next jaunt I headed over to CeX. A bit unusual this lot, as all of their stock is second hand. You can also drop in your old DVDs, consoles or games and either get back cash, or use them against purchases in store (you get back more for your stuff this way).
I came out with Project Gotham 3 for a fiver, and the XBox 360 Live Arcade compilation for £4. Sadly Project Gotham 3 didn't work, but the Live Arcade disk did, and apart from me playing Uno into the small we hours on XBox Live, the rest of the family were hooked to Boom Boom Rocket.
Trying to return Project Gotham was a bit, well, strange. I still had the receipt for the game so I didn't forsee any difficulties in sending it back. As it turns out the game was physically damaged, and after a fair bit of muttering, huddled employees examining the game disk and "are you SURE you bought it from us?" they replaced the game. I've not had the chance to play it yet (hopefully later on tonight) so fingers crossed.
Looking closely at the game that I've now got in my grubby hands, I've actually ended up with Project Gotham 4 in a Project Gotham 3 box. As this retails for £12 then I'm quids in - assuming that it actually plays!
I also traded in some of my old DVD box sets and used the money to buy a 20 Gig hard drive for the 360 for £35. As with Project Gotham I'll be testing that later on tonight, once I get chance to get onto the 360.
(Later)
It looks like my luck has held out - both Project Gotham 4 and the hard drive work perfectly. So, yay for that!
Sunday, 15 February 2009
Thursday, 12 February 2009
XBox 360 Controller on Ubuntu 8.10
Seeing as I've now got an XBox 360 which uses a USB controller, I thought I'd give it a shot on Linux (or on Ubuntu to be exact).
Most devices these days are plug-and-play in Linux, and this controller is no exception - but. . .
It detects it as a mouse! The left stick causes the mouse pointer to move, which is less than helpful for playing games.
However, help is at hand. To get the gamepad working, open a command window and enter the following:
xinput list
This should give you a list that contains the XBox controller details:
"Microsoft X-Box 360 pad" id=5 [XExtensionPointer]
Num_buttons is 32
Num_axes is 2
Mode is Absolute
Motion_buffer is 256
Axis 0 :
Min_value is -32768
Max_value is 32767
Resolution is 10000
Axis 1 :
Min_value is -32768
Max_value is 32767
Resolution is 10000
Type the following, replacing [device] with the device ID provided above (in our example 5):
sudo xinput set-int-prop [device] 'Device Enabled' 32 0
And that's it, at least until you reboot.
Update: For those of you on 9.04, good news! The controller works properly without any additional configuration. Nice one!
Most devices these days are plug-and-play in Linux, and this controller is no exception - but. . .
It detects it as a mouse! The left stick causes the mouse pointer to move, which is less than helpful for playing games.
However, help is at hand. To get the gamepad working, open a command window and enter the following:
xinput list
This should give you a list that contains the XBox controller details:
"Microsoft X-Box 360 pad" id=5 [XExtensionPointer]
Num_buttons is 32
Num_axes is 2
Mode is Absolute
Motion_buffer is 256
Axis 0 :
Min_value is -32768
Max_value is 32767
Resolution is 10000
Axis 1 :
Min_value is -32768
Max_value is 32767
Resolution is 10000
Type the following, replacing [device] with the device ID provided above (in our example 5):
sudo xinput set-int-prop [device] 'Device Enabled' 32 0
And that's it, at least until you reboot.
Update: For those of you on 9.04, good news! The controller works properly without any additional configuration. Nice one!
Saturday, 7 February 2009
DanO vs XBox 360 and 3 Red Lights
I've just been given a "broken" XBox 360. Basically I've been told "if you can fix it, you can have it." As my future brother-in-law has already bought a replacement this was a nice challenge.
Update: Before we go any further with this there is something worth mentioning. Microsoft have extended the warranty on ALL XBox 360s to three years for this problem (and this problem only), so if your XBox 360 is less than three years old and you have the Red Ring of Death then call Microsoft for a replacement first. Read more about this in part 2.
Powering the console on gives 3 Red Lights, otherwise known as The Red Ring of Death (or to be more exact a general hardware failure).
There are a lot of rumours going around on the causes and fixes to the Red Ring of Death, so this looked like a good opportunity to maybe put the myths to bed.
Apparently the "R.R.O.D." can be caused by the soldered connections cracking on the GPU. This can be fixed by re-soldering the GPU (if you can get hold of a micro-solder kit), replacing the X-Clamp that holds the GPU in place with one that gives a tighter fit, or by "baking" the console.
Now, I've already sent off for a replacement X-Clamp (courtesy of EBay), but in the meantime I've been having a bit of a read-up on how the repair takes place.
According to popular rumour, the baking method goes something like this:
Step 1: Remove the hard drive, video cable, memory cards, in fact everything but the power supply from the XBox.
Step 2: Power on and wait for the three lights (making sure the XBox is lying flat).
Step 3: Taking three large DRY bath towels, wrap the XBox up completely, and leave for around 25 minutes.
Step 4: Unwrap the XBox which should still be showing three red lights and power it off.
Step 5: Wait for the XBox to cool completely (30-60 minutes) and power back on.
The theory goes that this causes the XBox to get so hot that the solder melts fixing any cracked joints.
Seeing as the XBox hasn't cost me anything, I'm going to try the "baking" method.
. . .
So after following the above instructions I powered the XBox back on and. . .
Still three red lights.
Just in case it hadn't been hot enough I re-wrapped it again, making sure it was nice and snug, and this time. . .
SUCCESS!!!
One working XBox! At least it was for around three minutes before it locked up. At this point I turned it off for another half-an-hour to make sure that it had cooled completely, and then tried playing a game - after half-an-hour of playing Dead or Alive 4 it was still working perfectly.
Nice one!
It is worth mentioning a couple of things at this point. One, if you choose to do this you do so at your own risk. Two, keep an eye on the XBox, as a house fire isn't fun for anyone concerned. Three, if you have a warranty on your XBox, then for Gods sake use that rather than messing around with alternative methods.
Also, this isn't necessarily a permanent fix. According to some people they have to do this every week or so.
And - just in case you do want to try this yourself. . .
The Towel Fix
NOTE: No, that isn't me in the video. Just so you know.
Another alternative fix - The Penny Fix
And, of course, the X-Clamp fix
Update 2 - Four days later. . .
So, the big question is "Is the XBox still working?"
All went swimmingly for a day or two, right up to the point that I tried to sign up for XBox Live. Half way through the sign-up process the XBox froze. Powering off and back on again brought me back to the three red lights.
Aaaaargh!
One more go with the towels (wrapped up for 30 minutes this time) and I had a working XBox 360 again. One the XBox had cooled I went back and signed up for XBox Live, downloaded a couple of demo games, watched some movie trailers, played a couple of DVDs, set up a UPnP server on my PC, watched a couple of episodes of Family Guy, and basically messed around for a couple of hours whilst waiting for the inevitable return of the red lights.
Not one lock-up.
On Monday I bought Blue Dragon (which I highly recommend to any Final Fantasy fans out there) which, in common with most RPGs shows the game play time on the saves. To date I've had over nine hours of game play with no lock-ups or other problems.
So does that mean that this time the fix is permanent? Who knows, although probably not. Since it turns out that this XBox is still covered by Microsoft's extended warranty for the Red Light problem it will be winging its way back to them should the issue re-occur.
Update 3: 1 week after the "towel fix"
Strange but true - the XBox 360 is still going. I did have one moment of "aaaargh" when the power cable got knocked partly out, followed by the familiar three red lights, but powering off and back on again with the cable securely in place did the trick.
The system has coped with what I'd call normal usage for a console (around three hours usage a night) without any problems.
In a fit of purest optimism I've bought another couple of games, and more importantly a 20 gig hard drive, so hopefully I'll be able to play some of my old XBox games on it too.
I'll be posting some more on my first impressions of the 360 in a different post, so stay tuned.
Update - Around three weeks since the last "towel fix"
The RROD has come back, so this time I'll be sending it back under warranty rather than messing around. Want to know how this went?
Read on in Part 2
Update: Before we go any further with this there is something worth mentioning. Microsoft have extended the warranty on ALL XBox 360s to three years for this problem (and this problem only), so if your XBox 360 is less than three years old and you have the Red Ring of Death then call Microsoft for a replacement first. Read more about this in part 2.
Powering the console on gives 3 Red Lights, otherwise known as The Red Ring of Death (or to be more exact a general hardware failure).
There are a lot of rumours going around on the causes and fixes to the Red Ring of Death, so this looked like a good opportunity to maybe put the myths to bed.
Apparently the "R.R.O.D." can be caused by the soldered connections cracking on the GPU. This can be fixed by re-soldering the GPU (if you can get hold of a micro-solder kit), replacing the X-Clamp that holds the GPU in place with one that gives a tighter fit, or by "baking" the console.
Now, I've already sent off for a replacement X-Clamp (courtesy of EBay), but in the meantime I've been having a bit of a read-up on how the repair takes place.
According to popular rumour, the baking method goes something like this:
Step 1: Remove the hard drive, video cable, memory cards, in fact everything but the power supply from the XBox.
Step 2: Power on and wait for the three lights (making sure the XBox is lying flat).
Step 3: Taking three large DRY bath towels, wrap the XBox up completely, and leave for around 25 minutes.
Step 4: Unwrap the XBox which should still be showing three red lights and power it off.
Step 5: Wait for the XBox to cool completely (30-60 minutes) and power back on.
The theory goes that this causes the XBox to get so hot that the solder melts fixing any cracked joints.
Seeing as the XBox hasn't cost me anything, I'm going to try the "baking" method.
. . .
So after following the above instructions I powered the XBox back on and. . .
Still three red lights.
Just in case it hadn't been hot enough I re-wrapped it again, making sure it was nice and snug, and this time. . .
SUCCESS!!!
One working XBox! At least it was for around three minutes before it locked up. At this point I turned it off for another half-an-hour to make sure that it had cooled completely, and then tried playing a game - after half-an-hour of playing Dead or Alive 4 it was still working perfectly.
Nice one!
It is worth mentioning a couple of things at this point. One, if you choose to do this you do so at your own risk. Two, keep an eye on the XBox, as a house fire isn't fun for anyone concerned. Three, if you have a warranty on your XBox, then for Gods sake use that rather than messing around with alternative methods.
Also, this isn't necessarily a permanent fix. According to some people they have to do this every week or so.
And - just in case you do want to try this yourself. . .
The Towel Fix
NOTE: No, that isn't me in the video. Just so you know.
Another alternative fix - The Penny Fix
And, of course, the X-Clamp fix
Update 2 - Four days later. . .
So, the big question is "Is the XBox still working?"
All went swimmingly for a day or two, right up to the point that I tried to sign up for XBox Live. Half way through the sign-up process the XBox froze. Powering off and back on again brought me back to the three red lights.
Aaaaargh!
One more go with the towels (wrapped up for 30 minutes this time) and I had a working XBox 360 again. One the XBox had cooled I went back and signed up for XBox Live, downloaded a couple of demo games, watched some movie trailers, played a couple of DVDs, set up a UPnP server on my PC, watched a couple of episodes of Family Guy, and basically messed around for a couple of hours whilst waiting for the inevitable return of the red lights.
Not one lock-up.
On Monday I bought Blue Dragon (which I highly recommend to any Final Fantasy fans out there) which, in common with most RPGs shows the game play time on the saves. To date I've had over nine hours of game play with no lock-ups or other problems.
So does that mean that this time the fix is permanent? Who knows, although probably not. Since it turns out that this XBox is still covered by Microsoft's extended warranty for the Red Light problem it will be winging its way back to them should the issue re-occur.
Update 3: 1 week after the "towel fix"
Strange but true - the XBox 360 is still going. I did have one moment of "aaaargh" when the power cable got knocked partly out, followed by the familiar three red lights, but powering off and back on again with the cable securely in place did the trick.
The system has coped with what I'd call normal usage for a console (around three hours usage a night) without any problems.
In a fit of purest optimism I've bought another couple of games, and more importantly a 20 gig hard drive, so hopefully I'll be able to play some of my old XBox games on it too.
I'll be posting some more on my first impressions of the 360 in a different post, so stay tuned.
Update - Around three weeks since the last "towel fix"
The RROD has come back, so this time I'll be sending it back under warranty rather than messing around. Want to know how this went?
Read on in Part 2
Sunday, 1 February 2009
The Best (and worst) of Cooking
The Internet is a great resource for anyone interested in cooking. There are so many different recipes out there, many of which would be unlikely to appear in any regular cook books.
Some, like Latka, have become a regular part of our cooking, others such as Loco Moco have given me a new favourite "junk food" type snack.
There are some great resources out there. Old Scrote's Real Food Cookbook is one of the best old-fashioned cook books going, with a range of UK and International recipes and cooking tips, with the added benefit of a good dollop of British humour.
So, as you can tell, I enjoy cooking, and I definitely enjoy trying out new recipes. Today's new recipe was one for Chocolate Mousse. This is a really easy one to make from scratch and proved to be a hit with the whole family (again, a big thank you to Old Scrote for that one).
Out of interest I had a bit of a search around to see what alternative recipes for Chocolate Mousse they were, and happened upon this "gem".
The crux of the above recipe is this: make up a packet of instant mousse, pour into glasses and eat.
I hate to point this out but THAT IS NOT COOKING!!!
This is one of my pet hates - convenience food that isn't convenient. Let me give you an example: Yorkshire Pudding mix, just add milk and an egg. In other words what you've got is a small packet of very expensive flour with a touch of salt. It is cheaper and just as fast to make a Yorkshire Pudding from scratch. More convenient? Not really.
As Old Scrote appears to be off-line at the moment I'll finish with his recipe for Chocolate Mousse - enjoy!
Update: Old Scrote himself has been in touch, his site is now available at http://www.oldscrote.talktalk.net/.
Chocolate Mousse
There are not many recipes for desserts in Scrote's repertoire but this one is a cracker, very easy, impressive and despite the tiny portions, devastatingly rich. You need a whisk of some sort and a bowl which you can set over a pan of boiling water (i.e. not plastic) to melt the chocolate. For four servings you need a large ½lb bar of plain chocolate (200g) and four eggs. The eggs must be very fresh.
For each person allow 1 egg & 2 ounces of ordinary plain chocolate. (Do not use cooking chocolate, it is a completely different stuff.) Break the chocolate into small pieces and set to melt in a bain marie- a pyrex glass bowl over a pan of boiling water. Meanwhile separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs, into separate containers. When the chocolate has completely melted, remove it from the heat and mix into it just the egg yolks (the whites are used later). The chocolate will become stiffer and take on a 'greasy' appearance- this is correct. Cover & set aside for 15 minutes to cool a little. In the mean time beat egg whites with a balloon whisk until eventually the mixture becomes white & stiff, so that it stands up in soft peaks. After the 15 minutes, fold the beaten egg-white a little at a time into the chocolate mixture, mixing very thoroughly.
Pour the resulting creamy chocolate mousse mixture into serving glasses (short glass tumblers or wine glasses are ideal) & put in the fridge to chill for 2 hours and set. Serve with a generous pouring of single cream. (Ruth puts a dash of Armagnac in and then adds the cream to keep the alcohol in!)
Some, like Latka, have become a regular part of our cooking, others such as Loco Moco have given me a new favourite "junk food" type snack.
There are some great resources out there. Old Scrote's Real Food Cookbook is one of the best old-fashioned cook books going, with a range of UK and International recipes and cooking tips, with the added benefit of a good dollop of British humour.
So, as you can tell, I enjoy cooking, and I definitely enjoy trying out new recipes. Today's new recipe was one for Chocolate Mousse. This is a really easy one to make from scratch and proved to be a hit with the whole family (again, a big thank you to Old Scrote for that one).
Out of interest I had a bit of a search around to see what alternative recipes for Chocolate Mousse they were, and happened upon this "gem".
The crux of the above recipe is this: make up a packet of instant mousse, pour into glasses and eat.
I hate to point this out but THAT IS NOT COOKING!!!
This is one of my pet hates - convenience food that isn't convenient. Let me give you an example: Yorkshire Pudding mix, just add milk and an egg. In other words what you've got is a small packet of very expensive flour with a touch of salt. It is cheaper and just as fast to make a Yorkshire Pudding from scratch. More convenient? Not really.
As Old Scrote appears to be off-line at the moment I'll finish with his recipe for Chocolate Mousse - enjoy!
Update: Old Scrote himself has been in touch, his site is now available at http://www.oldscrote.talktalk.net/.
Chocolate Mousse
There are not many recipes for desserts in Scrote's repertoire but this one is a cracker, very easy, impressive and despite the tiny portions, devastatingly rich. You need a whisk of some sort and a bowl which you can set over a pan of boiling water (i.e. not plastic) to melt the chocolate. For four servings you need a large ½lb bar of plain chocolate (200g) and four eggs. The eggs must be very fresh.
For each person allow 1 egg & 2 ounces of ordinary plain chocolate. (Do not use cooking chocolate, it is a completely different stuff.) Break the chocolate into small pieces and set to melt in a bain marie- a pyrex glass bowl over a pan of boiling water. Meanwhile separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs, into separate containers. When the chocolate has completely melted, remove it from the heat and mix into it just the egg yolks (the whites are used later). The chocolate will become stiffer and take on a 'greasy' appearance- this is correct. Cover & set aside for 15 minutes to cool a little. In the mean time beat egg whites with a balloon whisk until eventually the mixture becomes white & stiff, so that it stands up in soft peaks. After the 15 minutes, fold the beaten egg-white a little at a time into the chocolate mixture, mixing very thoroughly.
Pour the resulting creamy chocolate mousse mixture into serving glasses (short glass tumblers or wine glasses are ideal) & put in the fridge to chill for 2 hours and set. Serve with a generous pouring of single cream. (Ruth puts a dash of Armagnac in and then adds the cream to keep the alcohol in!)
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