Robin Hoods Playground

I just had an idea. I'm pretty sure that someone else has already thought of it and done it, but I don't remember reading it anywhere. I'm going to take the computer that I use to flash 360's with and try to eliminate the need to have any kind of boot device. By that I mean I shouldn't need a floppy disk or a USB thumb drive.

First a little description of this computer.

It's an old PC running a PII 500 MHZ slot processor. 128 MB ram. a single 10 GB hdd. dual cd burners. Running Windows XP.

Now for what I'm going to try.

1. Install Acronis Disk Director Suite 10
2. Use the software to create a small partition, oh say something like 100 MB or something.
3. Install DOS onto the partition and put all my dos based flashing tools on it. Maybe even write some scripts to kinda "automate" if you will the process for samsungs and benq's. I do have one project that if all goes well, I'll be starting tomorrow, but that will be in a different section of the forum.


I "think" using the disk director software will allow me to choose at boot up which partition that I want to boot from and if I need to flash a sammy or a benq, then I just choose the dos partition and use my tools. If it's a hitachi, then I just boot to windows like normal.

This should be a simple project, but I won't be able to start till I get a "test" subject which I should be able to come up with later this week or first of next week so I'll post it up once it's done.

sounds good to me.
It should work fine.

let us know how it goes

Yeah, sounds interesting. Keep us updated.

if its all command prompt then, to me, you should be able to get into any drive and find the files and run them too... but i have no DOS experience besides flashing.

Yeah, it should be easy enough. I just have to get adjusted to how this disk software works. I already f'd up the windows partition with it because I set the darned dos partition as the boot partition, but forgot to load the OS selector software so I could choose either windows or dos. So..... when I booted the computer, I was greeted with non-system disk, replace and strike any key to continue. So, I didn't even try to fix it. Just removed all partitions, set them back up and installed windows.

This time, when I installed windows, I left 200 MB of space free, instead of using that software, I'm going to create a 98 boot disk, format that 200 mb partition as fat16, then us iprep on it to make it bootable, then turn on acronis OS selector. This sounds more like a better thought our plan

well if people cant even make a bootable usb, how on earth do you think they are gonna know what a partition is? some people that get into this dont even know what a thumbdrive is.

hes just looking for something to do.

yea ill leave all the question on this to him.

I'm not looking to enlighten people with this. I know that some people would end up wiping their hdd's just like I did. Luckily, I only use this PC to flash stuff with so it's no problem for me. Just a project I had in mind to see if I could get to work was all. Thought I would share it.

dont get me wrong, i think it is. i thought you were going to try to teach people this and i thought it was crazy. keep us posted.

Nah, not taking you wrong. I was just explaining my intentions

I think it might be able to simplify things for someone who was doing mods on a regular basis. I agree though, I can guarantee that I would probably wipe my drive nice and clean!

OK, got it working. I'm not going to go into great detail, but if your familiar with working with disk partitions, it's a snap. I would not go through the trouble if I were only going to flash one drive and I only did this project out of my own curiosity.

1. Used Acronis Disk Director to create a small partition on the hard drive and set it up as an extended partition. Around 200 MB was what I made.
2. Created a Windows 98 SE boot disk and booted with it. I then formatted the new partition. I used format D: /s to make it bootable. If you undertake this project, your drive letter may vary depending on how your computer sets up its drive structure.
3. Booted back into Windows. Used Iprep to prepare the partition setting it up for both Samsungs and Benq's.
4. Setup Acronis OS Selector software. The setup was pretty much automatic. It scanned the drive, saw the partitions, and asked me to reboot. When I rebooted, I was presented with a screen to where I could choose the Windows XP partition or the DOS partition. I booted into dos and connected the Samsung drive from my 360. Gave iprep the command to read the firmware, used the 10 second trick, and away she went. After reading out the firmware, I rebooted into windows, browsed the dos partition found my orig.bin, checked it with firmware toolbox, it was a good dump. At that point, I stopped because there was no point in going any further.

So, it can be done, and the thing I like about it, it takes literally no time to read the firmware out since it's writing at HDD speed and not floppy or USB speed. Although it's probably about the same about of time using a USB stick. If your the type to want to try and set something like this up, have at it. I don't expect anyone to provide any support for this project to anyone and if you try it and hose your windows or hose your 360, neither myself or anyone on robinhoodsplayground is responsible.

Now go and have some fun!!

welllllll i'm not going to try.

i dont want to have to reload my windows xp.
I know that is what would happen


That is cool man.I was think it should work.
If any one could do it you could.

Well, if you pay attention to what your doing, you won't have to reload windows. What I did was actually a noob mistake. I wasn't paying attention and thats what happens when you don't pay attention