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Extract Xbox 360/Original Xbox ISOs on PowerPC Macs With Nextract-XISO!

alex_free

alex_free

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Recently the Xbox 360 got an awesome soft-mod and I've been having a great time with it. One thing that bothered me was that the best tool for extracting original Xbox and Xbox 360 games was essentially unmaintained (you need to extract the ISOs then copy then to the HDD to play them, there are other formats yes but I like this one the best and it is very mod friendly too).

So I thought, how cool would it be to extract ISOs for the Xbox 360 (a powerpc console), with a powerpc Mac?

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Nextract Xiso (NXISO)

Software, Docs, & More!
alex-free.github.io
github.com

GitHub - alex-free/extract-xiso: Xbox ISO Creation/Extraction utility fork for modern operating systems.

Xbox ISO Creation/Extraction utility fork for modern operating systems. - alex-free/extract-xiso
github.com github.com
 
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alex_free said:
Recently the Xbox 360 got an awesome soft-mod and I've been having a great time with it. One thing that bothered me was that the best tool for extracting original Xbox and Xbox 360 games was essentially unmaintained (you need to extract the ISOs then copy then to the HDD to play them, there are other formats yes but I like this one the best and it is very mod friendly too).
Click to expand...

Is that based on this mod which boots from a live USB on each session? It's something that I've been meaning to look into after seeing this video appear in my recommendations.


alex_free said:
So I thought, how cool would it be to extract ISOs for the Xbox 360 (a powerpc console), with a powerpc Mac?

View attachment 2526518

Nextract Xiso (NXISO)

Software, Docs, & More!
alex-free.github.io
github.com

GitHub - alex-free/extract-xiso: Xbox ISO Creation/Extraction utility fork for modern operating systems.

Xbox ISO Creation/Extraction utility fork for modern operating systems. - alex-free/extract-xiso
github.com github.com
Click to expand...

Once again you're a legend, @alex_free - my 360 has been inactive for ages and this is a great incentive to put it back into regular use. You've also provided a version for Intel Macs: which means I'm sorted on both platforms but I'll give this a go on my iBook G4 under Tiger. 🙂
 
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TheShortTimer said:
Is that based on this mod which boots from a live USB on each session? It's something that I've been meaning to look into after seeing this video appear in my recommendations.




Once again you're a legend, @alex_free - my 360 has been inactive for ages and this is a great incentive to put it back into regular use. You've also provided a version for Intel Macs: which means I'm sorted on both platforms but I'll give this a go on my iBook G4 under Tiger. 🙂
Click to expand...
Thanks! And yes it is exactly that. What I posted is very easy to use (also can be done from a powerpc mac I think!). I recommend the xeunshackle ready to copy download. It has everything already in the right file structure so you just drag the files onto the USB drive (may have to use the 360hp command to deal with the hidden content folder Finder doesn't like, see readme and lmk if you need help). Love seeing my iBook G4 crunch through a Xbox 360 8.7GB ISO file (I copied it over via SSH).
 
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alex_free said:
Thanks! And yes it is exactly that. What I posted is very easy to use (also can be done from a powerpc mac I think!). I recommend the xeunshackle ready to copy download. It has everything already in the right file structure so you just drag the files onto the USB drive (may have to use the 360hp command to deal with the hidden content folder Finder doesn't like, see readme and lmk if you need help).
Click to expand...

Excellent! 😀

I'll dig out my 360 tomorrow when I'll have the time to play around with all of this and I'll let you know how I get on.

alex_free said:
Love seeing my iBook G4 crunch through a Xbox 360 8.7GB ISO file (I copied it over via SSH).
Click to expand...

How long did it take?
 
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TheShortTimer said:
Excellent! 😀

I'll dig out my 360 tomorrow when I'll have the time to play around with all of this and I'll let you know how I get on.



How long did it take?
Click to expand...
Not nearly as long as you'd think! Quite respectable. Again lmk I'm off work today I can help get you started I just learned all this 360 stuff a few months ago when this came out.
 
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@TheShortTimer recently the Xbox 360 exploit got an update and the success rate has improved dramatically. I was a little crazy to use this as a daily driver previous to this (but my model of Xbox 360 is unable to be hardware modded and I’m patient so I accepted the ~30% success rate). But now, really even for normal people, I think this is a daily driver. You gotta give this a go with the new update: https://alex-free.github.io/360-hack-pack/
 
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alex_free said:
@TheShortTimer recently the Xbox 360 exploit got an update and the success rate has improved dramatically. I was a little crazy to use this as a daily driver previous to this (but my model of Xbox 360 is unable to be hardware modded and I’m patient so I accepted the ~30% success rate). But now, really even for normal people, I think this is a daily driver. You gotta give this a go with the new update: https://alex-free.github.io/360-hack-pack/
Click to expand...

Thanks, Alex. 🙂

Do I just download the latest Xeunshackle update?
 
After eventually locating my 360 and the PSU, I realised that I'd mislaid the C15 cable. I've got plenty of C13's but they don't fit the PSU socket due to the notch preventing this from happening. A couple of minutes with a solder trimmer soon solved that. 😉

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With the notch removed, a standard C13 cable definitely fits now! 😀

Next up, I formatted my USB stick on the 360 and then carried out the prep work on a Mac.
vD8cWqk.png

Nice and easy. The 360hp command writes the necessary files into the root directory and creates a Live USB installer for your 360 in a few minutes. Time for the moment of truth - I connected the USB stick to my 360 and powered it up...

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Let's run the exploit!

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So far so good - and as an aside, if the animations freeze on the RBB title screen, reboot the 360 and repeat the process to run the exploit.

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Yes, we're in business - the soft mod is in place and will remain so till shutdown or a reboot. 😀

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I dumped a copy of the NAND as recommended and I'd already prepared some Xbox Live/Arcade titles to play around with.

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The thumbnails are missing but most of them loaded and ran fine regardless.

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I'm ecstatic at finally getting the opportunity to play R-Type Dimensions but how about Rocket Knight?

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Brilliant!

Now, last but certainly not least…

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Oh, this is too much fun and it's nice to see my 360 no longer going neglected and it's also relief that it hasn't succumbed to the dreaded Yellow Light of Death during the years that it was inactive. Thanks @alex_free for being the catalyst that made this happen. 🙂

At some point soon I'll have a look at extracting ISOs and the media player angle.

(For those who are curious, the images were obtained by capturing the 360's HDMI output into a MacBook Air via Thunderbolt using an UltraStudio Mini Recorder and I'll create a post about this process elsewhere.)
 
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Here's an invaluable tip that I came across on Reddit whilst trying to deduce why one of my XBLA downloads wouldn't run in Aurora - no matter whichever mirror file I tried. A huge haul of trial versions of XBLA titles can be found with a little bit of searching and that includes a version of the game which does work - albeit in trial mode.

However, all XBLA trial games will unlock and run in their full versions if you modify three settings in the launch.ini file on the Live USB stick as highlighted below...

cJNy67R.png


...from "false" to "true"...

8FBq6aB.png


Save the modified settings and when you boot into Aurora, all of your trial versions will be replaced with the full games. I've tested this and it's working for me with all of my XBLA game demos. 😀

(If you don't have BBEdit, you can modify the launch.ini file with TextEdit or whichever program takes your fancy.)
 
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TheShortTimer said:
Here's an invaluable tip that I came across on Reddit whilst trying to deduce why one of my XBLA downloads wouldn't run in Aurora - no matter whichever mirror file I tried. A huge haul of trial versions of XBLA titles can be found with a little bit of searching and that includes a version of the game which does work - albeit in trial mode.

However, all XBLA trial games will unlock and run in their full versions if you modify three settings in the launch.ini file on the Live USB stick as highlighted below...

cJNy67R.png


...from "false" to "true"...

8FBq6aB.png


Save the modified settings and when you boot into Aurora, all of your trial versions will be replaced with the full games. I've tested this and it's working for me with all of my XBLA game demos. 😀

(If you don't have BBEdit, you can modify the launch.ini file with TextEdit or whichever program takes your fancy.)
Click to expand...
They believed so much that this would never be possible! Nice find. I’ve only played retail games so far. Speaking of, I might put together a beginner/crash course on retail games and extracting isos. Glad your having as much fun as I!
 
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TheShortTimer said:
Xeunshackle again, right? Also, does the 360hp command need to be re-run for this new version? 🙂
Click to expand...
yup exactly. Recently played Tomb Raider (2013) and Rise Of The Tomb Raider (2015), those games push the hardware like crazy! Triple AAA games on a 10 year old system at that point in time was wild.
 
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@TheShortTimer how’d it go? I’ve been playing a ton of 360 recently. The library is so much more than just fps, and the emulators and hombrew now.

Not to mention it is basically a PowerPC G5 with a 2005 ATI GPU that every game had free anti aliasing performance wise due to special hardware (10MB EDRAM) and up until the very end of its life cycle a mandatory 720p requirement… I miss old Microsoft for sure.

Too bad they don’t have any engineers that now even know how to make a fix for this exploit in the architecture (some rumor I heard from another forum from someone’s uncle that worked at Nintendo Microsoft). Half kidding, but half believable now a year later. When I first started working in this in march 2025, I had instantly bought the same 360 model I had bought brand new in 2015, after getting my first job, saving up for the summer, etc. (360e which can’t be hard modded really to this day) because I was absolutely certain this would be patched in days…

Months went by, and I asked someone. Some ‘insider’ knew Microsoft couldn’t patch it, but because it wouldn’t be worth it to test every single game, library, console, and the employees who knew anything about PowerPC G5 had all left by 2025 when this was released. The bug is really deep that is used to exploit it… But they did release an update that adds ads for Xbox series whatever to the dash, (which we replace right after exploit so jokes on them) apparently they know how to do that!

What a baller move, grimdoomer managed to make the most secure console vulnerable at the worst time, not even knowing this, and now no one knows how to even fix it and it’s apparently not worth it to the a multi billion dollar company. So we get an unpatched soft-mod forever. No way they are fixing it at this point!

Now I have a PS5 on a known exploitable firmware (12.7), last game I played was Resident Evil 9 which was one of the best I’ve played in years. So I might be in the same position once that is fully developed 😉
 
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