My first XBox 360 - the one I just recently resurrected from the Red Ring of Death - died again. After several weeks of use, the graphics and sound started getting corrupted after a few minutes of play, then finally just gave me the RRoD on startup. But I brought it back to life once more!

Several people have asked how I modded my server to increase the numbers of tanks and planes, how I added extra planes to carriers, how I changed the types of units spawned and how I was able to do all that without creating new maps that need to be downloaded. Well, read on for the gory details.

Trying to join a BF1942 server and getting an "invalid CD key" error? This message pops up at the most inconvenient times, but is easily resolved in most cases. At LAN parties, it's often possible to get a game running on a PC where it was not previously installed by just copying the game folder, but there are usually one or two pieces of data from the registry that are also needed. For Battlefield games, that's the CD keys.

The TPU server IP changed in the last 24 hours or so, from 24.87.160.136 to 174.6.245.193. TPU shows up with the new IP address in the BF42 in-game server browser, but you may have to perform an UPDATE to see it. If you have marked the server as a FAVORITE in BF42, you will have to re-do that. I will re-submit TPU with the new IP to Game-Monitor today. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Now that I have two functioning XBox 360s, I was thinking that at long last I would be able to play certain games cooperatively. You know, games that have co-op modes but only when you're playing on-line or with multiple 360s on a LAN. Co-op gameplay on a single console is usually limited to games that support splitscreen, but also includes many sports games and some fantasy-type games such as Gauntlet and its ilk, where all the characters are visible at the same time on one screen.

My hope was that games with online-only co-op modes would now be mine to explore. As it turns out, this hope can be fulfilled, for a price. That's the price of a second copy of every game I want to play cooperatively. Yes indeed, for another sixty bucks I can play the game in a way that should have been included to begin with. Oh, I tried starting the game on one console, then running it on the other, but as soon as I ejected the disc from the first console, the game exited back to the dashboard. Even installing the game to the hard drive made no difference. Ah, the joys of copy protection.

So now I'm thinking that since my first 360 is already in warranty-voided-land, I might as well finish the job and hack it so I can run copies of games. There's no frigging way I'm going to buy second copies of a bunch of games.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE 2009-11-12: Apparently Microsoft just killed XBox Live network access for a huge number of modded 360s and the owners are now unloading them on Craigslist (http://gaming.icrontic.com/news/craig...-xbox-360s). Maybe I'll hold off on that modding notion.

My popular demand, I've just bumped up the tickets on all maps. I changed the ticket multiplier from 175 to 225. Because of this, I also removed the 60 minute time limit for rounds.

Some TPU users are reporting CD key errors when they try to join TPU when there's an expansion map running (Road to Rome or Secret Weapons).

I just cleared the CD key ergc values from the server and restarted it, so hopefully those issues are now resolved. Please let me know if you find otherwise.

Sorry for any inconvenience!

UPDATE 2009Oct10: Apparently the issue still exists for some players, with Mimoyecques in particular triggering the error. I'm working on it...

Now that I have a workbench again, I'm getting back into old projects. My first XBox 360 died with the classic Red Ring of Death some time ago and has been sitting in a storage locker in the form of a pile of parts since then. When it died, I had already voided the warranty some months earlier by opening the unit to install padding under the lid of the DVD drive - to stop it from scratching discs. That repair had been a complete success, but then the RRoD happened. I would have been able to send the unit back to Microsoft for warranty repair if I hadn't opened it because they extended the warranty to three years specifically for RRoD issues.

The TPU server is now running on new hardware. If you notice any problems, please let me know. In particular, I'd like to know whether or not performance has improved. Are there any new lag issues? Has lag increased or decreased?

Old server (Claude):
Pentium IV 2GHz
512MB RAM

New server (Hubie):
Pentium IV 2.8GHz
2GB RAM

Sigh. I bought my second XBox 360 after my first died of the horrible 'Red Ring of Death.' I had successfully modified that 360 a few months earlier, installing padding (under the lid of the DVD drive) that prevented the drive from scratching my game discs. Unfortunately, opening the 360 had also eliminated the possibility of returning it for repair/replace as part of the extended 3 year coverage specific to RRoD issues. Oh well. That 360 is now a pile of parts in a box. I tried one of the X-clamp fixes on it with no success and plan to keep trying at some point, but meanwhile I bit the bullet and bought another 360.