The original Xbox shipped with 64MB of RAM, which was quite a lot for its time in 2001 but seems small by modern standards. A modder called Prehis2oricman has quadrupled the amount of available RAM to 256MB using a custom RAM module that consists of two parts: a RAM chip and an interposer allowing use of all eight memory slots including those typically empty on the console’s motherboard.
This modification was achieved through months of reverse engineering, hardware engineering, software hacking, and perseverance. However, there’s little reason to install this mod currently as existing applications don’t utilize it. The potential for new BIOS updates that unlock additional features could change the situation in the future.
Do you think modifying console hardware like the Xbox to quadruple its original RAM is worth pursuing, considering the current state of software support?
It would be nice if we could install the extra RAM and then boot Morrowind from the hard drive. We could disable the game’s config flag that forced it to soft reboot the console on load in order to free up leaked memory. Load times for that game would be so much faster.