Hey Carl, if you have a Cash Convertors near you they may have some Xbox controllers if yo're still looking. Our local one had 2 for sale at £1.50 each an ideal price for hacking

I'm still trying to win a Crystal Xbox for my games room...

That is cool but I am now using these.....

very good too!

Picture doesn't show Carl, I had a USB to PS adaptor I used to use on my PC until I discovered the Xbox controller was a better fit for me and easy to make a USB adaptor for. Horses for courses though and whatever works best for you is the one to have 

if you find xbox conrtollers, it could be worth a flip on ebay.

I've soft-modded quite a few xbox's.

@Carl, I take it that Blaze memory unit worked? I never got any 3rd party units to work properly. I thought it had to be an official memory unit.

This is one of mine

yeah that was the other thing I wanted to mod and change my HDD for, I was considering putting emulators on it etc, that would be awesome. Do you guys have any cheap HDD suggestions that I could buy that would work with my PAL original Xbox? at the time I was hoping to not buy but if I can get one for 20 quid or so I might be tempted

I've soft-modded quite a few xbox's.

@Carl, I take it that Blaze memory unit worked? I never got any 3rd party units to work properly. I thought it had to be an official memory unit.

This is one of mine

that looks very slick indeed! 

yep the card worked fine, no problems with it at all.

My HDD's never cost more that £20.
The one in the picture has a 320GB but that
has around 30-40 Xbox games on it too.

I'd say for emulation only, a 40 or 80GB is fine.
Never had a problem with any HDD working.
Mine were all bought second hand. SATA works (apparently)
with an adapter I guess. ATA is easier.
I did the hotswap method using the Chimp program.
I won't lie, I was pretty nervous the first time I tried it! 

Hi dot.fyre, is that XBMC in use there as the dashboard?

Yep. Don't ask what version though! 
I never update it.
My motto is, "If it works, leave it alone."

I used the AID disc (Auto Installer Deluxe).
It allows you to set the dasboard as XBMC (or evox, avalaunch etc.)

how does that work? I'm interested to know more, I have IDE drives etc, but are you saying it would work better with a SATA via adapter?

TBH I don't know, maybe they'll be faster but
I doubt you'd notice. SATA with an adapter would probably give you
problems with fitting it in. Space is tight in the xbox.
It's an IDE that's in it already so replacing it with another (bigger) IDE HDD
is the easiest thing to do.

right... which is what I did but it never seemed to work via the method I used so I was wondering if you could ellaborate a bit on the one you used?

Is yours softmodded?
How did you install it? Just put it in?
As I said I used chimp. I'll simplify it a bit but if your going to do it
I suggest getting a better FAQ than what I'm about to do! 
Setup your softmod.
Make sure Chimp is installed as an app.
Open xbox.
Ready your HDD - set to slave IIRC.
(you also need a way to power the new hdd)
Boot xbox.
Find your Chimp app. Don't run it yet.
At this point you pull out the IDE lead from the xbox DVD and plug it into the new HDD.
Power the new HDD up.
Run Chimp. (again I suggest getting up-2-date instructions on this)
Basically, it clones the std HDD to your new HDD.
Wait for it to clone the hdd.
You then lock the new hdd (within chimp)
Power off the xbox.
Replace the old hdd with the new one.
Replace the xbox's dvd IDE lead.
Check it boots using the new HDD.
Done.

Sounds a bit fiddly and to be fair the first time I did it it was.
And nerve racking.
But it's fairly straight forward.

I think I'll do some googling for this before going forward, I assume you have to put any emulators or whatever else you want on the drive, onto it AFTER you do the Chimp swap?

Mine is softmodded yeah it turns on and boots in softmod mode if I press the eject button I believe