Xbox:Chihiro General Information

The Sega Chihiro is an arcade system based around the Xbox motherboard. It is comprised of a DIMM board (DIMM or NetDIMM) unit that plugs into a top board, a middle board (mediaboard), and bottom board (Xbox motherboard); as well as a JVS standard panel board on one side. The Xbox motherboard is nearly identical to retail hardware, with the only differences being it uses an earlier version MCPX chip (MCPX X2), it running a Chihiro-specific kernel, and it having the extra RAM slots populated to bring the total RAM up to 128MB.

See the Xbox:Chihiro Games on Xbox page for instructions on how to play some Chihiro games on a modded retail Xbox.

Powering the Unit
The Chihiro is powered by a standard JVS power harness used in arcades. However, you can either buy an adapter cable or DIY your own out of a JST VL 4x2 connector and a JST VL 3x2 connector (shown below) to connect them to a standard desktop ATX power supply. A video over how to wire up such a cable can be found on the Video Game Esoterica YouTube channel.

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Video Output
The unit outputs 480p RGBS video via a standard VGA port on the fan side of the unit. Although the Xbox board can output a variety of resolutions, the output from it traverses the link cable to the mediaboard where it is changed into 480p RGBS.

Games
Games are loaded off of a separate GD-ROM that is connected by a single cable OR if a NetDIMM module is installed on the top of the top-most board, games can be booted over a network, from a Compact Flash card (with official or unofficial adapter), or from a hard drive connected to a Compact Flash adapter.

Regardless of method, a security key must be plugged into the USB port on the side of the unit. Games loaded from GD-ROM must use a USB key specific to that game, while booting games from a NetDIMM can use a "zero security key" which works for any game. See the Xbox:Chihiro Security Keys page for more information.