XeLL, oh my dear XeLL

It’s no secret that I have a particular fondness for the Xbox 360 (you can read more about my relationship with it in this post).
Unlocking these consoles was essentially my first job and source of income, allowing me to continuously hone my soldering iron skills. Taking apart the case, removing the screws, and “doing my thing” was second nature. I enjoyed it. It was a very important part of my teenage years.

Then, of course, I moved on with my life. I started university and shifted to other income opportunities that required less time and effort, so I could focus on my studies.

However, there’s one image from that time I remember with particular affection:

XeLL Reloaded running on an Xbox 360

Seeing that screen meant several things: the console was still working, my solder joints were perfect (I used to take pride in how neat my soldering looked), and—most importantly—I was seconds away from grabbing critical information to completely dismantle the security mechanisms Microsoft had put in place.

Watching that screen was a near-daily ritual, console after console, customer after customer. A true elixir of satisfaction.

Over time, innovations in this “scene” became more and more scarce. While there have been major milestones (for example, the 2021 RGH 3 by the great 15432), it seemed there wasn’t much left to do. The Winchester consoles were always untouchable, but frankly they didn’t interest me. The Trinity revisions, in my opinion, were Microsoft at its best. From Corona onward, I saw it as cost-cutting in manufacturing processes.

What happened in 2025?

On March 3, Grimdoomer released Xbox360BadUpdate and achieved what seemed impossible: an exploit for all Xbox 360 revisions (including Winchester) that only requires a USB stick—no soldering required. Pure genius.

While the method is still fairly unstable today, with a relatively low success rate (and the community still recommends RGH for a reliable experience), it’s a milestone no one could ignore.

And that sparked a wave of nostalgia. With nostalgia come ideas. I saw on Reddit this post featuring a modified XeLL with the Avenged Sevenfold logo, and thought, “I’m a computer engineer now—I understand things I didn’t before. How does XeLL really work?” Two hours of tinkering later, I had my own modified XeLL.

And of course, I didn’t stop there. XeLL is built on LibXenon as its base library, and the latter was quite outdated in terms of its components. I’m obsessive about updating software, and I couldn’t pass up the chance.

Update zlib, bzip2, freetype, and libpng? Done. Update newlib and binutils and refresh the necessary patches? Done. Update GCC?

Damn GCC. I couldn’t update GCC. At some point they introduced a change that—even after adjusting the needed patches—caused XeLL to compile but not run. Of course I tracked down the issue: commit 60bd3f2 introduced flag_cunroll_grow_size, and by disabling that “optimization,” XeLL sprang back to life. That was after a week of suffering, compiling commit after commit until I found the culprit. Once identified, I managed to update GCC to 13.3.0.

With that settled, and after pulling in some enhancements from 15432 to add eMMC write support, I was ready to start developing the web app for XeLL. And here we are.

XeLL Theme Customizer

It’s a symphony of components: LibXenon and its toolchain to build XeLL, XeLL Customizer as the web app, and XeLL Customizer API as the intermediary between the web app and GitHub Actions to trigger build pipelines based on user-selected parameters.

True to form, I emulated XeLL’s exact margins and used the same IBM VGA 8x16 font that LibXenon has shipped for years. After wrapping it up, I shared it on Reddit in this post.

Within five minutes, users were already finding bugs I hadn’t even anticipated. I shipped a few hotfixes, and by morning had a stable release.

The community response was incredible: over 10,000 visits in under 24 hours and more than 130 custom builds generated. The community’s suggestions have been genuinely useful, and above all, working alongside giants like Swizzy, 15432, Octal450, InvoxiPlayGames, and others is an indescribable feeling. I feel like an impostor walking among giants.

Contributing my “tiny grain of sand” to the Xbox 360 scene is something I never imagined I’d do. And here we are. If you want to try XeLL Theme Customizer, go for it! I hope you enjoy it.