I'm getting back into the modded Xbox scene again. I softmodded my Xbox back in 2005 and had it running XBMC and associated emulators for a number of years. After that, I tried moving onto the PC side of things with MAME and other emulators, but the experience has never been as fluid as with the Xbox/XBMC. Now, after becoming frustrated with the lack of cohesion on the PC side, I recently dug the Xbox out of storage and have been playing with it a little bit. I want to update it and see if I can get more out of it.

I've been reading through EP and other sites trying to educate myself with the changes in the original Xbox scene since I've been away. One of the major ones for me is Final Burn and CoinOps. CoinOps looks like a great project that brings the best of Xbox emulation under one umbrella. For emulation, it seems like a no-brainer and probably the best choice available. But I'm not sure if it will work for what I want to use the Xbox for.

Aside from emulators, the other main reason I used XBMC was because I have my music library on an SMB share and could stream through the Xbox and into my stereo. What I'm not clear on is if CoinOps is it's own dash like XBMC or can it be run like another emulator under XBMC? If it's the later, then I think everything would be fine. But if it is its own dash then I'm not sure how I would run both. The other option would be to forgo CoinOps, use XBMC and add Final Burn Legends. I imagine this would be the easier route actually.

Currently, I have an old MAME emulator on my Xbox. One thing (of many) I'm not clear on is the ROM set for either Final Burn or CoinOps. I know the ROMs I use with my current MAME emu are very old and I don't know if they are compatible with the current versions of Final Burn or CoinOps. I did recently download ROMs from MAME .142 for my PC. Would these work with both/either Final Burn or CoinOps or is there a special set out there? Also, I don't want or need ALL of the ROMs available for either emulator. I have a healthy selection of games that I like to play. But I don't need the entire multi-thousand set available to these emulators. Is there a way to have just the ROMs I want and not have to load the rest?

Long post and lots of questions I know. Thanks for reading. Any help would be appreciated.