Actually, softmods require a working hard-drive on the xbox ou are modding. Oddly enough I wasn't thinking about that when I mentioned it. If you have a modchip, then there is no need to do any kind of softmod.
You first need to get your xbox version:
http://xbox-scene.com/versions.php
You need to get a set of bios that work with your xbox version (search xbins)
The best modchip imo is an xecuter 2.6b, or whatever 2.6(x) version they are on. v1-1.5 are easy installs. b1.6 require some kind of tsop rebuild. I have never seen or modded a 1.6 though.