Opened A Xbox To Find A Hitachi-lg Dvdrom, **MERGED TOPICS** Options

[zoleet]

Should it work with 8161B?

[marcus905]

Should it work with 8161B?

As already been stated in this thread, the answer is no. Only the HL-DT-ST GRD-8163B may be used, because of internal hardware incompatibilities.

[Schwatter]

It will read original game discs

Thats bad, so it means that the drive is limited by firmware.
Its the same think like by the new samsung.
It has a good laser but it also didn´t read cdr´s

Sorry for my bad english i´m just a stupid german ;-)
I hope you can deciphering

[theDeacon]

Not any more. I have extracted the BIOS.

I spent about $200 (Australian) on hardware, including both a 8050L Xbox drive and a 8163B PC drive as well as the parts to build an "IDE flasher" (see www.loet.de). It also took quite a number of hours to wire up each drive to the flasher etc., but I won through in the end.

I have flashed my 8163B with the 8050L BIOS and verified that it still works in the PC as well as in the Xbox!
It will not read CDR discs (74 or 80 minute), in either the PC or the Xbox, as expected. It will read original game discs, at least it had no trouble with the old Halo disc I tried, and it also had no trouble with a TDK DVD-R disc I tried.

At the moment I only have the power lines and eject signal hooked up. I should have time tomorrow morning (Australian time) to try and confirm the points for at least a couple of the other signals. I'll use pictures posted earlier in this thread as a starting point.

I also downloaded the Dangerous Brothers auto-reset BIOSes for this drive. These are Windoze executables for flashing the BIOS to the drive. The BIOS image is embedded in the executable. I haven't tried it yet (partly because I don't run Windoze natively on any of my PCs), but I'm assuming that I can just patch one of these executables with the 8050L BIOS and then use the patched executable to flash any number of 8163B drives (one at a time) without going to the trouble I did this time.

More later... (still want LenteSubigo back, guys?)

Thank you for all of your hard work. Much appreciated brutha!

[zoleet]

Any Downloads? As .torrent would be cool

[zoleet]

Does the reflashed 8163B read X-DVD-s in PC?

[marcus905]

Does the reflashed 8163B read X-DVD-s in PC?

Not the originals, alike a pc dvd drive, if you can get it to eject in a pc.

[ferrari_rulz_02]

so have we got the pc version of the drive working in the xbox yet?

[wenid]

Any Downloads? As .torrent would be cool

I'm trying to get xbins to accept it. I just got an email from GreenGiant saying "pass it onto Iriez and he should put it on Xbins for others to try", but yesterday Iriez seemed a bit dubious about it. I'll email Iriez again now.

[wenid]

Does the reflashed 8163B read X-DVD-s in PC?

No. As I understand it the Xbox sends special commands to the drive to get it to read original game discs and of course the PC doesn't know what those commands are.
The difference between the Xbox drive firmware and the PC drive firmware is basically the ability to understand these special commands.

[wenid]

so have we got the pc version of the drive working in the xbox yet?

Yes, but it's not "fully operational". There is a problem with (at least) the tray in and tray out signals (what you guys have been calling X and Y, I think). See my next post...

[wenid]

Oops! Ran afoul of the board's flood control with all these postings one after another.
Anyway, here's the slightly overdue update I promised about 48 hours ago now.

The good news is that the 8163B drive is working fine in the Xbox and I have found the TRAY IN and TRAY OUT signals (aka X and Y). The bad news is that they are 3.3V signals rather than 5V signals and that doesn't seem to be good enough for the Xbox circuitry. One of them also needs to be inverted.

Now I'm not much of an electronics engineer, but I think maybe there's some CMOS in there somewhere that needs the high level signal to be at least 4V or so. Not being much of an electronics engineer, I don't know what the best/simplest way to achieve this level conversion is. Any ideas anyone?

[LenteSubigo]

Well, I know a way that will work, but I'm sure someone else could find a better, easier way.

Parts
1 x Compact Reed Relay (Operational Voltage of 3.3 or less)
1 x +5V Fixed-Voltage Regulator
1 x NAND Gate

When the relay gets 3.3v it allows 5v from the regulator through for the signal. The NAND Gate can invert the second signal.

[wenid]

Any Downloads? As .torrent would be cool

Iriez has now kindly put it up on xbins in the PC section.

Well, I know a way that will work, but I'm sure someone else could find a better, easier way.

Parts
1 x Compact Reed Relay (Operational Voltage of 3.3 or less)
1 x +5V Fixed-Voltage Regulator 
1 x NAND Gate

When the relay gets 3.3v it allows 5v from the regulator through for the signal.  The NAND Gate can invert the second signal.

Ah-ha. Interesting. We can probably pick up a "clean" 5V somewhere on the board and do without the regulator, too.

I've also been wondering for some time why you guys always talk about NAND gates. What's wrong with just using an inverter? I've been looking at some spec's and it seems to me that a 7405 (or some variant of it) would do the trick. The drawback is that to get the relatively high output voltage we'd need an open-collector device (which is what the 7405 is), and that means external pull-up resistors are required.

For the signal that needs to be inverted (tray in, from memory -- dunno whether that's X or Y in the alphabet naming system) you just run it through one inverter, and for the other one (tray out) you invert it twice to get back where you started (but at a higher voltage). Since the 7405 has six inverters per chip this still only uses up half the capacity of a single chip.

I think I'll try to pick up a 7405 (or three -- they're only a couple of bucks each) and I'll have a look at relays too because that might be simpler than having to worry about six pullup resistors.

[otherguy]

just some t houghts on the inversion of the signals and method of upping voltages.

As far as the relay goes - is a 5v relay going to be available in a small enough package that it could be fit inside the drive chasis? I've only seen relays with these specs in quite large sizes...
I would think it would make more sense to use a transistor to supply the 5v from the smaller 3v signal... and package size shouldn't be a problem - as the transistor isn't based on electromagnetic fields... it doesn't need to be as large as the relays (should be cheaper too).
I'm still a student, so i may not be 100% correct in my assumptions - just applying what i've learned thus far

Edit: and congrats on the extraction! i didn't think it would ever get done lol

This post has been edited by otherguy: Mar 2 2005, 12:45 AM