Ide Cable Question, 2 part problem Options

[JTSkiSTX]

First off I brought the XBox to a Christmas party at a relatives house and everything was working fine. When I brought it home it started fragging but would boot fine with the mod chip disabled (X3 pinheader install) I thought I might of jostled one of the pins on the ride back home (Really stiff suspension)

So this morning I have my multimeter at hand ready to check the continuity. While I was taking the IDE out of the DVDRom drive the black part of the IDE cable that goes into the cdrom drive stayed in and the flat cable part was torn out. I managed to pry it out and everything looked fine, all the pins are straight. Anyway I put in a spare ATA133 cable (shorter than the one that came with the xbox) that I wasn't using and I still frag (no suprise there) but now when I try to boot with the modchip disabled it frags. So I tried 2 other IDE cables, 1 100 and another 133 with the same results. I know these IDE cables are fine, I took one of them out from a working computer. When I try booting without the hard drive and DVDRom drive connected (mod chip disabled) I can boot fine.

Do you guys think my DVD drive is messed or is it the IDE controller on the mobo? I don't think its bad IDE cables I tried 3 different ones. The HD works when I put it in a computer.

There really isn't much more I could do about the IDE problem without another xbox to switch parts and test. And I still haven't solved the first problem yet. Is there anyway I can use a spare cdrom drive? So what do you guys think is wrong? I'll test all the pins with a multimeter after the football game and get back to you guys. I'm more worried about my IDE problem though.

[JTSkiSTX]

nobody has any insight on the situation? I still haven't tested the modchip with the multimeter, which I think is the reason it started fragging in the first place. The multimeter I have is ancient, my friend is gonna steal 1 from his work so I can try it then.

I have no clue about the IDE cables though, will certain types work better? I think its eaither bad IDE cables, my mobo is messed up, or my dvd drive is messed. As I saide before I think there might be 2 things wrong with the box bad modchip and now something with the dvd drive.

My box is an early 1.1 (it still had to be desoldered) with a philips drive.

[BAP1130]

When it frags, do you get an xbox error code on the top left of the screen? Also, I would check all of the points for your chip, b/c when you replaced the cable, it might be perfectly fine in that sense, but still frags b/c of the chip.