Prevent HDD Crippling - NAND write protect diagram Options

[aLuCaRD]

I've been out of the loop for a while now regarding the 360 but now with winter approaching I hope to get more time to return to it.

My question is:

I have 2 consoles will refer to one as "special" and one as elite from now on. I use my Elite to play games online with friends and my "special" console for offline playing (It's probably been banned since the first load of bans.) and as a Media Center extender. At this point I do not have discs installed onto either of their HDDs and transfer my profile between consoles.

Will I have any issues using my elite console to upgrade both HDDs/dashboards/OS's or should I no longer use my elite to upgrade the other console..?

Any information would be greatly appreciated. Am debating the new kit from Team Xecuter to simplify the special consoles frimware upgrades too.

Thank you

[thwack]

I've been out of the loop for a while now regarding the 360 but now with winter approaching I hope to get more time to return to it.

My question is:

I have 2 consoles will refer to one as "special" and one as elite from now on. I use my Elite to play games online with friends and my "special" console for offline playing (It's probably been banned since the first load of bans.) and as a Media Center extender. At this point I do not have discs installed onto either of their HDDs and transfer my profile between consoles.

Will I have any issues using my elite console to upgrade both HDDs/dashboards/OS's or should I no longer use my elite to upgrade the other console..?

Any information would be greatly appreciated. Am debating the new kit from Team Xecuter to simplify the special consoles frimware upgrades too.

Thank you

Should be fine to update your early ban console (although if you ever want to use it to boot Linux etc, at present you can't due to the current dash update). Only worry would be that if the console wasn't banned and you wanted to use it online after updating to the latest dash - we don't know if the 360 can log DVD responses to ban you playing games offline.

Bassically, you'll be fine just so long as you don't want to use your offline 360 online

[aLuCaRD]

Thank you very much for the info.

Much appreciated thwack.

[Demobot]

So here is my question. Can I still mod a 250GB HDD and not be banned from XBL?

[elfloco]

modding now. Do I have to disconnect the WP pin to its current connection before connecting it to ground or can I leave it connected and just solder the switch for grounding?

tnx for clarification

[DarkEvilKen]

Holy! It is fricken hard to solder to that point on the NAND chip. Especially when you've got a horrible thick iron tip. Maybe I'd have better luck going through searching for an alternate point(on the same side I hope), even if it means testing every conductible point.

[DarkEvilKen]

modding now. Do I have to disconnect the WP pin to its current connection before connecting it to ground or can I leave it connected and just solder the switch for grounding?

tnx for clarification

By disconnecting do you mean cutting the leg from its current connection? That is not necessary nor should be done. Just ground the WP pin to write protect the chip.


Hey Godzivan, any tips on connecting a wire to that leg? I'm already using thin 30 gauge wire.

This post has been edited by DarkEvilKen: Nov 21 2009, 08:28 AM

[elfloco]

thank you. I got it from myself reading the nand specification, but another clarification is always welcome
cheers

[thwack]

Soldering to the NAND leg tip:

Tin your wire properly first - apply flux to wire, apply solder to wire (doesn't have to be a lot - less=more). Apply flux to NAND chip leg. Line up tinned wire with leg of NAND chip. GENTLY place heated solder iron tip to top of wire on NAND chip leg, give it a small amount of time to bond, remove soldering iron, wait a couple of seconds for solder to cool, wire should be soldered to chip leg

This post has been edited by thwack: Nov 21 2009, 02:38 PM

[elfloco]

worked as expected... banned, but my hdd is safe

[bruffterman]

I think you failed to understand this. They found a copy of crtl.bin in the update, but it still contains the same-old list of revoked consoles. HOWEVER, MS could use that file to store a list of banned consoles IN THE FUTURE (they currently have not, not even in "wave 5"), however, I doubt they will store 1 million Console IDs in your NAND. Just think about it for a full three seconds.

They wouldn't have to write the IDs to the NAND, they aren't trying to stop DLC sharing. The IDs would just have to be momentarily loaded into ram, so that the update could check your console ID against the list, and if it appears, would write the banning sec data to your NAND.


I'm sure it's got something to do with incredibly complicated 1-way maths, but if the ban writes the same piece of data to everyone's xbox, and people who have already gotten their cpu (from the original hack) can decrpyt that data on their consoles (if they get banned) Then once we have a clean version of the exact data, if we know the encryption method used, why can't we use those two pieces of information to reverse crack the CPU key on our consoles? I'm sure it would still take years, but with distributed computing and GPU power couldn't we start building a look-up table. encypting the image with every possible value of the CPU key, as the table grew your chance of finding a match would go up and up.

[jayneo8]

Has anyone actually tried this mod?

I did it and it seemed to work. I plugged my xbox into the network for the first time in ages. Went to connect to live and it confirmed my box is banned.

Then some weird stuff happened. In the dashboard the text dissaperead and all that was left was the a,b,x,y symbols. Then I started a game and it played off the DVD even though it existed on the harddrive. It then Red Ringed with an E71 error.

I turned the xbox off, unplugged the network cable and disconnected the WP pin from GND and the xbox worked fine. It still allows me to copy games/play games from the harddrive, so it did do it's job. But it gave me some weird results and I can't imagine leaving it on the network with the WP connected to GND.

At least I know my box has been banned and I can still play games from HDD without concerns, but for now I'll leave it offline.

Anyone else experience this type of behavior? I'd like to see if I am banned without disabling functions but I rather just leave the wire soldered for good to prevent it from ever being disabled.

[-PK-]

Anyone else experience this type of behavior? I'd like to see if I am banned without disabling functions but I rather just leave the wire soldered for good to prevent it from ever being disabled.

You will need to a switch to turn off the mod in order to update the dashboard. Even if you are currently banned, you will still need a switch to play new games that include future dashboard updates.

This post has been edited by -PK-: Nov 21 2009, 09:24 PM

[bruffterman]

You will need to a switch to turn off the mod in order to update the dashboard. Even if you are currently banned, you will still need a switch to play new games that include future dashboard updates.

tho if you have a banned (modded) xbox and don't want to update I assume ripping the disc wave patching it and burning it, would be an option and would remove the update right? if the update is in the video partition? so unless the game refuses to run without the update, which will obviously eventually be the case, when updates are introduced for stuff like natal, if not before just to screw with us.

Hopefully MS won't do anything offline to screw up our boxes tho, I'm pretty sure, in europe at least that they broke some laws by crippling the boxes. they shouldn't have done anything other than disable live access. of course their argument will be that it was to preserve the integrity of live but that doesn't explain disabling hdd installs. It makes me suspect that there might be a security hole in the hdd install that MS found before we did.

[GamerBR]

Anyone else experience this type of behavior? I'd like to see if I am banned without disabling functions but I rather just leave the wire soldered for good to prevent it from ever being disabled.

I also got an Error when first turning it on, but it's nothing to worry about. And if you banned there is no difference leaving the wire soldered, just unplug the network cable, it's useless anyway.
But if you are not banned and would like to leave the wire soldered you might sometimes get an error.

This post has been edited by GamerBR: Nov 22 2009, 10:47 AM