I just bought an XBox on eBay for $50, and got some parts at the same time. The XBox was toast with a service code 07 and the hard drive wasn't spinning up at all, so I said dead hard drive. Seeing as how my parts also had a similar hard drive, I thought... why not take the controller card and swap them out? Voila! instant fix.

1.0 XBox - $49.99
XBox parts - $7

Perfect working XBox for sale - $100
Knowing that you don't have to buy extra parts and praising God that the mail lady came back with what you needed to fund your schooling - priceless

Speaking of which, does anyone have an extra Seagate HD that they would like to sell for $5 or something? I need to replace that controller card now =(...

Will post pictures of what I mean later.