those links are allowed (and if they werent taking th eh off wont keep you from getting banned, lol)

Another forum I am in has the stupid rule that no outside links are allowed, but we can just make the link dead any number of ways and they are ok with it then.

the only thing you cant do here is link to a website that has direct downloads of warez and pirate content (including xbes built with MS xdk)

oh yeah, no pr0n either

Well, seems like the Samsung is still the best XBox DVDROM out there. But, it won't play my old DVD+R backups that my Thomson could launch! But, it plays CDR which is good.

try the 2004 philips VAD6035/21, boots all cd-r and dvd+r i threw at it

theyre got the best reputation, but i think the new phillips has one over em.

time will tell though. lets wait and see what can be done with these lg drives first

i got a new xbox and inside is a dvd drive i have never seen befor.
it says hitachi the model #is grd-8050L.


what is it. is it good or a bad dvd drive

In a word..


BAD

is MS putting these in all the new xbox systems.
this is the first one i have seen. i have opened over 100 xboxs and have never seen this type of drive.

yeah, its new

but we dont know how many of the production lines are using them, so you might still get teh new phillips and samsung drives in new xbox's for a while to come yet

sigh another scheme that ms is using to make for profit

tru. but i supose you have to look at it from the point of view that ms is a business. of course they want to do what they can to make a dollar.

does it play all cds and dvds like the samsung?

doesnt anyone read the thread before posting?

lmao, I think it's safe to say that most people on this forum can't get mad at MS for saving a buck or two per drive when a certain few members here get a "deal" on their games. Not to point any fingers though. The scene as a whole is very respectable, but just those few...

You joking me with this profit bullsh ? These bastards are racking fat wads off of Live, Games, Controlers (S: Blue, Black and Green), AV Packs, DVD Packs, as well as the most huge loyal base of money tossing customers out of any console. As for modding, they don't give nearly as big a crap as they front. Modders, no matter what, feed money into Xbox the same as anyone else, and are, like the others, only setting them selves up for years of loyality like a damn church. Thats more valuable than anything else, the console just an after thought sucka, to get you addicted to the greater MS product base.

www.uploadimages.net , try that its the best host ive ever seen



umm ive never had that problem with that and i played that combo disk for about 2 hours on the new drive and nothing happend, and i havnt had any other problems with any other games that ive played on it either, i think you just fucked up your disk or something.

Getting back on topic... anyone had any luck getting some firmware for the new drive, and possibly flashing it to a PC DVD drive

616s are too hard to get and really expensive. A cheaper drive would be great!

What makes you feel that LG is another Thomson? In my opinion the Thomsons are one of the best because of compatibility to all DVD-Media! Only its drive speed of 2x is killing me (I don't know if that is true, but found it on a website!!!)

http://www.xbox-linux.org/Talk:Xbox_Linux_...D_Burning_HOWTO

Samsung is way faster with 5x but fails DVD+R (in my opinion superior media). If you got the RIGHT dvdwriter you can use BITSETTING to get +R or +RW working on every Samsung!!! The Philips Rev. 2 seems to be nice too but I don't have any clue about its speed.

I would love to get my hands on this drive. LG makes one of the best optical drives so I can not understand how people can talk about it as an inferior drive!!! The only thing that sucks is it isn't working with CD-Rs and DVD+RWs!!!

"Samsung is way faster with 5x but fails DVD+R (in my opinion superior media). If you got the RIGHT dvdwriter you can use BITSETTING to get +R or +RW working on every Samsung!!!"

What is "RIGHT dvdwriter" and what is "BITSETTING"?

Can you be more specific?

LG GSA-4163B for example is a good dvdwriter.

DVD-R : 2x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV, 16x PCAV
DVD-RW : 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x CLV
DVD-RAM : 2x, 3x ZCLV, 3x – 5x PCAV (Ver. 2.1)
DVD+R : 2.4x, 4x CLV, 8x, 12x, 16x ZCLV
DVD+R Double Layer : 2.4x, 4x CLV
DVD+RW : 2.4x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV
CD-R : 4x, 8x CLV, 16x, 24x, 32x, 40x ZCLV
CD-RW : 4x, 8x, 10x CLV, 16x CLV, 24x ZCLV

A DVD-Player or dvd drive first tries to get information about what kind of media is in the drive in order to chose the correct laser. Some players and drives can not understand what "DVD+R", "DVD+RW" or even "DVD+DL" are. Bitsetting is a special feature which makes the dvdwriter set a flag so the media type WILL BE DVD-ROM to achieve better compatibility. With bitsetting burned DVD+ Media runs perfectly on Samsung drives!!!

http://www.dvdplusrw.org/Article.asp?mid=0&sid=2&aid=42
http://www.videohelp.com/glossary?B#BitSetting

untrue. i have had media that wouldnt work.

Yeah, I would definatly have to agree there. I have the new Phillips drive in my 1.6 Xbox that I got in early November (Halo 2 ) and it plays almost every media I put in it. I have found VERY few types of CD-Rs that it will not play. I haven't tested the other media as extensively since CD-R is usually the one that doesn't work. I know some of my extremely old CD-Rs didn't work (old dark blue bottoms), but I'd say about 90% of the CD-Rs I had worked in it. Great drive, couldn't be happier with it... unless it was quiet haha.

i've had a v1.6 to mod for a friend that had a new philips drive and at the time i knew nothing about the new philips drive so i thought it was just the same as any other philips apart from the noise that made me think it was almost broken

anyway i spent atleast a hour looking at it untill i read that the noise is normal

Ive seen this brand of drives in mass quantity at a local pc swap meet, I'll try to pick some up
they were $10-$15 each I got all of the samsung 616t's

I'll posts pics after the 1st

Damn, just as I was planning on buying a new xbox.
Guys think I should try to buy one of those factory refurbished systems?

Samsungs are ok, but maybe its just the one i've got. I've got the 605f. It's ready any burned dvd media i've thrown in it, but never a cd-r. I've gotten around that by burning stuff on a dvd+rw instead, or copying over the network to the hard drive.

I can live without cd-r (allthough it would be nice to have), but at the least the 605f plays everything else i throw at it.

Oh yeah all this talk about back up discs and stuff is great. But how well does it deal with original Xbox games? Scratched up ones and stuff like that. I never use any sort of dvd or cd media as my crappy Thompson wont read em anyway.

Hey ppl i found the H-L Data Storage English website. This mite sound really dumb but i spent atleast 15 mins looking for it . No matches turned up for H-L Data storage on Google

http://www.hlds.co.jp/e_index.jsp

Again this mite be pretty obvious...

I also found a possible match..... its the GDR-8162B

its not a perfect match but i think it mite be like the Samsung 605F and the 616T. Keep in mind the 616T is 16X too.....

anyway this was the only drive on the website.

IMO the best DVD-ROM drive for XBox is the Phillips v2 drive (Phillips J5 3235C)

It reads absolutely EVERYTHING so it has an advantage over the good old Samsung which is problematic with + media unless you bitset

hmmmm.....i have the new hitachi LG dvd drive. I havent noticed any errors and/or problems...except...it wont read the last 5 seconds of a cd i have. I have cleaned it over amd over again (w/ windex from the inside out, windex, lol) but it still wont read it *sigh* . Any whoo, my mfg date is November 2, 2004. I would open it to see the specs and such but i do not want to void the warrenty just in case i choose to return it or send it to micrsoft. I noticed a reply that said it had problems reading the topspin/ncaa fottball 2005 cd it included, which is bs because it reads mine fine. As for cdrs...everyone is right, it wont read em. O well. I hope that encouraged some of u. And i dont think that it is the next Thompson as some of u may say who dont even own it and are judging by the pics.

all the ones ive come across wouldnt read dvd+r, besides the philips (both the un-tweaks v1 and the new one) read all dvd media as well, and are far more reliable at it than the thomsons

One of you guys with this drive need to open it up and take some hi-res pictures of the circuit board... that is litterally the only way we'll be able to determine if there is a sister drive like the Xbox sammy and the 616 sammy.

I'm good friends with A@ron (writer of "the definitive 616t tutorial"). We're both very familiar with 616 modding, how and why it works. We need to know the model number of the chips on the circuit board as well as any model numbers printed on the actual circuit board. You get us that stuff and we can start working on cracking this new drive.

What's up?

Someone can take pictures of the GDR-8050L's pcb. I will try and get my hands on a GDR-8162B and take pictures of it's pcb for comparison.

NCIX in Canada sells these for $31.61 CAD and they have sales all the time.,

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku...G%20Electronics

Ill be chiping a friends drive that he got new for crimmis, if it has the drive in it ill grab some pics of the PCB and the chips. Good luck thought, i figure that MS will never make that mistake again and there just trying to make our lives misrable. Bad ram, bad drives...... seagate......any way, ill see if i can dig that info up friday or sooner. some one else with the Drive do the same so we have conparason.





Spelling and gramer are not my strong point.....

Hee hee...im getting excited....thatd be tight if it can be cracked to do original games like the samm616's....as believe it or not ive got a lemon of a sammy in an xbox which was fucked over from a softmod from some guy at school...i mean how can u screw over a soft mod....i ended up buying it from him....he was saying it was giving him dde n stuff...so i was like w/e...ill buy it...mod it...sell it....then i noticed it was a sammy.....how odd...a sammy with reccurent dde's ....i cleaned the lense...still makin stupid noises...but hopefully there is gonna be a new ''616'' with the lg drives..... going to chip a family members xbox when my next batch of aladdins arrive, if it has one ill take pics for all you guyz


Cheers,


Shadow


and by the way Malphazar
jacking Brahms avatar.....not cool

-EDIT....my bad...brahm's EX avatar...still.......

Hey twistedsymphony!

What do you think about the Samsung SD-616E? I ordered this drive some while ago as I though that I could get the SD-616T. The SD-616E is manufactured by Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology and I am afraid that this drive cannot be modified as it can be done with the SD-616T. Any comments on this would be welcome.

I got some `dirty disc errors` some time ago and started browsing message boards to find out with which drive I could replace my dying Thomson drive. My Thomson drive is still functional, but I wouldn`t bet that it won`t fail in future. If the LG drive turns out to be as "good" as the SD-616T and folks could find a compatible drive than can be modded, I would go for that one..

My brother bought an xbox for his girlfriends son, for christmas.

Anyways it has the new dvd-drive in it, I ''tested'' the xbox for a few days before wrapping it.

I noticed that sometimes it randomly gives me the (The disc might be damaged...) error and it did it a few times (with : One original game; Amped 2+Top spin, 4 Backups (2 dvd+r ,2 dvd-r all branded differently). All the discs look brand new (no scratches)).

The error is realy random like once it did it after about 4 hours of playing kotor 2.
Another time after 35 mins of nfsu2. etc....

This never happened on my xbox(its a samsung I guess it makes a difference??)
(well it happened a few times but it was in morrowind backed up on my hard drive)

Now I guess ill have to buy him a samsung or a phillips since this thing is annoying!

thatll b useless. ud b better off getting him a hdd, and copying the games to that

can we get a pic of the under side of the dvd tray?

what do you want that for? theres pics of the tray around here, theyre not that hard to find

There are no pics of the underside of the tray though, are there?

If he's after a pic of the underside, a topside view isn't going to do.

could somebody please clear up a nagging question for me:

If the Hitache drive has a direct hardware equivalent, we'd simply flash the xbox firmware onto the PC version, correct? With the 616T's, I seem to see people talking about hacking the firmware, but I don't see why this is neccessary, not to mention that it's a fairly involved undertaking.

thx

It may not be as simple as that. Pizza Pizz tried pottering around with the Samsung SDG-605F, when a SD-616Q was flashed with the 605F firmware, it wouldn't read CDR anymore, possibly indicating that the drive REFUSES to read them, even though the hardware can handle it.

so what would happen if you flashed the 605f with 605b firmware? is that a way to get cdr support?

Now, I'm not familiar with the hardware on any of these drives, but I assume the 605f and 605b have different chips on them, which means you can't just go flashing different firmware on it, because those chips need to talk to each other somehow. But therein lies my confusion, because, same chips, same language, I don't see why firmware would need hacking, per se. But again, I'm not even 100% familiar with the copy protection scheme the xbox uses. I thought it's just a reverse-spinning drive motor.

Thx for your patience with an interested n00b.

yer it must be, otherwise y would u have to reverse the motor when moddign a sammy 616?

so why cant we just take the firmware form teh xbox drive, flash it on the pc drive, reverse the motor?
then, we just need the few point that tell the xbox if teh drives open or what, and you shoudl have a dvd drive thatll read everythign perfect.
just like the sammy 616.

As stated somewhere above, the reason you'd need to "hack" the Xbox drive firmware would be to enable some extra features, such as DVD+R reading, etc. Just because the hardware supports something, doesn't mean the firmware allows it. I know the 616T PC version can read DVD+R WITHOUT bitsetting, if you have the latest firmware. The Xbox version, being older, does NOT support this, which is why you have to properly bitset a +R in order for it to be read.

I'm sure the PC version of the Hitachi reads burned media fine, which means that the drive is physically capable of reading the media. However, if, once it is flashed, it doesn't read DVD+Rs (or any other media) anymore, then we know that the firmware is limiting it, thus it might need to be hacked.


To answer HunTerror's question about the motor spinning:

The motor reversal on the 616 isn't to reverse the spinning motor; it's to reverse the tray in/out motor. The Xbox doesn't spin the discs backwards, it reads them from the outside track -> in (instead of inner track -> out, like normal media). The tray reversal wasn't a copy protection method, just a slight difference between the way the drives were manufactured (which had to be properly addressed in the drive firmware)

For ferrari_rulz_02:

In order to take the firmware and flash it in a way that the new drive works, the new drive HAS to have the same type of chips, etc. on it. Trying to find the exact PC equivalent of the Xbox Hitachi is the goal of this thread. Once that is found, the work of mapping the proper solder points, etc. can begin.

Why the hell cant someone just open one of these drives and posts pictures of its circuit board. I have a drive that may be a pc equivalent, but I cant compare them unless you guys post a pic.

POST A PIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A number of you have them in modded xbox's, cant just one of you POST A PIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1