ok, the topic title might not be descriptive enough...hopefully this helps clear my problem up.

I've got 2 xboxes, one has a working Xenium (1st gen) and upgraded hard drive. It's working.
The 2nd xbox had a matrix chip in it, but the chip seems to have died. I've tried reprogramming it with the little programmer that came with it (parallel port, using winLPC), but just keep getting error messages about not being able to erase the chip. I have a number of original hdrives that came out of other modded machines, but none of them boot up with this xbox (so i'm thinking that none of them were it's original drive ) otherwise i'd try to do a softmod on the box.

so, i guess my question is.... what the heck can I do (besides find someone selling a mod chip) to get the 2nd box working?

is there anyway to flash the box's eeprom if i put the working Xenium into it?
anyway to lock one of the drives to this box (if i put in the Xenium and then chose lock the drive)?
any easier/solution to flashing the matrix with the programmer?

or am I SOL.....

This is obvious. Invest in another mod chip.

That will work if you have an unlocked drive.