I have all these loose 360 parts from friends giving me completely busted systems over the years. Usually they give them to me after they take it apart themselves and can't fix it.

Recently I wanted to try to get one system working out of the five or six here and i've managed to do so however I can't get anything to read games because I have no clue what the original disc drive is for most of this gear.

My only current method is the most time consuming but it might be the only way. I've pulled drive keys off of everything in the parts box and I am trying to program the keys onto my one *new* drive (Samsung) one at a time until I find one that works for this motherboard.

I was hoping there might be a database or something online and a number printed on the motherboard that will narrow my efforts in this way. Is there anything like that or a much easier method that I don't know about? I've had to gather my info on how to do stuff from all over the place.

Thanks.

I think your best bet is to keep doing what you're doing. If you can determine which motherboard goes to which case, you can use 360drives.com to give you a good estimate of the type of DVD drive it shipped with.

That samsung will not work on falcons or jaspers, and most zephyrs were shipped with benqs. I would only try that samsung on Xenons or zephyrs.

Keep in mind drive spoofing doesn't work on the latest dashboard, so injecting a key into a samsung when the motherboard expected a liteon could flag you for a ban, or it would just not work.

Samsungs and Hitachis -->Xenon and early Zephyrs

Benq --> Late zephyr and Falcon.

Liteon-->possibly late falcon and jasper.


Doesn't sound like fun there. Make sure you keep all the keys you recovered from all the drives!

What motherboard does the working box have?...if xennon then odds are the drive would be Hitachi or Samsung.....unless it was sent in for repair by microsoft,....in that case it could be any drive.

Are the rest of the drives broke?? if not just keep plugging them in untill you find one that works.
Thats the quickest way I know of.

one drive has a tray load error but I reflashed the firmware. I believe its a benQ.
I have another benQ with a new laser I put in, but now it makes loud noises when running the motor. I might have a bad laser/motor unit from ebay.

The samsung I purchased new and that's why I've been using it exclusively. Its a ms28 revision. I also have a ms25 revision samsung which doesn't seem to read anything either.

Last time I sent commands to the ms28 Samsung it replied 0x70 and i've not been able to get it to show up for me to push a write to it since then.

I got so far with it all then I hit a wall. I might need to get another "new" drive from the web and try again.

I'll have to do some research regarding which mobo my working 360 has. It's old. I think a xbox 360 arcade edition. One of the first ones to be revised to include hdmi port below the standard av port.

The majority of these systems have been repaired by MS because there's ram heat pads and numerous doodles on the circuit board from whatever tech checked it.

Thanks for the replies!

oh I forgot to mention that i'm only using these systems for local play and the ability to load backups of my games is not a complete requirement. Therefore anything that would ban me from live would be okay in my book.

After a little research it appeared that tricking the system to accepting my good working drive would be the easiest solution to getting these four or five titles to work that I own.

I suppose if there is an easier solution than what i'm doing let me know. I'm still a noob at this particular scene.

You can almost always tell which drive matches a board by comparing the drive sicker to the part left on the shield. Assuming the boards are still inside their cages.

it is a falcon motherboard.
and it has the original dashboard. Not the "new live experience" or whatever it is called. So I hope that means I can do the drive key spoof.

what if i'm unable to locate the original drive for the key? What are my options then? Will a modchip or something of the sort bypass that key check on the drive board?

If it has the old "blade" dashboard, then you can probably jtag that thing and increase its value significantly. Once jtagged, you can put whatever kind of drive in with no issues, run emulators, play backup games, or install games to a hard drive and play off that. I recommend doing this because those older dashboards are pretty hard to come by these days, and the hack that replaced jtagging for newer dashboards (RGH) is a whole lot harder to do.

Hell, if you jtagged it, there'd be no real reason you would even need a DVD drive!

the easiest way is to use a NAND reader, dump the NAND find the original drive type and key and spoof that to the drive that is of the correct type

Can you please clarify a little bit, I have a similar situation. And think this method would be benefit me. Where is the stickers you speak of (on the shield) and what do they/should they say. Do you happen to have any pics??

Thanks in advance

There's a metallic sticker under the tray that gets broken when you remove the drive. They're not likely to be in the exact same position. When you put a drive into the cage it either lines up both halves of the sticker or not.