Hello! I thought there was only Samsung, Thomson, and Phillips drives; but I stumbled across a post that mentions it and has pictures (another post here). Did you ever come across them? Were they all 1.6 / 1.6b's? Cheers!
They were all dated 2004 or 2005 and i think they were only installed to rev 1.6 and 1.6b consoles. At least all the ones i've had by now were found in Rev1.6 consoles!
All in 05 systems actually. As close to the final production dates as possible. Mostly if the MFG is late in 05, chances of the drive are higher.
Thanks for the replies guys! Do all 1.6b consoles then have Hitachi drives? I'm also curious if you have accurate revision date ranges, since information found online and on the dev wiki contradict each other.
Not every 1.6b has a Hitachi drive. But as hexigon already said chances are higher to find one in a late 2005 Mfg date. Can't tell you about the serial numbers or production dates as i tend to swap around drives... When i find the next one i will post the infos in this thread so we have a starting point!
I believe I made some kind of post about the Hitachi drive here some where, and also mentioned the MFG. EDIT: Seems I must be my memory is foggy, I'm sure I have though.
Thanks for the info. I should have clarified: I meant manufacture dates for each revision in general, not specifically for Hitachi drives. I may make a Google form and post it around on a few sites to try and grab revision vs serial number details. I've collected a few special edition serial numbers from eBay listings for info already. As far as I know, everything I've written on this page is accurate except for the manufacture dates which are fuzzy and seem to overlap in a way that doesn't make sense.
Derf, its good there is research into this all, and it good we have some "names" for these versions. but the revision numbers are made up by the scene, MS never truly shared how many revisions there where. So maybe remove or add that notion on your page. More importantly, its best to stay open for more versions "between" "revisions". Im not saying im sure there are, but there is a small posibilety there are sofar unnoticed versions because IC's, parts like hdd and dvd, and the layout of the LPC bus dint change that much isnt a reason for not being another revision being there. Just saying because I myself was at first confused when I saw the DVT4 boards and DVT3 ones. and even more confused when I noticed diferent MCPX chips (generarly retail is all -X3 and "should be interchangeble" pin wise, functional) the 1.6 did had some radical changes tho, especialy board layout wise. 1.1 versions with other brand Caps dint make it a total diferent version, but 1.4 and 1.5 is LPC diference? ... I read Ground, 5v or 3.3 is disconnected, by board design or does the MCPX has something to do with it? Anyway, there are more, especialy older, before retail. but for DVD, Hitachi is special
Thanks for the reply! Wouldn't it be safe to say that a "revision" would be a revision to the motherboard itself that made the previous gen modchips unusable? That's how I always took it since there's a lot of oddball combinations of DVD/HDD with the motherboard equipment. DVT3/DVT4 are debug consoles, right?
Your probably right. Im not sure if we realy catched all the real diferences tho (I do think we got all of them that influenced the modchip workings over generations) the 1.6 and 1.6b is only ram? probably something else, but why do we call the 1.6b a B? its "just diferent ram. maybe thats a question for another thread DVT4 is devkit console yes (debug is similiar, but retail like case, no dvd emu and no kerneldebug(serial com)) DVT3 is like DVT4 but somewhat older hardware and definitly preretail 1.0. (supports older kernels, not the newest?) and there are even older or diferent boards, some with whats look like CPU debug ports and a USB plug near the back (that could go to the "usb" connector on a DVT case ) wich otherwise was probably used for a JVS system for arcade boards. cause Sega and Chihiro anyway, dvd drives, wonder if I got any hitachis
1.6(b) have a different power supply design as well (other voltages at the connector) They also used another video encoder (excalibur) which contained the bios in a mask rom. They lack the positions on the pcb to install 4 extra memory chips and double it's memory size. The motherboard has some of it's mounting holes on different locations. Another revision motherboard in a 1.6(b) case can be shorted by the metal shielding. Besides the samsung memory chips, they also used another brand (hitachi?) with other timings. Those ram's were slower. They got rid of the bad 1 farad capacitor that is known for leacking and damaging the motherboard. The eeprom uses a different encryption key for it's harddisk key.
Different master key or encryption? cause all (normal) keys where diferent with all xbox. I can imagine what you mean tho. Thx. (did not know about the PSU tho, is it somewhat backwards compatible or not? just looks so much the same that identification wasnt that obvious for "noobs"? The excalibur yes, havent seen one decapped yet, but we dont have the mcpx decaped good either (there where attempts and its ... dificult to decode (the rom part)) Slower Ram? so every real gamer wants faster ram yes?
