Original XBOX woes

I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction/s about a few XBOX ideas I have. I’ll give my story (as short as possible) and ask some questions at the end.

So, in 2007 I was given an XBOX that had a dead Phillips DVD drive & I believe is 1.1 (well call this XBOX 1). In 2008 I was given a 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] XBOX (XBOX 2) that doesn’t power up and has a mod chip in it. It has a Thomson DVD drive that works a little – reads some discs, not others and often has loading issues. I think XBOX2 is also a 1.1. I recently bought a 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] XBOX (Yes, XBOX 3) as part of a pile of broken stuff. I think this one is a 1.2-1.5 as it has an ATX power plug.
So, for a few years, I have been playing games by putting DVD drive 2 in XBOX1. This has been troublesome but at least I got to play through Halo 1 & 2. Anyway, I tried DVD Drive 3 and it was worse. So, for the sake of it I pulled apart DVD drive 1 to see how hard it is to clean it and to my surprise, it had shards of a broken DVD in it! Cleaned it up and it worked perfectly!! So for 3 weeks I was in heaven. The other night I finished playing a game with no probs and put in another – wouldn’t read the disc and has not read anything since. The following day it also failed to eject – the eject light just flashes. So I’m back to DVD drive 2.

XBOX 2 doesn’t boot (dead) – is it likely that the mod chip caused this? The guy that gave it to me ran it for over a year before it died.
Is it worth trying to put the mod chip in XBOX3?

Can I set up something like XBMC on a drive by connecting it directly to a PC? I’m hoping to avoid doing a softmod with a mem card, cable and Splinter Cell – expensive option as I live in Australia.

Does anybody have experience fixing power supplies to know if it is worth the attempt on XBOX2?

Is it likely that my Phillips drive is beyond repair?

It is likely that a clean of the lens will help the Thomson DVD drives?

I’m new to all this and not sure where to go with it all. I’m not going to get a 360 but have planned to get the next gen when released so I need to get a bit more mileage out of these. Grateful for any assistance. Leaning a lot from various forums and other resources though…

 

Well I can help you on the drive issues. Firstly repairing the drives are not difficult, will take around 10 minutes to do. You can pick up new Philips lasers for around $10-14 depending on the supplier.
The eject problem on XBOX2? (I find this number thing confusing lol), is just caused by the gears and the door. A bit of grease will get the drive sliding like new again. Usually the DVD doors get sticky on Samsung drives the most (from my experience) a whack on the top of the XBOX will get the drive to open, you can also place a sticker on the magnet inside the drive to allow the door to open more freely.

Since the XBOX2? Can't boot you can replace it with another power supply or find an XBOX that has a dead board and place the XBOX2 motherboard inside that with a working power supply. As an XBOX collector It's sad for me to say turf the dead PSU out, I can't find these things and I see no point in really doing so... You can pick one up for $10 at flee markets or cash converter stores (I've found and bought a few myself).

A modchip wouldn't cause the system to not boot, it's just the PSU giving you trouble, and which they are trouble.

You'll find that some game will load on certain drives and fail to work with others. It's just the XBOX DVD drive is HORRIBLE. They're really pieces of junk, there's been many reports over the years and today that they're just unreliable. Since you're wanting to use the XBOX still. Backup your games with the modded XBOX and install a larger HDD and create a new one with AID as it can do it all for you, it makes things a lot simpler. No point in softmodding on a 8GB HDD, you won't get far. Since you have a modchip you can now just play your games from your HDD, and just FTP games you want to play to the HDD completely ruling out the need for DVDs.

Hope I answered some of your questions.

 

For the $15 for a new laser, id replace it with the samsung 616(t/f) as it can read anything. They can be had for the same price, but will require modding.

 

I have one going my Xbox ATM. Problem is there are several diagrams for the power connector to wire into and every one of them has the pins labeled differently...

I need the TRUE pinout diagram for a 1.3/ 1.4 Xbox.

Anyone know where to find the proper one? I don't wanna risk blowing something out by hooking the serial data line to +12V or something like that...

 

This PDF is correct

 

I've got a phillips laser here somewhere that is brand new but wasn't compatible with the Phillips drive I had but the seller swore it was.

If you can tell me the model of the laser inside your Phillips I might have something for you.

 

Also, stuck dvd drive doors sometimes need a replacement rubber strap.

 

YAY!
Thanks man. I've been sweating over this. I've done everything to the drive minus the wire connections to original piece. Now I can finish it finally. I even removed everything not needed from the front PCB and cut the whole thing down to fit like original. Even put original bezel on and it looks factory. I think it has the BIOS flashed already according to FleaBay seller so I'll find out soon.

 

Thanks all - sorry for any confusing stuff in my question. New baby and sleepless nights don't do favours for literacy. I dismantled all 3 DVD drives and found some things. The 2 Thomson drives have a little metal piece surrounding the laser, and these are scratched to ....... So I hate to think what this has done to the discs. But anyway, the Phillips had nothing visibly wrong with it - all I did was dismantle and reassemble but this ended up fixing it again. Found a good tute at:
http://www.llamma.com/xbox/phillips_xbox_dvd_complete_dissassembly.htm

I'm sure it will die again but we'll wait and see. I'll rephrase one of my earlier questions about the mod chip - I was wondering if these chips are known to create power differences that would in turn cause a PSU to die. I don't want to waste good PSUs because I have a chip that might be stuffed.
Thanks again for everyone's help.

 

Only way to find out if the modchip is causing power supply issues (I don't see how) is to de-solder it.

 

Sorry if this is a silly question but what type of grease should be used (or what's it called?). I have to tap the top of mine a few times to get it open so wouldn't mind fixing that.

 

silicone grease

 

There used to be a thread about types of grease at some point here

Lithium grease is the standard choice.
But i also like to use silicon grease, its non conductive, does not affect plastics and wont dry out.

 

Many people use the grease that's used for RC Cars. Just as MaxWar said as long as it's non-conductive.

 

Thanks guys. I did a search on ebay to find something cheap and cheerful and it came up with all sorts. But I'm guessing I need something like this?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CARLUBE-2..._Body_Shop_Supplies_Paint&hash=item3cc52b2d9d

 

Sounds good, or if you happen to go to a hardware store they are likely to have some in the plumbing section.

 

Thats exactly what I use

 

phillips laser

I appreciate that but I have found that there si a physical issue with that drive and when it encounters this, it stops reading all discs. Kind of over the drive thing now as I have been told many times: "all XBOX drives are sh....".

Now I'm looking at modding options

 

Looking into this further, the Blown XBOX with the mod chip has a:
aladdin advance v1.0-v1.6
I just had a look at 2 tutes on youtube about how to install these and there is some soldering of wires across different sections of the Mboard and chip. The one I was given had none of this done so it looks like someone botched the install. Any idea from XBOX veterans if the chip is likely fried now? I'm guessing that this would have blown the xbox. If the chip itself is likely to be OK, I might give it a go in one of my working consoles (done right of course).

 

If looking into modding, look for a Samsung Sd-616T. With a simple firmware swap and some extra signal wires soldered in it can play all media and original Xbox disks at full speeds. 52X for CD and 16X for Xbox/ DVD.