XBox 360 Flahsy Flashy!

I just couldn't resist any longer. I had to break open my XBox 360. Yes, it voids my warranty (but I want a Wii anyway ). On the longer range agenda, I'll be replacing the bright white case with something black, maybe with a cool blue LED to match the Onkyo. In the shorter term, I've been reading a lot about flashing the firmware for the DVD drive. Basically, you can't play back-up copies of your games because the DVD reader checks what type of content is on the disc, and then what type of media the disc is. IF (game && !pressed) THEN no play for you! The idea of flashing the firmware is that the check always returns a condition that allows the game to be played.

There are various guides and YouTube movies out there, so Google for yourself (I'm not going to try to keep links updated). The short of it is that you crack open the case, plug the DVD drive into a PC (SATA support required), run a program that re-writes the DVD drive's firmware with a modified version, then put it all back together. The latest version of the most popular firmware is 5.2 and is pretty mature. It comes in 4 flavors that has to do with the drive speed. I want options, but I also want to preserve the life of my drive, so I selected the "d" option that defaults to a slow read speed, but you can use the faster speed if needed.

All in all, it was an exciting afternoon to break open what's basically a small computer and play with its guts. The flash part hiccuped at first because I couldn't identify which drive was which. So I disconnected couple to help narrow things down. Note that the maturity of the software really shows here because I was successfully reading firmware, but it wasn't the size expected, so I got lots of warnings. Finally I got a good backup copy of the original firmware for my drive, then I flashed it with the 5.2d version. I closed everything back up and went to test.

"Open Tray"

Every disc I had -- original game, backup game, original DVD, backup DVD, audio CD -- EVERYTHING -- gave me this "Open Tray" error. So I started reading some more. Turns out, flashing the firmware can make the drive's laser lose it's sense of positioning and will read areas where there's no data. There's a fix: tie a little piece of rubber band around a rail inside the drive to create a bumper. Which means opening the DVD drive itself -- more that what I had bargained for. And the thing is, version 5.2 was supposed to fix these errors. Did I have a bum drive? Right now, the drive was useless, so I had to try. Later in the evening, I broke the case open again with the intents of doing the rubber band fix. And what did I see?

The Xbox's SATA drive cable just dangling loose. I plugged it back in, and before putting it all back together again, tried out all the various media. EVERYTHING WORKS! Closed it up, and all has been well.

Game load times are a little slower with this version of the firmware, but the console doesn't sound like a jet airplane getting ready for take-off anymore. So that's a win too. Will post more when I upgrade my case.