I'm not sure if this applies here, but it involves the DVD..

[Khali]

My buddy was helping an apartment owner out (work related, he moved TVs and stuff) and one of his tenants skipped town, leaving a bunch of stuff behind, this 360 being one of those things. So he asked him if he wanted it, to make him some kind of offer, but he could try it out first. We booted it, it works fine and everything as far as booting and the dash board goes, but when we tried to open the DVD rom, to our surprise, nadda. It doesn't open the tray. So we figured, what the hell, pull it apart, see what was going on. The console itself was clearly already tampered with, and the warranty sticker has been removed.

Now, pulling it apart, and getting to the DVD rom drive, there's no gear inside it! So the tray doesn't even open. We're assuming he was doing some kind of DVD swap method to play burned games, we're not really sure how the method here goes. If anyone can ID this method, or tell us if he just removed the gear, or anything, much help would be appreciated.

If it helps, there are screw driver marks or something all over the DVD rom face plate, so it seems he was opening the tray that way, but there's also a HUGE hole inside the DVD rom, back of the tray, like at the back end, like he was trying to pull it forward, like if the top was removed. Anyone have any idea what the deal is?

Another thing that also puzzled us is that he skipped town without paying rent, and left it behind. But who knows, people have their reasons I guess? Anyone know what the deal is?

[sadalius]

If the drive has any signs of life, then you may be able to replace the drive. You can find then on ebay and a couple other places as well. Basically what you need to do is get a replacement drive, it can be the same exact brand and revision, or a totally different drive. Without knowing whats in it, I would recommend getting a Samsung MS-28 drive, or a Benq if you can find it. You'll need a sata controller with VIA 6421 chipset. Once you get your new drive, you would use the VIA sata card to read or "dump" the firmware from the old drive and use a piece of software called firmware toolbox to get the drive key. This key is what will make your new drive work with the 360 that the old drive came from. Once you have the key, then you can dump the firmware of the new drive and use firmware toolbox to inject the key from the old drive to the new drives firmware. Then you can create the ixtreme firmware and flash it to the new drive and be all set. If you get a different brand or revision of drive, then you may have to use firmware toolbox to "spoof" the new drives firmware so that the 360 thinks that its still the same drive as the old one.

Hope this helps!!

[Khali]

We were actually gonna go down this road, we know a guy that can do the DVD drive swap. We know its the Samsung model, what I was wondering is, will the Hitachi work? He found a Samsung for like $40 though, so we might just try with that one. But do you think the guy did this to try a swapping method or something? Or did he just sabotage the drive? That's the only reason I can see him leaving it behind.

[CoFree]

i would say he could not get it working so he left it.

[sadalius]

I agree with CoFree. He probably couldn't get it working so he just left it. I would take the hitachi to the guy that can do the swap and see if he can dump the firmware before you order the samsung. While $40 is cheap for those drives, its a little bit to loose if the hitachi is totally dead and you can't get the key out of it. If he can get the key, then I would order the replacement drive.