Gaming Flashing 360 for first time, need some tips please.

[blazingwolf]

Alright, so I'm hacking a 360 for a friend, I think I can handle it. I'm a bit lost in some directions so I figured I'd visit gbatemp for some tips.

I've got a 360 here, manufacturing date is 1-16-2006. It's a Samsung drive. So I know which drive I have, that's good. I'm confused when it comes to this m25, m28 business? What is that? I hear you can only hack m28 with a via card or something. Do some mobo's have this already installed or is the card absolutely necessary? I hear m25 you can plug in straight to your mobo. I'm guessing since this is an early model 360 I don't have to worry about that?

As for the file I need to flash my 360, all I need is the iXtreme 1.51 firmware right? It works for all versions? Just download that and load it in with iPrep? Is iPrep the best tool/recommended?

I hear that you must "read" your firmware to back it up or you'll brick it. So just READ in iPrep, then flash? Do I even use the erase command?

Finally, if this works, I'm thinking of buying a 360 for myself. Are the newer ones hard to flash/impossible? Should I just go for a used 360?

 

[velocity37]

You don't need a Via chipset necessarily, I've flashed a Samsung with my Nforce chipset. A via chipset is recommended because you can flash any current 360 drive with it just fine, some chipsets won't work right. The VT6421 chipset is on the cheapest cards as well, so you can pick one up for around $14 if your motherboard can't flash it. JungleFlasher is easy too. MS25/28 doesn't matter, just that MS25 makes it a little easier. With the MS28 you have to get the drive into the "half open" state to get past the firmguard, while there is no firmguard on the MS25.

Anyways, JungleFlasher will do the job just fine, and the JungleFlasher User Guide explains every step of the process.

New 360s can be flashed too, but you have to either make a key reader or buy one, so there's some extra money (~$50) involved. You can also pay someone on craigslist $25-50 to do it for you. A used 360 would be easier to flash, but you won't get the Jasper revision.