Hacking Modding old 360

[Andim]

So my neighbor dropped by today and gave me two broken 360s for $20.
The first is a Falcon with a spotty disk drive, and is running firmware 14719. The second is a Zephyr and has been RRoD'd for years.

Though I'm sure the RRoD'd one would be easy to hack if I could get it working, I'm not going to try that right now.
What are my options for the first one? I don't need Live. Don't even have a subscription, and I have an additional 360 that I won't be modding. Can I flash the drive without too much additional hardware? Will other options require serious soldering?

 

[DinohScene]

RGH hacking would require soldering.
I won't RGH a Zephyr cause their a pain to boot, if they boot at all.

If you really don't want XBLive, then get a RGH.
If you just want games to be launched then I suggest getting an ODDE (external USB drive as storage media for games)
Or flash the drive indeed (DVD backups)
ODDE only needs you to have a dump of your DVD firmware.
I'd pay someone to extract it cause it's easier for you ;]

I'd leave the Zephyr for what it is and tackle the Falcon.
I'd personally get an ODDE.

 

[Andim]

After I extract the firmware do I need to buy anything else to flash it? I read something about a SATA card.
Edit: Or do I need to flash it for an ODDE?
Double edit: Looks like it's a Benq drive. Is it possible that I could just plain dump and flash it using my PC? All the tutorials for this drive just tell me to power it using the 360 and plug it straight into my mobo with sata.

 

[DinohScene]

If your Mobo's SATA chipset is compatible then you can.
I do not encourage this method tho, but if you only use it for key extraction then you can ;]

For an ODDE, you'll need to purchase a Xkey.
And no, you won't need a hacked firmware for the Xkey.

 

[Andim]

So that'd be like $90 for an xk3y, and $10 max if I need the sata card. If I pawn off a few of my 360 games I could pay for that.

That's a great deal. Last time I looked into hacking my slim the subtotal came to something like $200, with no ODDE.

 

[DinohScene]

Pretty much yes.

Aye aye!
Let me know if I can help you with it when you have it.

 

[Andim]

Now, uh, as far as that Zephyr goes, it's not actually technically red ring. Only one of the lights is flashing red. As I understand it the typical red ring is three lights. And it's let me turn it on once. Is there any chance it might be fixable without a lot of disassemble and reflowing?

 

[DinohScene]

Does it display an E74 error?
Then you'll need to reflow the HANA chip.

 

[lisreal2401]

What is the error code you get when you hold the sync button and press eject? When you click it four times, you should get a code that will stand for these numbers 0 - Four - 1 - 1 2 -2 3 -3

 

[Andim]

It's E74, which I guess is bad news. Is reflowing the hana chip any different from whatever job people do on the GP/CPU, with the X clips?

As for the code, it's...
top left
full
top
top

Or 1022, AV cable/encoder chip error

 

[DinohScene]

It's your HANA chip.

A reflow on the HANA lasts some what longer then the GPU/CPU.
If you do end up reflowing it and get it working again, glue a small heatsink to the HANA chip ;]