Xbox 360 Lite-on quick summary (as of 14th August 2009)
This guide will assume a basic familiarity with 360 flashing and indeed may ultimately serve as part of a larger guide, this is intended as a guide for those getting back into the game and for those somewhat lost following the developments of the last few weeks (I was so I spent some time getting things straight in my head and figured others could use something like it).
As you are probably aware Microsoft contracts out 360 disc drives to other manufacturers which means a variety of drives. The two most recent models in new 360s are the liteon 73850 and 83850c. The 83850c is seen in drives coming back from repair and in some new models (many 360s sit on shelves for months so you are still fairly likely to end up with a 73850). There is no way to tell which revision you have without opening the xbox 360 up but once that is done it is just a matter of reading the information from the label.
Initially touted as being unhackable they have both now fallen (the 73850 back in late December 2008 and the 83850c in the first week of August 2009 having only been seen two months before) and can be hacked by the end user with no need to attach equipment to the drive on a permanent basis. For the vast majority of sites/blogs/guides the term liteon refers to the 73850 as the 83850c is a relatively new development (first seen in the first few days of June 2009).
73850
The only available way requires you to read the key from the drive using external hardware which you can buy for about the price of a game or make from basic components (catch is you need a serial port where most purchased devices will operate over USB).
Guide to making a probe:
http://xbox-experts.com/e/tutorial.php?n=flashyourliteonf
Common paid for versions include the CK3 connectivity kit as well as the spear and 360Xtractor.
Be careful as many connectivity kits can be just the power kit (used for older drives) or just the spear (somewhat useless without a a kit to connect it to) so read up on what you are buying.
Do note that once flashed a way to dump the required serial numbers becomes available to anyone with a compatible sata chipset (VIA6421 and some nvidia kit) without the use of a probe. A good modder should also provide the serial if you had yours initially done by a third party so updating should not be difficult.
General order of things is
Disassemble 360 and drive (not necessary for older drives but for the 73850 you will need access to the drive mainboard.
Set drive into mode necessary but having the drive close but stop before it reaches the closed position (usually by cutting power half way through a close).
Power the drive and have it identify. Probably wise to note drive location.
Attach probe and read serial (see picture in the build your own guide). Repeat dump as paranoia requires (done for you in the latest versions) and send keys to several places to avoid problems if/when hardware fails.
Use serial and other dumped files to generate hacked firmware.
Use special liteon erase instead of normal erase.
Powercycle drive* (may require you to manually set drive address hence having to note it above).
Flash hacked firmware- wait until it says it has finished.
Rebuild drive and 360.
* part of the firmware you erase also includes the drive logic so upon power cycling the drive you will likely find you can not do a “soft” eject and instead will have to manually eject using the “emergency eject” bar and set it to half open.
Several hacked firmwares exist but most choose between the ixtreme 1.51 and 1.6 versions (1.51 and 1.6 both support wave 3 but 1.6 has support for those wishing to use their drive to dump pressed discs).
83850c
This revision closed the hole but another was opened when the new way to dump the serial (part of debugging and fixing drives) was exposed as being weakly protected (interested parties can view the nicely commented source code of OpenKey available in the openkey downloads at http://www.abgx360.net/ ) following decryption of the firmware proper. As far as people in the know are aware this is unique to the 83850c and those with 73850 drives should not expect a “backport” as it were. Just to clarify initially you could only decrypt it by sending the “dump” to the mod seller foundmy along with $42 USD but shortly after a tool called freekey and then an open source tool called openkey (linked above) arrived. Today these tools are little more than a curiosity as their functionality has been working into the general flashing tools detailed below.
Naturally this required a new hacked firmware for which you have the
Team HyperX IXtreme 1.6 firmware for Liteon 83850c drives
http://xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1724.nfo
This is essentially the same as a normal drive flashing method except that the serial dumped will need to be decrypted.
Either way once you have the proper serial it is effectively the same as flashing an earlier drive but instead of doing a normal erase you need to do a liteon erase*, a couple of tools exist but the big two are dosflash and jungleflasher.
Jungleflasher is posed as an all in one toolkit while dosflash is also an all in one kit but less prone to handholding as well as being available for dos. As of their latest versions they both have serial “decryption” (that would be JungleFlasher 0.1.65 BETA and DosFlash V1.8 respectively).
Jungleflasher release thread:
http://xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1725.nfo
Dosflash NFO:
http://www.xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1728.nfo
Hope this has been of some help.
Also my as yet unfinished redoing of the 360 started by WeaponXXX:
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=157...p;#entry2075011
And a nice thread describing some of the basic errors abgx360 (a 360 iso checking tool) attempts to detect
http://www.xboxhacker.net/index.php?&topic=2943.0
This guide will assume a basic familiarity with 360 flashing and indeed may ultimately serve as part of a larger guide, this is intended as a guide for those getting back into the game and for those somewhat lost following the developments of the last few weeks (I was so I spent some time getting things straight in my head and figured others could use something like it).
As you are probably aware Microsoft contracts out 360 disc drives to other manufacturers which means a variety of drives. The two most recent models in new 360s are the liteon 73850 and 83850c. The 83850c is seen in drives coming back from repair and in some new models (many 360s sit on shelves for months so you are still fairly likely to end up with a 73850). There is no way to tell which revision you have without opening the xbox 360 up but once that is done it is just a matter of reading the information from the label.
Initially touted as being unhackable they have both now fallen (the 73850 back in late December 2008 and the 83850c in the first week of August 2009 having only been seen two months before) and can be hacked by the end user with no need to attach equipment to the drive on a permanent basis. For the vast majority of sites/blogs/guides the term liteon refers to the 73850 as the 83850c is a relatively new development (first seen in the first few days of June 2009).
73850
The only available way requires you to read the key from the drive using external hardware which you can buy for about the price of a game or make from basic components (catch is you need a serial port where most purchased devices will operate over USB).
Guide to making a probe:
http://xbox-experts.com/e/tutorial.php?n=flashyourliteonf
Common paid for versions include the CK3 connectivity kit as well as the spear and 360Xtractor.
Be careful as many connectivity kits can be just the power kit (used for older drives) or just the spear (somewhat useless without a a kit to connect it to) so read up on what you are buying.
Do note that once flashed a way to dump the required serial numbers becomes available to anyone with a compatible sata chipset (VIA6421 and some nvidia kit) without the use of a probe. A good modder should also provide the serial if you had yours initially done by a third party so updating should not be difficult.
General order of things is
Disassemble 360 and drive (not necessary for older drives but for the 73850 you will need access to the drive mainboard.
Set drive into mode necessary but having the drive close but stop before it reaches the closed position (usually by cutting power half way through a close).
Power the drive and have it identify. Probably wise to note drive location.
Attach probe and read serial (see picture in the build your own guide). Repeat dump as paranoia requires (done for you in the latest versions) and send keys to several places to avoid problems if/when hardware fails.
Use serial and other dumped files to generate hacked firmware.
Use special liteon erase instead of normal erase.
Powercycle drive* (may require you to manually set drive address hence having to note it above).
Flash hacked firmware- wait until it says it has finished.
Rebuild drive and 360.
* part of the firmware you erase also includes the drive logic so upon power cycling the drive you will likely find you can not do a “soft” eject and instead will have to manually eject using the “emergency eject” bar and set it to half open.
Several hacked firmwares exist but most choose between the ixtreme 1.51 and 1.6 versions (1.51 and 1.6 both support wave 3 but 1.6 has support for those wishing to use their drive to dump pressed discs).
83850c
This revision closed the hole but another was opened when the new way to dump the serial (part of debugging and fixing drives) was exposed as being weakly protected (interested parties can view the nicely commented source code of OpenKey available in the openkey downloads at http://www.abgx360.net/ ) following decryption of the firmware proper. As far as people in the know are aware this is unique to the 83850c and those with 73850 drives should not expect a “backport” as it were. Just to clarify initially you could only decrypt it by sending the “dump” to the mod seller foundmy along with $42 USD but shortly after a tool called freekey and then an open source tool called openkey (linked above) arrived. Today these tools are little more than a curiosity as their functionality has been working into the general flashing tools detailed below.
Naturally this required a new hacked firmware for which you have the
Team HyperX IXtreme 1.6 firmware for Liteon 83850c drives
http://xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1724.nfo
This is essentially the same as a normal drive flashing method except that the serial dumped will need to be decrypted.
Either way once you have the proper serial it is effectively the same as flashing an earlier drive but instead of doing a normal erase you need to do a liteon erase*, a couple of tools exist but the big two are dosflash and jungleflasher.
Jungleflasher is posed as an all in one toolkit while dosflash is also an all in one kit but less prone to handholding as well as being available for dos. As of their latest versions they both have serial “decryption” (that would be JungleFlasher 0.1.65 BETA and DosFlash V1.8 respectively).
Jungleflasher release thread:
http://xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1725.nfo
Dosflash NFO:
http://www.xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1728.nfo
Hope this has been of some help.
Also my as yet unfinished redoing of the 360 started by WeaponXXX:
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=157...p;#entry2075011
And a nice thread describing some of the basic errors abgx360 (a 360 iso checking tool) attempts to detect
http://www.xboxhacker.net/index.php?&topic=2943.0