I had
absolutely no luck trying to use a modded LPT printer port cable and LPT printer port. I tried it, tried shortening the wires, tried using smaller wires, tried not using the cut off printer cable and doing it directly with wires, etc... If you're
pretty damn sure you did the soldering correctly, then maybe you should pick up a NAND-X mod tool. I found that none of my Intel-based LPT ports on computers I had around here, would even be detected by the nand-reader programs. The NAND-X is a USB based tool that will take the place of an LPT printer port and instead just use any USB based computer.
I was pretty sure my soldering was not the problem (it was all clean and secure, as I got to test it on a MS-refurbished E80 dead board first).
Soooo, I ditched my LPT cable, and got a NAND-X, and now it takes 45 seconds to read or write one of the smallblock nands I have on my JTAG's. When I accidentally-ish took my Jtag on to xbox live, and they 'crippled' my nand so I could no longer copy games to the HDD, I just used the NAND-X to copy back to my working freeboot-hacked NAND within moments. Sooo, I was correct that my soldiering wasn't the problem, because the same wires and pins attached to the NAND-X were read easily.
Oh, and if it helps, I found that snipping off a small piece of a metal stem off of a diode or resistor, and then just a quick heating the pool of soldier on the 360 motherboard pin-holes just a touch (15watt heat tops) and carefully forcing the stem into that solder-ring with pliers, can make a good solid connection point for a JTAGs NAND reading.
I easily scalped the nand off the dead E80 board too, although there was still nothing that could be done to save it.
Stupid MS letting their refurbished RROD consoles get too many efuses burnt and not somehow resetting it before someone got their RRod console "back" from 'em... the thing was like a ticking timebomb to someone who updated constantly.
I guess after the attempted update, the E80 state, and a phone call to microsoft that stated $120 dollars to fix it this time, I guess it was then thrown down a flight of stairs...
(bad business practice by MS if you ask me...)