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[lucidbarrier]

I have been fixing xbox 360's with the red ring of death for awhile now, and have had a lot of success fixing them. I have encountered a few older consoles with open tray errors and unreadable disc errors.

The two I am working on with the open tray errors are a 2005 and 2006 with:
Hitachi GDR-3120L drives

The one with the unreadable disc error is a 2006 and has a:
Samsung TS-H943

I tweaked the POTS on the lasers and the Samsung reads the discs the majority of the time, and the hitachi drives showed mixed results at reading DVD's and games.

Now, I read that using a SF-HD66 laser is an acceptable upgrade to the older SF-HD63 laser and is a simple replacement. I opened the two Hitachi drives and popped out the old lasers and carefully opened the packaging on the new lasers.

I removed the solder with a butane soldering tip and carefully removed the solder from the static joint. Then I popped in the new lasers and plugged in all the ribbons in the appropriately places and buttoned the drive back up and tried to get it to read a disc.

The laser physically moves and hits the stop switch but will not power on on either of the drives and try to read the disc. When I remove the top drive cover, I can see the laser move and hit the stop switch, but the red laser doesnt come on to try to scan the disc like the old lasers did.

I can see the red dot through the discs usually and know the laser is actually working. The dashboard shows open tray and it actually says reading when I close the tray but it always shows open tray.

What am I doing wrong?

[RDC]

If it's not lighting up then either the Anti-Static point isn't desoldered completely, the flex cable could be damaged or it could also be a bad laser. Try installing a know working laser or the original one back in the drive and see what happens, as well as check the end of the flex cable for any breaks right behind the contacts where it plugs into the Laser. Those things can bend and snap on their own from wear as well as from just the first time it's removed/installed no matter how careful ya are with them.

The Lasers they came from the factor with were the HD63 or HD67. Try one of the HD66 in a Samsung and see how it acts.

Make sure the Spindle motors on those Hitachi drives turn freely also, they can get all gunked up and cause the disc to spin slowly and you'll have read issues from that. (This has nothing to do with the laser not lighting up, just something else to look for with Hitachi drives if ya weren't aware of it)

[lucidbarrier]

QUOTE(RDC @ Jan 4 2009, 01:34 AM)

If it's not lighting up then either the Anti-Static point isn't desoldered completely, the flex cable could be damaged or it could also be a bad laser. Try installing a know working laser or the original one back in the drive and see what happens, as well as check the end of the flex cable for any breaks right behind the contacts where it plugs into the Laser. Those things can bend and snap on their own from wear as well as from just the first time it's removed/installed no matter how careful ya are with them.

The Lasers they came from the factor with were the HD63 or HD67. Try one of the HD66 in a Samsung and see how it acts.

Make sure the Spindle motors on those Hitachi drives turn freely also, they can get all gunked up and cause the disc to spin slowly and you'll have read issues from that. (This has nothing to do with the laser not lighting up, just something else to look for with Hitachi drives if ya weren't aware of it)

I desoldered all three lasers now the same way. I made sure that no tiny bit of solder was in between the lines. I noticed that these lasers are sealed in plastic wrap but that the lasers inside has the sticker Estartus and the box says SF-HD66 on them but that they have a smaller sticker that has Estartus.com on them as well. They have the customary numbered stickers from the factory but the other sticker threw me.

I am thinking that these lasers were in bulk or something, maybe once in an antistatic bag, and this ebay seller handled them barehanded and put their logo sticker on them and stuck them in regular plastic baggies and sealed them with a over the counter heat sealer. Some of the pots look factory and some of the POTS are in different positions. Some of the lasers are not sealed. The handling bothers me, since they are not in antistatic bags and they were touched by who knows whom with possibly no regards to static discharge.

But I digress...

I did have the spindle problem with one of the Hitachi drives, it would drag and I watched the disc barely move and give the open tray message. I took it apart, cleaned it with alcohol and lubed it with high viscosity oil and put it back together. It works great when the disc spins up.

The problem is the laser doesnt blink when the laser boots up.

I took one of the HD66 lasers and popped it into the Samsung drive and it blinked red for an instant, hit the stop switch and turned off. I put the drive top back on it, and inserted a disc and then it said to insert the disc into an xbox 360. I tried again a couple times, but it looks like this laser was DOA/USED etc etc.

Now we were getting somewhere. I removed another one of the new HD66 desoldered lasers from the Hitachi (to test your theory, I had the same one before you posted) and stuck it in the Samsung and same thing, it blinked and turned off. When I inserted the Call of Duty 4, it ran the game flawlessly. Matter of fact, I have never seen the online multiplayer load that fast before.

For some reason, the Samsung recognized the lasers while the Hitachi drives did not. All three drives seem to have the same SF-HD63 lasers in them.

It seems that the HD66 lasers will work mighty fine in the Samsungs, so I am at a loss over the Hitachi drives. Its possible that the firmware on the PCB will not accept the laser, that the PCB's are bad (possibly from being cooked over the GPU), that the drive itself just is crap, or that I may need to get lasers specifically for this unit (like the HD63).

I thought about replacing the entire drive with new Hitachi drives, but I noticed these drives are pretty expensive. Is it possible to get a Samsung drive and install it into an xbox 360 that originally came with an Hitachi?

What I know so far is that replacing the PCB is pretty straightforward being same brand/model drives. There is a key in the firmware and the xbox firmware that links the two together. But you cant just swap a PCB from a Hitachi into a Samsung.

[RDC]

If ya want to swap one brand of drive for another ya have to rekey as well as spoof it so it reports being the original drive. So to swap a Hitachi with a Samsung ya have to dump both drives FW, get the key from the Hitachi FW, inject that key into the Samsung FW as well as spoof the Samsung FW so it reports being a Hitachi vXX and then reflash the Samsung with that FW.

[lucidbarrier]

Thanks for the help, I might just go ahead and try to spoof the drive once I get a SATA controller card.

I may also decide to get some HD63 lasers and try that, depends how I feel on pay day.

[lucidbarrier]

I just wanted to update:

I got in two new lasers SF-HD63  that I purchased off of ebay and removed the solder points very carefully with an electric soldering gun. To note: these lasers also had Estartus.com stickers on them and they are from a different seller on ebay.

I swapped out the laser in the Hitachi drive and the first laser lit up red so I put the drive cover on and popped a game in. The laser read and stated it was a DVD and then it loaded and said to insert the game into an Xbox 360 console.

I rebooted and ejected the tray over and over but no change.

I removed the laser and popped in the other laser. The game loaded immediately and I ejected the game and closed the tray. The console then reported it was a dvd. I opened and closed the tray and rebooted the system and still it said it was a dvd.

Then all of a sudden it started saying open tray.

I am beginning to think there is definitely something wrong with the PCB.

This post has been edited by lucidbarrier: Jan 21 2009, 09:38 AM

[lucidbarrier]

I reopened the drives and carefully reconnected all the ribbons again, and now one of the drives is reading game discs again, works pretty good.

The other one still has open tray on it, I am thinking something went wrong and it zapped the laser.