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[sajain84]

I tried to Pot Tweak my Philips drive and as you can guess it, messed it big time.
Now I am changing 25 ohms a time and seeing whether I can get the drive to work.
The drive reads CDRW though ...

Anyways, I can be looking at getting a Samsung Replacement.
I needed some doubts to get cleared before I venture out.
I have read the tutorial by Nikko thoroughly.

Okay,

1. If I do everything exactly as it is supposed to be done, what are the chances of the drive working properly ?
I ask this because I did the Pot tweaking thing exactly as in the tut, but my drive got screwed anyways ... Sorry

2. What is the most difficult part of this hack ? Which is the place in which I have the greatest chance of screwing up ?

3. After everything goes fine, and I fix the drive in the HDD, how close can I get the Xbox to looking like the original one ?

Thanks for all the help.
Cheers !

[sajain84]

No answers out there ?

[toyato89]

This is an EASY mod... that is if you can handle a soldering iron. If you have a soldering gun, get a good iron (Weller) or a soldering station if you do a lot of soldering. A needle tip for the Weller is a good investment too if that's what you're getting.

Q1: If you do it all right, then your chances are 100%. It is a very straightforward mod. There's no pot tweaking, its just soldering wires to points and flipping the motor around. Mine works great.

Q2: The most difficult part of the mod is a split between flipping the motor around and soldering the wires onto the points on the large PCB. Also, don't forget the little black band on the tray motor, or else it won't open or close.

Q3: See my tutorial here, or the link in my sig to make it fit once it's modded. It comes pretty close to looking stock. The tut is very detailed with lots of pictures. The only thing I didn't cover was getting the xbox tray door cover thing onto the tray. It's not that hard though, and you'll see what you need to trim off. It was a pretty tight squeeze for mine to get it on there, but it works and looks good, and thats all that matters. I think there's a tut that covers it, but I can't be certain. I just figured it out myself.

Hope this helps you.

[sajain84]

Hey thanks for all the help.
Makes me feel much better.

Cheers !  

- Saurabh

[lordvader129]

QUOTE (toyato89 @ Jan 10 2004, 01:39 PM)

The only thing I didn't cover was getting the xbox tray door cover thing onto the tray.

1 word...

superglue

...or is that 2 words?

[fin1581]

Toyato, nice tut - I will have to try it since I hate having my modded Sammy 616t sit back into the box so far.  Thanks!

[barracuda]

I thought the scariest part of the mod job was flashing the firmware...I always worry when doing that.  

I'd recommend just cutting the traces to the motor and soldering wire in to change the polarity...then you don't need to deal with desoldering or disconnecting the drive's rubber band thingy.  (Actually, I couldn't figure out how to remove that PCB and didn't want to break it...I think you need to shave down the PCB a little to get over motor's plastic holder.) Just make sure the traces are fully cut and then insulate with some hot glue.

To make the drive sturdy, I guesstimated where the screw holes were and used a phillips screwdriver to drill the hole in the caddy plastic.

Then used hot glue to attach the faceplate.

All in all, it maybe sits back a quarter inch.
My next project is to mount a 616 in there with the faceplate and everything, but I need to move the power/eject buttons

Also, most of the tut's say you may need to switch TRin & TRout...it won't do any damage if you find out you have to(the tray will eject when you power off).

[sajain84]

QUOTE (barracuda @ Jan 11 2004, 10:14 PM)

I'd recommend just cutting the traces to the motor and soldering wire in to change the polarity...then you don't need to deal with desoldering or disconnecting the drive's rubber band thingy.  (Actually, I couldn't figure out how to remove that PCB and didn't want to break it...I think you need to shave down the PCB a little to get over motor's plastic holder.) Just make sure the traces are fully cut and then insulate with some hot glue.

Could you or someone please explain what this means ?
Didn't quite ring a bell ...
The traces part ...

Sorry for being such an idiot.

- Saurabh

[Perplexer]

QUOTE (sajain84 @ Jan 11 2004, 01:30 PM)

Could you or someone please explain what this means ? Didn't quite ring a bell ... The traces part ...

I agree 100% with barracuda.  Desoldering the motor and flipping it to reverse the polarity is like swatting flies with a sledgehammer.

You can instead just flip the positive and negative power wires going to the motor from the white cable (and cut the existing traces) so you don't need to remove the motor or touch the rubber drive belt.

There are pics somewhere (I think in one of the tutorials) on how to do this.  I do this on my 616T mods and feel better about not manhandling the motor...

[sajain84]

Got it now.  
Thanks !

[sajain84]

I read some more tutorials on how to mod the drive and only one (this one by ameasey) shows how to scratch the traces and connect the two wires to the white wires.

This avoids you to have to desolder the motor and makes the mod much shorter.
However, the pictures showing this in the tut aren't very good and I can't quite make out the second trace I need to scrap out.

Anyone who knows links to a better pic or anyone who can throw some light on this issue ?
Thanks.

- Saurabh

[A@ron]

Sorry my tutorial just flips the motor, so no luck there but if you want to see it PM me and let me know.

A@ron

[toyato89]

QUOTE (barracuda @ Jan 11 2004, 11:44 AM)

I thought the scariest part of the mod job was flashing the firmware...I always worry when doing that.   I'd recommend just cutting the traces to the motor and soldering wire in to change the polarity...then you don't need to deal with desoldering or disconnecting the drive's rubber band thingy.  (Actually, I couldn't figure out how to remove that PCB and didn't want to break it...I think you need to shave down the PCB a little to get over motor's plastic holder.)

As for the firmware aspect, my drive came with bad firmware. I was SO pissed off at first, but determined to see if I could fix it, and turned out that even with a bad flash, mtkwinflash was still able to flash it in atapi mode. I just had to tell it which ide port and master or slave, and worked like a charm, and has been ever since.

As for the motor flipping. This took me about 3 minutes. If you have desoldering braid (which I didn't at the time) I expect that it would take far less longer. The band thing is NOT a big deal. I think I used needle nose pliers to remove and replace the band. If you forget to replace it, the tray just doesn't open, so you use an unfolded paper clip to open it and put it back in there... wow big deal.

Removing the front PCB was very easy, just be careful not to break the tabs that hold the motor in place. The way I did it was I stuck small blade screwdrivers in there and pushed them back and the PCB was easily pulled down out of there, no harm done. I dunno if cutting traces and scraping them back and soldering little wires onto them is easier for you, but motor flipping was certainly easier for me. I'd be more worried cutting traces than I would be removing a motor and resoldering it. With traces, if you cut it, its cut, and more work to fix it back up again. The motor method is basically foolproof. I fail to see how someone could mess that up if they were careful.

Since there's always more than one way of doing something, each to his own. If your method works for you, awesome. Have fun with the new drive.

[toyato89]

I believe that pic was posted for me b/c I made a post calling for help to fix my drive. I pulled off the pads on my drive's PCB while trying to shorten the 4 wires that go out the back (tip: don't pull on wires after they've been soldered onto the PCB, you'll be sorry, I learned the hard way). Its all fixed now, I found some alternates other than those shown on the pic. I also pulled up a trace, but fixed that with 1 tiny thin strand of wire and a hell of a lot of patience.

Also, if you're doing the motor flip, its much easier to desolder the headphone jack and volume wheel @ the same time. That part's covered in my tutorial. Very easy to do, and necessary if you want your drive anywhere near the front of the xbox.

[DreCon]

QUOTE (toyato89 @ Jan 13 2004, 07:06 PM)

I pulled off the pads on my drive's PCB while trying to shorten the 4 wires that go out the back (tip: don't pull on wires after they've been soldered onto the PCB, you'll be sorry, I learned the hard way).

I did the exact same thing, but on the M1 Ready point. Do you know if there is an alternate for this point? I'm kind of at a lose here.?.?