Hi,
chipping is fine for coma consoles as it overrides the xbox bios.
It can also work if a tsop flash failed.
If your xbox harddisk is no longer working, you can chip the xbox to have access to the eeprom contents.
If you erased your eeprom, you can chip the xbox with a bios that has an embedded eeprom in it's bios.
A modchip is not a magic device that cures every possible xbox error. If someone messed up the xbox with strange actions, or the xbox got messed up due to a power interruption, it can be effective.
If the xbox suddenly from one day to another stopped working, there is little change that a modchip will solve this issue.
Even if your harddisk started smoking, it probably still can be used as a doorstopper.
Serious now. You might try the xbox without harddisk and dvd first. If it boots into an error screen, that's a good sign that the mobo and supply are still ok. If you have something to check the supply voltages, you might do that to be sure. You can connect another xbox harddisk or a pc harddisk to that xbox (together with the dvdrom).
If you connected a locked xbox harddisk, the xbox should give you an error 6 screen.
If you conncted a pc harddisk that is unlocked, it should give you an error 5 screen.
The only exceptions to that are the 1.0 xboxes. They just show you the error screen without an error number.
If you get those errors, you will know that the xbox mobo is still capable of reading the harddisk. It means that you have 99.9% change that the xbox will work again with a good harddisk.
I prefer an eeprom reader to softmod a xbox. It allows to read the xbox eeprom chip. With the eeprom.bin file, you can unlock the harddisk without hotswap. You can use the xboxhdm package safely that way.
Just check out this tutorial:
http://forums.afterd...view.cfm/357863You can do the same with a modchip and a package like the Slayers Rescue package. A modchip is still a bit more soldering work to install.
A gamesave exploit is only a good option if you have an original exploitable game. It will only work if you start with a working xbox.
regards.