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[dom0012]

cjack how did you desolder those perfectly? thats amazing..  you are makin a lot of progress fast and i admire that. And if the supposed "eeprom chip" is not on some xboxes, and the console works without it, wouldnt that mean its not a "eeprom chip" because a system doesnt boot without eeprom???

[mbratton]

paul, I'm keeping a lookout at local stores for new shipments and have connections to get them quick - if/when I score a few extras, I'd be more than happy to send one your way at cost+shipping.

[PCBUILDERCHRIS]

shhhht im still learning to solder but im working with a 100 watt radioshack gun my greatgrandpa used work on tv's with

your style is clean cjack but not clean enough

nah thats an odd ninja joke yall will get more of those when im be sleepy

but cjack your cool as i said in another forum ill be watching your progress hoping for a mod


hearing this was like hearing scientist had found a way to go faster than the speed of light

[DivyX]

The dvd drives wouldn't contain any signature system imo. I'm having hard time to believe that it could be so hard to replace broken dvd drive by any other than MS if it did ( Sony approach ). Most prolly it could be just the Firmware, hopefully. I'd think you could flash the firmware of prem edition to core and vice versa? Thats something to try too i think, if it's enough problem free that is.

[Staticvoid]

can you buy another hdd and replace the old one? maybe the eeprom is used to lock a hdd to the first system its put in? premium already has a harddrive so it comes locked thus no need for the chip? even if the hdd's are interchangable between systems, maybe it does something to further protect its contents from us reading it?


far as the dvdrom go the the system could save the info of the dvdrom so non other will work with that system. why not make it hard to change, alot of people would throw it away and get a new one, or pay m*crosoft out that ass to fix it.

lots of questions but no anwsers, still waiting on one to test.

[flashfreak]

Locking DVD-Roms would be a dodgy idea, as I was thinking, if a drive died, your stuck with it, but as people have said, it'll create more work for MS to have it sent in to fix.

In the xbox 1 modders have made money replacing dvd-roms, i know i have. Some of those thomsons are soo poor, its kinda sad, some1 i've fiddled with just don't read anything, theres no real point having it there.

Maybe they're locking them to take away one of our reasons to tinker with them and slowly trying to make nothing possible for us to change, and put us outta business.

But then again, my rant has gone pretty far Just me thinking...

[curare]

Xevious your idea is plausible,
It sort of sounds like what they do with high end videocards these days.
Like with the geforce 6800LE being a locked 6800 with most of the
6800LE's unlocking perfectly and others having broken pipelines.

But if it was true then you would get some kind of errors when running
without the eeprom like arthifacts or a unstable system.
But it might be worth the effort of testing it by just removing the eeprom
and doing some marathon gaming with it, that should give a good indication.

Although they probaply did that on all core systems, So some should run
fine without eeprom and others should get errors or flaws.
And I wander if it's for the gpu cpu or the memory, theres no way of telling
outside of testing it thorougly. Gpu's have proven to be queite hard to produce
so maybe the premium has 30 unified shaders and the core has 24.
It would be strange tho since everything you have more of on a premium
 can not be use by developers because that would make the core users angry.
Or they should have a routine that checks if the console is a premium or
core and adjust the performance settings accordingly.


And for the dvd players why not try and switch the dvd between 2 premiums,
and see what that does cause maybe their just locked to run on 1 xbox.
If they are locked the repaircentres probaply have a special program to change it, but we dont.

[InterestedHacker]

QUOTE(cjack @ Dec 5 2005, 12:12 AM)

Just checked DVD player labels that are very similar but .... 2 different rom versions!

Core:
DVD PLAYER model: GDR3120L (X800475-008)
Rom version: 0046DH

Premium:
DVD PLAYER model: GDR3120L (X800475-009)
Rom version: 0047DJ

It's possible that rom versions are not compatible........it'just an hypothesis!

No, I think your initial thoughts were correct.  From what MS said many months ago, hardware would be signed!!  This means, DVD is locked to CPU, and possibly other things.  I know they were talking about signed RAM chips not long ago, but I think that was with detachable memory modules, not soldered in ones, and applied to general PC manufacturing.  I would guess that it's possible that the DVD-ROM firmware is signed, in a small flash chip?  It's worth looking how easy it would be to swap logic boards on the DVD drives.  In your case that might not work as you have a different revision.

It is also possible, like you said, that it's purely a compatibility issue, but I doubt that they would make the firmware incompatible...

QUOTE(flashfreak @ Dec 5 2005, 10:51 AM)

Locking DVD-Roms would be a dodgy idea, as I was thinking, if a drive died, your stuck with it, but as people have said, it'll create more work for MS to have it sent in to fix.

Not as silly as it sounds!

1) MS will sub contract the work out, and make some kind of small profit on the drive.  This is one reason why hardware manufacturers are considering hardware signatures, to reap profit from the repairs and upgrades market.  Sounds just like the sort of thing MS would do.

2) If the drive needed replacing, it would be a 2 minute job to change it, and the engineer could do some kind of controller combination to get the kernel to lock the new drive.

QUOTE(Xevious @ Dec 5 2005, 10:04 AM)

This is pure speculation...

Given the small size of the optional ROM, it could be a patch or configuration ROM designed to "fix" 360 processors (or assembled systems) that didn't completely pass validation. Specific examples could be disabling sections of cache that fail testing, modifying default RAM timings on boards that were unstable at full speed, etc.

Keeping with this theory, MS may have designed a certain margin of "error" in the 360 system spec in order to increase yields. For instance, the lowest common denominator could be 90% of "full speed" or full cache, with anything above being cream.

If there indeed is a positive correlation between core systems and the presence of a small ROM, this could indicate that MS binned systems, allocating the top bin to the Premium package.

Again, this is speculation, but it is based on practices that are commonly used by the industry to increase yields.

Whilst I agree this is possible, I think it's unlikely! For these reasons:-

1) User community would go mad!  Think about it, do you want to buy a 360 not knowing if yours is 3 fps slower than your m8s?  This just isn't an option, people are buying a console and they want an identical version to everyone else, period.

2) Problems with GPU pipelines etc would be flagged within the GPU and or it's assistant IC's.  As for the CPU, I think the chances of limiting this baby for x number of cycles is mad!  Think about it, games run with very precise timing, and limiting a CPU core or 2, even by as little as 0.001% would have some kind of compatibility issue with some code.  Trust me!

I think in all likelyness, the fact he has 2 slightly different revision DVD-ROM drives, says to me that they are producing new revisions of the board as they go...   Maybe the one with the EEPROM is a newer revision?  Or maybe they dropped it, and it was a security feature that is causing more problems than it was worth?  Again, speculation.

[matcapir]

maybe I missed it already, but maybe we could start a webpage with pertinant 360 info like we did for xbox 1.  Serial #'s, components onboard, rom numbers, core/prem vers, etc.  Start compiling a list so we can figure out version numbers and stuff

maybe I missed it already, but maybe we could start a webpage with pertinant 360 info like we did for xbox 1.  Serial #'s, components onboard, rom numbers, core/prem vers, etc.  Start compiling a list so we can figure out version numbers and stuff

[matcapir]

QUOTE(Arnold_Schwarzenegger @ Dec 5 2005, 07:24 AM)

http://www.free60.org/

Thanks Gov,

  Just found this before you posted it, what a wealth of info, thanks again.

Matt

[thecheekymonkey]

QUOTE(ppazz13 @ Dec 5 2005, 05:00 AM)

I doubt MS would have just put an extra chip in to try to confuse people.  If the chip is just a dead chip used as a decoy, it's already been found (< 2 weeks after launch).  Seems like a pretty lame idea for a decoy.

It must serve some kind of purpose.

yeah sorry, a few spelling mistakes in my post.


it`s supposed to ploy instead of ply

and what i meant to say was "i cant see MS putting the chip there, if it serves no purpose"


sorry  

[skipdaflip]

I'm curious how you can read the eeprom. What instrument do i need to read out the eeprom or other roms. So i know if there's a dashboard or other info in it?


Already found the answer!!! EEprom reader/writer. Think i will make one!

[maximilian0017]

QUOTE(Xevious @ Dec 5 2005, 09:04 AM)

This is pure speculation...

Given the small size of the optional ROM, it could be a patch or configuration ROM designed to "fix" 360 processors (or assembled systems) that didn't completely pass validation.

I think you have something but MS wouldn't use it for that.

The more likely scenario would be that it's a "fix" chip for the processor, updating its microcode or security features, if i remember correctly i read something on free60 about a serial bus on the origional processor.

This would also explain why some consoles have this serial eprom and others don't, Old versions of the CPU could be patched this way and newer versions of the processors wouldn't need the patch because it is integrated in the new microcode.
That would probably mean that if you desolder it that the xbox would chrash at some time or another, or maby detect a DVD drive with another firmware version?!?

It looks just like the "patches" seen on motherboards etc Gate Array Logic chips(gals and pals) that change certain data signals to their correct version without reworking complete motherboards/chipsets.

My 2 cents  

[mad_pc_man]

Yo!
(some ideas follow, no particular order)
1. Has anyone tried using an xbox modchip in a 360, all types of chips, (xecuter spidergx etc...)
2. Has anyone got an output of the eeprom.
3. Can you use an exe from MCE to do some stuff.
4. Can you wipe the hdd/eeprom/tsop clean and see what happens.
5. Might be a bit n00bish but what exactly does a hypervisor do, (in simple layman's terms)
cheers
mad_pc_man

[Ace25]

QUOTE(mad_pc_man @ Dec 5 2005, 11:35 AM)

Yo!
(some ideas follow, no particular order)
1. Has anyone tried using an xbox modchip in a 360, all types of chips, (xecuter spidergx etc...)
2. Has anyone got an output of the eeprom.
3. Can you use an exe from MCE to do some stuff.
4. Can you wipe the hdd/eeprom/tsop clean and see what happens.
5. Might be a bit n00bish but what exactly does a hypervisor do, (in simple layman's terms)
cheers
mad_pc_man

Ummm, ok.
1. Where would you "install" an xbox modchip? What points on the motherboard? Not trying to be mean, but what was going through your head when you thought of that one? Nevermind the fact that it is 100% certain not to work even if there were an identical "LPC" looking point were it could be installed.
2. No, its encrypted.
3. No
4. No
5. Locks the hardware into a "Virtual PC" in order to have complete control of the hardware/security. Hypervisor is the all seeing "Policeman" in the Xbox. Anything you want the xbox to do has to be run by him for approval.