Really? Now im lost......i had a V1.6 with a bad eeprom, the xbox wouldnt boot, all you see is a red blinking light and no video or audio signal.
I reflashed the eeprom using the cromwell-eeprom patcher and it was fixed
Its the same cromwell i use to fix all bad eeproms.
You can also embedd an eeprom into a bios with evtool or xbtool, it will let you boot to a dashboard, but not to the original M$ bios. Fixing the eeprom with the cromwell-eeprom- patcher fixes the problem.
So i think you are wrong, unless i miss something here....