Possible incorrect firmware or spoof causing no video?

[dude496]

Hello, I'm a complete newbie to the Xbox modding/repair...plenty of electronics experience and a bit of computer knowledge.

Cliff notes...360 slim wouldn't read disks, drive was replaced with an incorrect drive (unknown if it was spoofed or had any firmware mods/changes). Now system will not display any video on hdmi composite or compoment. System does have audio, and will tv or monitor (tried both) display a black screen with message saying input signal is out of range when using hdmi (but only if I either turn the tv off and back on with the 360 on or disconnect and reconnect the hdmi cable)

Anyways, I decided to try and fix my friends Xbox 360 slim. Long story short, he brought it with him on a deployment about a year ago...while he was there, his DVD drive stopped reading disks. He had one of his friends take a look at it. His friend gave him a "replacement" lite-on DG-164S (more on this below). After he replaced the drive, it still would not work.

So his Xbox sat in a box collecting dust for a long time before I offered to take a look at it. My first mistake was to assume that the only problem was it not reading disks. Instead of testing the system I decided to jump right into tearing it apart...big mistake because now i dont know if it had video problems prior to me taking it apart or after tearing it apart. I really dont think I messed amything up, tore plenty of systems but it is still an unknown variable.

My original plan was to swap the pcb from his old drive to the "new" drive. Both drives had a label on them showing them both as being lite-on DG-164S drives, so i thought it would be an easy fix....nope!! Upon opening the "new" drive the first thing I noticed was that it looked like someone tried to use a screwdriver to pry the drive out of the case...no clue why they would do this, it's easy to remove the drive. The next thing I noticed was that the wires are a different color, the bay that holds the laser is a different shape and the laser itself is different. So after doing some googling, I found out that the "new" drive is actually a DG-162S out of the phat 360. Why someone would do this is rather baffling and irritating.

So now to where I am today....I ordered a x360 USB pro v2, kamikaze tool and a few other things to do check the firmware. Hopefully a laser pot alignment and a good cleaning will fix the read issue. But I'm still stumped on the video problem. Would a corrupt/incorrect firmware or having the wrong drive cause the video issue?


Sorry for the long post but help would definitely be appreciated,

 

[JerkMaine]

You will need the correct dvd key off of the original dvd drive. Once the key is obtained u can inject it into the proper slim dvd drive. But first I would test the original drive it may just need a pot tweak or laser replacement.

 

[Antalpromille]

I dont think a drive with wrong firmware och spoofed uncorrect would cause no video, Possibly red dot but not this. Do you get sound? You can unplug the drive and boot the xbox, if it boots and gives video, then its something with the drive.

 

[MrBucket101]

I've put the wrong drive-key on a drive before. The xbox worked fine until I tried to play a game, then it would RRoD with the "unable to pair drive" secondary code

 

[JerkMaine]

He stated that he believes the slim drive was replaced with a phat drive. Not sure what that would cause the system to do as I've never done it.

 

[stefff]

dude496 > first of, try booting the xbox360 slim wiatout a drive, then you can see if it have video at all.. if it got it then you should go on wiat the drive replament

do you or the owner of the xbox have the original dvd drive there was in the xbox360 slim (xbox motherbord and xbox dvd drive have a unique key there have to match to play games)

if you dont have the the drive or the drive key you have to look into RGH eather do that to play backup games, or to boot xell and get the drive key, after that desolder the items inject the drive key flash original firmware to it, update xbox and flash it after

remember we are here to help so if you dont understand some of the things we write plz just ask its better to have a working console than a brick to hold the door

 

[xlghost]

Try gently wiggling the video connector and see if you get a picture, I have seen a slim that would lose video if you moved the cables due to the entire video port being loose.

 

[dude496]

Thank you for the responses! I forgot to mentionnthat i have tried running it without the drive and also without the hard drive....didn't get video in any of those configurations. I fear it is either gpu or motherboard related, but wanted to exhaust all other options before hand.

I've tried wiggling the video cable, and also tried slowly plugging it in to see if there might be a loose connection, but no luck.

I'm fairly certain that the DG-164S is the stock hard drive, but not able to verify yet. I definitely can't be 100% positive since I was thrown a curveball with the phat drive, no real way to tell what else might have been damaged or changed by the person that put that drive in there. I've looke up the RGH and have a demon on order, sounds pretty darn slick!

I dont get any RROD, and don't think it would show any secondary codes without havving some kind of red flashing light (correct?). I'm totally stumped and can't think of anything else to check. Would the NAND show internal error codes or do any other diagnostics?

 

[dude496]

The only other two ideas that I can think of would be either there is something wrong with the HDMI and AV ports or it needs a reflow and possibly reball (highly doubt reball though).

I would think that if the CPU/GPU was bad, I would get a red light or atleast a flashing light on the ROD, correct? I would also think that if there was a cold solder joint or lifted/damaged trace, that would cause some sort of indication on the ROD.

Which leads me back to either something being funky with software/firmware or the actual HDMI and AV ports. The ports would probably make the most sense...not really sure how far down the system the xbox does it's BITs. I suppose that if there was a bad pin or short on the ports it might be at a point where the 360 no longer tests the system (wording is probably incorrect, but it makes sense in my head lol).