A few Xbox 360 mod quetsions

[Pabstblueribbon]

Hey,

I've never tried to mod a console, but I was sold a working xbox 360 for dirt cheap. The cd drive is done for, but other than that its in prime shape.

I was looking into modding it with a mod chip but while i was looking into it, i noticed something that i did not know...some xbox 360s have HDMI ports, some do not. I was under the impression that only the elite had it. Well after looking, my WORKING xbox 360 does not have the port, but the one with the broken cd drive has one.

My question is, would it be possible to switch my cd drive out of my good one, so that i could have an xbox 360 with an HDMI port? Would it be easier/cheaper to buy a new cd drive for the HDMI compatible one all together? Would this even really make a huge difference in picture? My TV has one component input and 3 HDMI's, which is the real sell for this for me.


I did some searches but i didnt seem to find anything that helped me too much. Like i said, i'm a mod "n00b" but Id at least like to find the information and take a whack at it.


thanks!

[stickem]

i think you can swap the drive but have to swap the motherboard also. unless you have the same drive in both consoles. might need to look and see what version of drive you have in both consoles. why chip, just flash it?

[Hobie-wan]

I don't know a lot about 360s either, but drives are coded for an individual board. I imagine the hacks floating around will let you swap drives, but then you won't be able to go on live anymore. I believe that the HDMI and component will give you about the same picture quality. When I got an HDMI cable for my PS3 and moved the component one back to my PS2, I didn't notice any picture difference, though my TV is only 1080i. Obviously HDMI is easier to deal with than 5/6 RCA depending on whether you plug in the composite too.

[Niode]

With component you can only do 1080i via component.

There are only two ways to change the optical drive in the 360. One is by flashing the firmware on the drive and swapping them (this will flag next time Microsoft do their Xbox Live mod checks, and then ban your console from Xbox Live). Or you have to find the EXACT same model drive as yours (yes, it really has to be the same model/brand drive, look for ones from 360s with known working drives), then when you have your replacement drive, swap the drive controller by removing the four screws from the bottom of the drive. The drive controller is the small-ish green PCB. Swap the drive controller with your new working drive and then put it in the 360. This shouldn't (no guarantees) cause your xbox to be flagged since the drive controller is the part that is flagged, and that part hasn't been modified, just the physical drive.

[Capcomwarrior]

With component you can only do 1080i via component.

You sure about that? Microsoft added 1080p support before they even added hdmi support, didn't they? http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/735/735904p1.html

There are fewer tvs that accept 1080p through component, but some do. All along I thought it had been known that 360 can do full 1080p through component, since they added it in this fall update back in '06.

And microsoft also says in this interview that it can be done through VGA as well.
Microsoft: "We can offer 1080p support through both the VGA connection and the Component connection."

[Niode]

With component you can only do 1080i via component.

You sure about that? Microsoft added 1080p support before they even added hdmi support, didn't they? http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/735/735904p1.html

There are fewer tvs that accept 1080p through component, but some do. All along I thought it had been known that 360 can do full 1080p through component, since they added it in this fall update back in '06.

And microsoft also says in this interview that it can be done through VGA as well.
Microsoft: "We can offer 1080p support through both the VGA connection and the Component connection."

If I go into: System Settings -> Console Settings -> Display and then choose 1080p the screen is just blank. My TV is 1080p and I run my PS3 at 1080p via HDMI.

[Capcomwarrior]

Does your tv display anything 1080p through component? From what I've read, it seems that the problem isn't that the 360 doesn't do 1080p via component and vga, but that a large number of the tvs displaying them don't.
I may be missing something or have it wrong, but I hope not because I was planning on getting the vga cable to play it in 1080p on my viewsonic that does up to like 1900p or something. When I hooked it up with my friend's vga cable I didn't even switch it to 1080p to try it, so I'm curious about this subject myself.

~edited to reduce confusion

[Niode]

I don't have any other hardware that outputs 1080p over component so I can't test. I haven't used the VGA cable in so long. The last time I tried it you were limited to 16:10 resolutions but that may have changed with the large influx of 16:9 resolution monitors.

[septimus]

My question is, would it be possible to switch my cd drive out of my good one, so that i could have an xbox 360 with an HDMI port? Would it be easier/cheaper to buy a new cd drive for the HDMI compatible one all together?

This HDMI xbox... when you plug it in and turn it on does it even boot up? Does it have the new xbox dashboard or the old one? There is a small chance that you might not need an optical drive at all.