Tutorial written by : Superfro

Overview

Hopefully this will help aid you in installing another type of drive, or if you happen to have a LG, get all the functionality of the original DVD-Rom (except for playing original games), plus more.

So what benefit does replacing your drive have? Well first of all load times are superb with a new drive, as well as the ability to use regular CD-R’s. I’ve been able to use the cheapest brand I could find, and it loads really FAST!

Why make another tutorial? Well, the only resources that I could find while doing this mod were designed for another drive (ACER), and this drive was amazing, it had a lot of the guesswork taken out, some of the points you need were clearly labeled, not to mention it was in German.

So lets get started.

Here you will find the original German version with diagrams on how to perform this mod. I was lucky enough for a friend of mine to send me a English translation which I’ve included here.

Disclaimer

It’s always needed, so here we go. Don’t attempt to try this if you think you might screw your XBOX up. This is a great learning experience, and what I have done here happens to work for me, I am no EE and in no way state that this will work for you. There are also probably easier ways to accomplish this, like I said, I am no EE and this works for me. If you understand you might screw your box up, and are still adventurous, whip out the electrical tape and let the fun begin.

What you need

First we’re going to need:

1. A DVD Drive

2. A 4.7k Resistor

3. Some thin wire

4. Some electrical tape

5. A 4 wire power spiltter

6. A soldering Iron

7. Some solder

8. A 4011 Quad 2-input NAND Gate (Radio shack # 276-2411)

9. A Voltmeter (or Multi-Meter with volts selection)

10. Some other stuff like wire cutters that you should probably have if you have the rest of the stuff above.

11. Oh yeah some existing knowledge of volts and soldering helps =)
Lets begin

I am going to use my drive, the LG as a reference, if you are not using the same drive you may have different results.

I used the 4011 (276-2411) I found at radio shack because the one the German reference refer’s to, (74LS00) they don’t keep in stock, but I’m assuming any NAND gates will work, for the original example the guy used only 1 gate, for mine I had to use 3 gates due to the fact I couldn’t locate (or the drive just doesn’t have) the proper signals required.

Also the German reference uses a diode instead of a resistor, the diode is probably best but when I read the English translation they said resistor so I bought some resistors instead of diodes, and well it appears to work just fine, you’re results may vary.

First thing we should do is break out the tools and crack open the XBOX, if you are unsure how to open your XBOX, consult one of the many FAQ’s out there.

Ok we got all of our tools out, and ripped our XBOX apart. Next step is to test the drive and make sure it’s a compatible drive, we can do this in a few simple steps.

First we simply take the IDE cable loose from our original DVD-Rom, place our new DVD-Rom on top of the old one and connect the IDE cable. Next we take the power cable loose from the Hard-drive and put our power splitter in place so we can connect power up to the new DVD-Rom as well as the Hard-drive. Please note, you may or may not need to keep the original signal (yellow) wire connected to the original DVD-Rom (with a real game placed inside). If you are using the Microsoft Dashboard this may be required, If you are using a replacement dashboard (such as Evolution-X) you can probably disconnect this stuff.

Ok so Our new drive works! Yay, but now we have the problem with the eject button not working (you know you tried it). And the light just keeps blinking and such. Well that’s what we’re going to fix now. So lets get to it. Lets rip out the old DVD-Rom and heat up the soldering iron.