Hitachi GDR-3120L Help

[drdreww]

I just traded a friend for this Xbox, it wasnt reading discs and even opening and closing the tray didnt always work. it has the

Hitachi GDR-3120L drive and supposedly they had replaced it.

when you would put in a disc it would try to spin up and would show as reading on the screen. then it would make a terrible screaching noise. I have never had a 360 before or worked on one. but have hacked/modded alot of other things. so i took it apart to see if they had messed it up somehow. long story short. now the drive wont do anything, the laser wont realign, the tray wont even try to eject and i just dont have any idea whats going on.
thoughts ideas?
I was thinking of getting http://www.thegamersfix.com/product.php?productid=16164

but if the drive doesnt respond at all what are the chances that the board is bricked? what are my options?

[saleem]

sounds like their drive (the hitachi) is knackered,probably not reading discs,no wander as the hitachi is realy old drive.it is a drive that was used in some of the first units ever made.so your looking at the drive being 3 years old+.

all i can say is replace it but,the problem is you need the key that is on the pcb (the board inside the hitachi) so you can marry the next drive to the console unit or it wont work.

you could always try getting another hitachi replacement and swapping the pcbs around but,if that fails you will be forced to use a completely different drive type and extract the key from the original hiotachoi pcb to put the info into the replacement drive.

[drdreww]

So the only real choice i have is to get a new drive and trial and error check to see if the old pcb is going to work.

and if it doesn't then I will have to try and extract the key from the old pcb and hope it isnt fried.

[saleem]

basicly yes,you need the hitachi to be recognised by firmware toolbox at least to stand a chance at getting the nkey at least,if you cant you will need to remove the tsop32 chip off the pcb and have it rewad in a programmer.

putting the board straight into another hitachi drive might help you more.