Basically i am a cheap bastard at heart and dont like paying a lot for things that I can get for less. My XBOX 360 is an example of this.
I call it the frankenbox because the parts for it came from 4 separate 360’s. When one has the red ring of death, the box is pooched but the cables and power cord and DVD drive can be salvaged and can offset the price of a new xbox when sold.
A freind of mine back in the summer gave me a console that was basically just the box, no cords , power or video. Just a simple white box.
Last week , I was able to pick up the power cord, video outputs, and a hard drive for 120 bucks , and when everything was hooked up , I get the please input a 360 disc in various languages , which means that the DVD drive is gunked up with grunge. Since the disc cant spin fast enough, the xbox wont read it.
Then saturday , I picked up a defunct box that had the dreaded red ring of death, but a functional dvd drive. First things first , open the xbox and pull the old one and try a direct transplant. Nope , Microsoft has some kind of signed instructions in the firmware that negates directly transplanting. No problemo, I was ready for that. All the DVD drives have a printed circuit board that can be removed in 4 steps.
So transplant PCB into the new DVD drive, and then transplant the drive itself into the console. Works fine out of the console with the unit open to the world. Close up the box, pop in halo 3 and I get the multi language your screwed again. Okay repeat steps, power off , pull plugs. Give it a couple of seconds and reverse the procedure and halo 3 comes up just fine, I play for 3 hours.
Xbox live is the next part of the project as Bro took home the wireless adapter for the console. Price for another one is prohibitive and I dont want to bother hard wiring the console as wired is a pain in the ass. Hmm, bridge laptop with console.
Fired up firefox and inputed the queory and returned with a number of hits, the first one is loaded and required steps are taken. Resulting in no xbox live. Kay, delete bridge and find primary internet connection. Right click and enable sharing, no bridges required. Xbox finds everything but hits a snag when it comes to actually connecting to live, says I need to enable UnCP or something like that.
Yada yada , go to router and unplug, wait 30 seconds and power on. UnCP thingie is enabled , time to return to xbox config an do it all over again. Same problem , only there is a box that says connected to live. Cancel trouble shooting and go directly to signin to live and lo and behold , I am signed in.
Since we’re supposed to get a snowstorm tommorow night , its time to pick up a case of beer and a couple of movies for later and hopefully pick up a copy of the sequel to modern combat 2, and let it snow let it snow 
Declan
