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Disposing of an ailing 360 without being a jackass
cloudeagle
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So my old 360 started developing disk drive problems. On absolutely pristine disks, it would make this horrible clicking sound and not load up the disk four out of five attempts. On a disk with the tiniest of imperfections, that would leap up to eleven out of every twelve attempts. It kept failing more often, so I just bought a new Arcade. The drive works wonderfully, and it's a Jasper to boot.
My big question is, what to do with the old 360?
Since it doesn't reliably work, I'd be an ass to sell it to a typical second-hand store. But since it mostly works, I'd hate to just trash it. Is there such a thing as a market for 360 parts? That is, sell it to some tech-head who could cut it up and use the parts for something else? Or am I just stuck?
My big question is, what to do with the old 360?
Since it doesn't reliably work, I'd be an ass to sell it to a typical second-hand store. But since it mostly works, I'd hate to just trash it. Is there such a thing as a market for 360 parts? That is, sell it to some tech-head who could cut it up and use the parts for something else? Or am I just stuck?
Switch: 3947-4890-9293
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You could even register the machine to them if it's not already, so they won't have any issues in future it it does break again.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
I actually have a friend who's an electrical engineer and spends a lot of his free time modding electronics. I packed it up and shipped it out to him, and he's playing around with it seeing what can be done/improved. If that sort of thing isn't an option, you could always ebay it "as it" or see if a buddy wants a system for the cost of the repair + some, as Willeth suggested. You shouldn't get much for a mostly broken system, I believe.
I'm bought an arcade, but for fun I'm going to tear it open and see what can be seen
or buy a $30 replacement disk drive, fix it yourself and have two
god knows they love to fail, so i keep mine in rotation (RROD -> broken fan -> broken disk drive, so far
Um, yeah, fraud would probably count as being a jackass
As well as, you know, illegal.
Poke around on ebay, look at the costs of dead/dying 360s there. If they sound fine to you, toss it up. If not, balance the cost of a repair from Microsoft with selling it fully functional.
Once fixed, you could congratulate yourself on having two 360s or just sell it as working without the load on your conscience.
GFWL: studaud (for SF4)
Actually you also have to flash the firmware on the new drive to match your old one... but that's trivial
And it means that for the cost of a new drive (and possibly a SATA card for your PC), you have a 2nd xbox.
Hmm, how difficult would this be? I can, say, install new components to my computer or disassemble my PS2 to clean it, but I'm not comfortable with anything more complex than that.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
Actually, if you live in the US and can get netflix that's a really good idea.
Many people buy broken consoles specifically to repair and re-sell them, so there's a decent market out there. They're not necessarily pawning it off on someone else :P
www.360-pros.com
They are located about an hour from me, we once brought my friends broken 360 there and showed up at 6, when they were closing. They must have guys that used to work for Microsoft there or something because they fixed it in about 20/30 minutes while we waited there (it had the red rings of death, but their card says they do disk drive problems). Also, they upgraded all the cooling systems and everything for free. They would at least be able to tell you what to do I think.
The hardware part probably won't be much (if any) more difficult than swapping a CD/DVD drive out on your computer, but you do have to flash the firmware, and I'm not sure how hard that will be. There are directions for the whole process out there, though, so if you Google some up I'm sure you could figure it out.
it's very simple if you have a compatible SATA chipset in your PC.. if not, you also have to invest in a $12 SATA card (that's what I did)
honestly, the hardest part is getting the 360 open, but there are a lot of tutorials (and youtoobs) about the process.
then you follow very simple directions to copy the firmware off your old drive and onto the new one... it's a bunch of bootable linux (i think?) apps that run off a CD... similar to flashing any other firmware or BIOS if you've done it
i modded my 2nd (RROD fixed) xbox to read burned games, and now my original has failed, so i'll be doing this repair myself shortly