Replacing XBOX DVD drive

[testicle187]

I have a modded XBOX with a dead Thompson DVD drive.  I don't have any normal DVD-Drives laying around, but have several DVD Burners handy.  I know if I put a regular PC DVD drive in that it will not play Original games.  If I put the DVD Burner in will it work as a regular DVD reader?  I do not plan on trying to actually copy anything on the system, just wanting to play backups via a different drive.  Will this work? 

[pointdablame]

No.

There are only a few PC DVD models that can be used in a modded Xbox, and they must be physically modified to be used.  The Xbox DVD drive does not use a standard power cable, so PC drives are useless.

You need to buy another Xbox DVD drive.  Check eBay or the Xbox-Scene forums.

[shmokes]

I'd say you're better off saying forget that.  Put any money that you would have used to replace the DVD drive into a larger hard drive.  You can then just push backups to the hard drive via FTP.  No more disc swapping, and faster load times in the games.  Much better solution.  I rarely rarely rarely use the DVD drive on my Xbox.  I actually use it as a DVD player, but since I bittorrent most my movies, or rip DVDs to my media server before watching them, I hardly ever find myself actually dropping a disc into the drive to watch it.

If my DVD drive went out, there's simply no way I would consider replacing it.  Not even remotely worth the cost or effort for me.

[crashwg]

While I agree with most of that shmokes, about putting games on a bigger HDD, I have to put my 2¢ in and say that I use my XBOX as my exclusive DVD player (due to XBMC awesome upscaling capabilities) and couldn't live without a dvd drive for that due to not having a server to store all sorts of movies on.

Other reasons for having a drive (some more legal than others):

Rented/Borrowed from a friend, a game which you want to rip
To play music CDs, to play cdr you may need one of the more expensive drives...
You have more games or movies than will fit on even the largest of HDDs
(related to the last one) you don't have the technical knowhow to do swappable HDDs
You're not a PIRATE and you buy games which you want to rip yourself

As for the original question, CHECK HERE.
I doubt your drive is compatible just because the sheer number of drives that exist and the small number of drives that are compatible.  Unless of course you want to do one of the setups where you hook up a PC drive in ADDITION to the XBOX drive.  In which case you will not be able to close the xbox.

Honestly though, just go check out those TUTs and search the xbox-scene forums for this.  There is NO better resource for anything xbox!*



*Not that BYOAC doesn't kick --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules--, the knowledge here is geared more toward arcades and their respective parts hence the name...

[testicle187]

Okay, I didn't realize you had to leave the stock drive in place.  My xbox already has a 160gb hard drive inside.  I was just wanting to drop in a PC DVD drive and use it to load backup DVDs.  I thought the only thing that would happen would be the eject button would not work on the front of the xbox.  Thanks for the links and info guys.

[Samstag]

You can use a PC drive without the original drive if you add a switch to control the tray-in/-out signals.  It still won't fit in the Xbox without some file/dremel adjustments but it's useable.

[ChadTower]

Maybe it's my Xbox specifically, but I find it suck-diddly-ucks as a DVD player.  If I try to do anything that causes a seek operation it just freezes.  It works great with Xbox original games but commercial DVDs are useless.

[JackTucky]

Maybe it's my Xbox specifically, but I find it suck-diddly-ucks as a DVD player.  If I try to do anything that causes a seek operation it just freezes.  It works great with Xbox original games but commercial DVDs are useless.

My xbox has problems making it through a whole movie on DVD too.  I don't want to rip the pink panther starring steve martin unless i have to.

=J

[Naru]

Hey you may want to look at this.

Xbox 8164 Adapter Solderless

Product Description:
Replacing your failed DVD drive just got easier, with Talismoon’s 8164 solderless adapter. This device allows you to use an LG-8164 DVD drive with your original Xbox. Repairing your Xbox just got cheaper and easier! In addition, the LG-8164 drive reads CDs at 52x and DVDs at 16x, which means that you will also experience faster read speeds (up to 8 times faster than OEM). Fast read speeds means faster load speeds, which is less time waiting when you could be playing.

You can get this here.
http://www.mod-chip.com/index-cart-us.php?go=en/select_ps2_main.htm

[northerngames]

cleant he laser eye and crank the pot down 200 or so ohms if that don't work get a $10.00 new thomson laser if your used to poking around in a xbox it is around a 15 minute task.