Tutorial written by : Rex

How to replace your Xbox DVD drive with a model 616T Samsung DVD-rom drive. This drive will allow you to play games in the following formats: originals (Xbox brand), DVD-r, DVD-rw, CD-r, CD-rw.

This tutorial is made possible by the efforts of Tiros from the Xboxhacker.net forums and plehem12 from the gamedorks.com and xbox-scene.com forums, and of course me, Rex from gamedorks.com.

When reading the original thread about how to replace the Xbox drive (http://www.xboxhacker.net/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=7&t=10613) it wasn't so obvious to me as to what to do. That is the reason I am creating this tutorial. To try and make this procedure a little more obvious.

Things you will need:

* A 616T Samsung DVD-rom drive
* Soldering iron
* solder
* about 4 pieces of thin wire
* power splitter for the DVD-rom power

Step 1

Flash the drive using MTKWinFlash (Windows based flash utility that works great) found @ http://digi.rpc1.org/mwf.htm. You will need to flash the drive with the Samsung 605 firmware. Do not ask me for firmware since I do not know where to get it. I have heard it comes in a zip foler named this: Samsung_SDG-605_firmware.zip. This is a relatively easy process. I do encourage you to disconnect any other DVD/CD drive you have when flashing the Samsung just as a precautionary measure.

At this point I want to clear up some misinformation that has been spread throughout the scene that made this process sort of confusing for me.

-The eject button will NOT work after you have flashed the drive with the new firmware until you hook it up to the Xbox. This is since the 605 firmware is from the Xbox Samsung drive which does not have an eject button. If you want the drive to open use the really small hole in front of it aka the emergency eject.

-This drive WILL work in Windows XP as a normal drive, but WILL NOT read originals. I have not heard of anybody so far who has made this happen. So if this is your goal, think again. If I am wrong and you are able to read originals on your PC then let me apologize now. The closest thing I have heard is "you SHOULD be able to plug it into a PC now and read originals" and like I stated this has not been confirmed by me or anybody else to the best of my knowledge.

-This drive WILL NOT read originals as a backup drive on your Xbox (similar to this http://xbox-scene.com/articles/swap-dvd.php). I do not know why as of this moment but the ONLY way I have found to play originals in the Samsung 616T is to completely replace the original drive (i.e. not in the PC, and not as a backup drive).

-The Main PCB on the drive says 616F, this is OK - you still have the 616T if that is what you bought. Those two drives share parts.

-At least for me this happened but I have heard other reports, the Xbox eject button will no longer work! You must use the eject button on the drive which will be fully functional. As times goes by I expect this to be fixed in a firmware patch of some sorts or possibly a rewiring. I am really not bothered by this at all.

Step2

Take the bottom off of the 616T. Look around and get aquainted with the set up. Tiros' hack involved using an audio cable but I couldn't find one so I just decided to splice right into the Xbox yellow cable. I figured if I messed up the cable I would just splice it back and everything would be OK again, which is true.

Here is an overview of the bottom of the drive with the wires soldered in:

Now for a closeup:

You see labeled in the picture, Eject, M1 (aka "Ready"), Trin, and Trout. The nice thing about this is there are ONLY 4 wires you have to splice to get this going! So yes that means there are 8 sort of trivial wires left in the cable that we do not care about.

Here is how to splice the wires. Just be careful about this. There is a large end and a small end to the yellow Xbox cable. Make sure you have it in the right order when following these directions.
Where the yellow cable plugs into the back of your Xbox drive there are 12 pins:

|01 02 03 04 05 06|
|07 08 09 10 11 12|

We will be using the 03, 04, 08 and 09 positions.

03 connects to Trin
04 connects to Trout
08 connects to Eject
09 connects to M1

The final step:
This sounds hard but it isn't. You have to switch the motor function. This step will most likely eventually be eliminated as soon as somebody patches the firmware but for now get out your soldering iron. We will be concentrating on the motor on the Front PCB.

This motor pic is from Arakon's 616F (similar to the 616T)
http://pirate.sparkhost.com/~arakon/motor-before.jpg
Mirror of the above photo in case he takes it down or doesn't like me linking it

Now unsolder those two big globs, lift up the moter and turn it 180 degrees and resolder. Also the little belt (rubber band looking thing) will probably fall off when you remove the motor. Do not forget to put this back on (I did and couldn't figure out for an hour why this darn thing wouldn't eject!).

CONGRATS YOU ARE FINISHED!

Now it is time to test. I put some tape over the fresh solering points just as a precautionary measure (not the motor points). After you have done that put the bottom back on the drive and plug it into the Xbox mainboard, give it some power and plug in the IDE cable. Make sure the drive is on SLAVE mode otherwise you get some Xbox error.

It should be working now. In case it doesn't here are some things to look for:

-Did the flash go OK? Did you get the right firmware?
-Do you have the wires hooked up correctly?
-Check the wires once again :)
-If it doesn't eject check to see if the rubber band belt was placed back in correctly.

That is all I can think of at this time. Oh yeah, this project isn't exactly what you would call the Xbox Beautification Project. I have seen people pull it off and make it look like the original drive, but I don't care how my Xbox looks, I just want it functional. I did notice that once you remove the original DVD drive and leave in the tray you can stack two game cases in there and set the Samsung DVD drive on there for a ghetto-fabulous fit!

I hope this helps,
Rex