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Just wanted to add to the conversation that using conductive paint works very well. Early in my adventures of hard modding, I ruined a motherboard beyond repair even trying the alternate soldering points. Since then I have gotten really good at solding, but there is always a chance things might go wrong. The paint works just like the solder does, but you can't pull a pad, have your soldering iron too hot, etc. If you mess up, the paint can easily be removed for you to try again. I got it from Amazon for $13 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KBXT6JW?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details *obviously if you have a v1.6 and need a mod chip, then the paint is a no go

I agree 100%. I was modding his as a favor and he asked that I leave it as original as possible for whatever reason, so it still has the original IDE hdd (even though I expressed his options with that smaller drive were going to be very limited) and had the original IDE cable as well. Normally I put in much larger SSD SATA drives, 80-pin ISE cable, etc. This was definitely a learning experience on that one. On a side note, I tried conductive paint this time instead of soldering the motherboard. worked like a champ and no danger of ruining the board if you make a mistake. I am pretty good at soldering, but wanted to try that. Pretty cool stuff. And if you mess up, you can easily remove the paint and redo it.

Well I just found the culprit. For whatever reason, it is a 40-pin vs 80-pin IDE cable with that drive that makes the difference. Original 40-pin cable, it throws error 13. 80-pin IDE cable and everything works like a charm. Go figure

Hello Team. I have run into something unique I have never seen before. I just hard modded a friends OG Xbox (v1.0) and everything went swimmingly. Although his original DVD drive (Thomson Okmco Shenzhen) would not read discs before the hard mod (pretty common issue of course), it would open and close and the Xbox booted just fine. I used a working Samsung DVD drive to work the modding magic and I had no issues with any part of it. The TSOP is an ST. After the hard mod and BIOS flash, I put his original DVD drive back in the unit. Now, however, the unit will not boot with the original DVD drive installed. It throws error 13. If I replace that drive with a different DVD drive (also a Samsung), it boots just fine and everything works. If I put the Thomson DVD in another v1.0 with a Hynix TSOP, it boots just fine. Has anyone seen an issue where the DVD model causes the unit to not be able to load the dashboard (at least that is what error 13 is I believe) after a modification? I am guessing the TSOP chip has something to do with it. This is more of a "huh" moment as obviously the unit is fine with the other DVD drive connected and I can just use that. Just curious if anyone else has seen this issue. Any insight is greatly appreciated!

Son of a #$!@&...that was it! I copied over 100s and 100s of gigs of files over using FATxploer and absolutely everthing is working. That has never happened before. Man, I wish I had brought this up sooner. I wasted weeks of time and effort trying to figure out why my files were corrupted. I am just glad it is resolved! You guys rock

You are 100% correct HDShadow. I checked AID XBPartitioner and it is using 1.1 (and I was using v4.53 as well). I have reformatted G using v1.3 and moving over a ton of files now to verify.

Thanks Kaos, I believe you may be on to something. I have a 500GB SSD EVO drive that prepared the same way as my 1TB drive that use for testing files before I put them over on the main unit with the 1TB drive. If memory serves, I don't have these issues on the G partition with the smaller HDD. I have another 1TB EVO SSD for another unit, so I am going to check (added photo...you are the man Kaos) the partition as you suggested and redo it with 64KB clusters and see if the problem remains. Thanks for the insight!

I seem to have a lot of issues with my data files on my G partition. Any emulators, games, media, etc., on the F partition work flawlessly. I can copy the same files over to my G partition and it is very hit and miss on whether things will function properly. There are also times when I can have everything working on G, then copy over some files (FTP or FATxplorer) and suddenly, things go wonky even with files that I never touched. My HDD is a Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB. So my G partition is quite large (803GB). My F partition is only 120GB. I used AID to prepare/format the drive. My BIOS is the EVOX m8+ CEE FG w/no DVD off the OGXBOX installer 1.5.3 disc. Is it possible that I am using a BIOS that doesn't handle that large G partition very well? Should I be using a different BIOS perhaps? It is very frustrating to work on making a HDD and getting the xbox all set up and then suddenly my files are corrupt for no apparently reason when they work just fine on F. Any insight here is greatly appreciated.

Final update on this. I have succeeded in blowing up the motherboard. Tried connecting the alternate points and things went from bad to worse. Now the unit will not even boot. Just goes right into blinking red ring of death. Undid the alternate soldering points and issue remains. Just powers on and goes red. Oh well, not sure what went wrong initially as it was the cleanest soldering job before or since. Anyway, I am done with this one as it seems it is damaged beyond repair. I just TSOP'd a v1.0 with a Hynix chip this afternoon and everything worked perfectly right out of the gate. Flashed the BIOS with no issues at all and installed a 1TB SSD SATA. I guess sometimes things just go wrong and it can't be recovered. I appreciate everyone's input on this one. I definitely learned a ton!

good idea for sure to get more surface area to bond to. I also wanted to clarify that the yellow and sky blue connections on the right-hand side of the picture in the red circle are all the connections since there is a yellow connection at the bottom, but you only see one end of that.

Thanks. I did have those alternate points printed out and been fighting it a while now. Difficult to get those tiny holes to bond and I getting frustrated with it. I have stepped away from it for the time being and to reset my nerves. I will keep at it though. I will either succeed or ruin the board the trying...and if I ruin it, I will get another one and try again. The first first board I did worked like a charm and was a success right away. I suppose I got lucky with that one

Thanks Raja. It is showing MODCHIP (or unknown HomeBrew) so despite how they look physically, the solder points must not be good. I will try the alternative points now and see if that makes a difference as it does appear I have pretty much exhausted everything else at this point.

I was able to pick this back up today. Got all the way to the point where XBlast asks for RT, LT, Start, & White to be pressed to confirm proceeding with flashing the active bank and I press and hold the buttons and.....nothing happens. It just sits there. Happens with CD as well has HDD Xblast. The bios file is on the hdd and ready to go if I can just get the flashing to 'be confirmed'. Should I try another flashing programs besides XBlast? I got creative earlier today and ended up wrecking the hdd and had to install it in the working TSOP unit, use AID to reformat it, reinstall the MS dashboard, and then softmod it again to get back to this point, so I am little gun shy to just randomly try things at this point (not that I am worried about having to rerun through the recovery steps if I had to, just don't want to keep taking two steps back if I can avoid it). I appreciate all the assistance so far. I am definitely learning a lot during the process!

OK. I will do that. Had to step away from it for a while. I will update as soon as I have any more info.

OK. Two things: 1. I went over the motherboard with a fine toothed comb and it appeared as if the bridge on R7D2 was not actually connected. I don't know if that was there since I received the unit or if I bumped it with the hot soldering iron and broke it. Either way, I repaired that connection with some wire...which leads me to... 2. I am now able to get farther in the flashing process, but now when I run XBlast (either auto or manually), I get a screen that shows the following: