It was listed as faulty, that it hangs on the Xbox logo. After sitting thinking I wonder will it error, my brother said Microsoft appeared on the screen. Apparently it seems to work, it just takes ages to boot, and the problem seems to be with the disc drive itself. There's no signs of leakage from the clock cap either, so I should remove that before it goes.
It's apparently another v1.1, and I plan to tsop it also. The main thing I need to do for now is give it a good cleaning and softmod it to get the eeprom. I don't trust the HDD because the spindle is whirring really loudly, so the eeprom is a priority, as is the clock cap.
After changing the drive for a Thomson out of another console, it boots up normally. There must be something wrong with the actual PCB in the Samsung I got with it.