Samsung DVD drive "Busy" Fault

[Raidernick]

I'm posting this here as I am at the end of my rope with trying to diagnose this issue. I have 23 original Xbox's and this fault ONLY happens on hard modded systems that have the Samsung DVD drive (both the SDG-605B and SDG-605F). I will give a little information first on the type of hard mods I performed to each of the systems(they are all identical).

modchip: Xblast Jafar/Aladdin

ide wire: 40 pin 80 wire 24" long

ide to sata: startech adapter(set to master)

hdd: 3tb wd red pro or 4tb hgst ultrastar

RAM: stock 64mb(1.6 models and 2 1.4s) or 128mb upgrade(all other models)

console capacitors: all replaced on both the motherboard and PSU with Panasonic FM(mouser) or Nichicon (console5 kit)

DVD drive caps: all replaced on Samsung drives only

BIOS: Cerbios 2.3.1 UDMA5 (tried UDMA2 did not help)

Xbox motherboard revision: I have all revisions from 1.0 to 1.6b

 

The issue I am having is that XBMC4Gamers gives the DVD "Busy" signal when I try to boot a game(game is brand new, no scratches), and the stock 5960 dashboard will just give a disc read error. The error can be fixed by simply rebooting the console into xblast OS then loading cerbios from there. Once the console boots again the game reads fine first try and works without stutters(the lasers are fine). The issue will happen again if the xbox is turned off then unplugged and allowed to sit a bit. If I turn it on again using the power button (instead of using disc button to boot to xblast first) the issue will happen again until I go back into xblast and reboot the bios. Also, the game will boot if I have the disc in the drive when first turning on the console. It only doesn't work when trying to insert it after reaching the dashboard (stock or xbmc).

 

This issue only happens on the samsung drives. I have many thomson, philips and even 1 hitachi drive and the issue does not happen there. On first boot with these drives, the games always load first try without having to reboot the console. I can rotate these samsung drives between consoles and the issue follows them to whichever console I put them into. I am convinced that this is not a hardware issue because of this but some problem with either the BIOS or xbmc4gamers.

 

I really hope someone can help me here as I have no idea what the issue can be and troubleshooting this had led me nowhere so far.

Edited November 24, 2023 by Raidernick

[Bowlsnapper]

4 hours ago, Raidernick said:

I'm posting this here as I am at the end of my rope with trying to diagnose this issue. I have 23 original Xbox's and this fault ONLY happens on hard modded systems that have the Samsung DVD drive (both the SDG-605B and SDG-605F). I will give a little information first on the type of hard mods I performed to each of the systems(they are all identical).

modchip: Xblast Jafar/Aladdin

ide wire: 40 pin 80 wire 24" long

ide to sata: startech adapter(set to master)

hdd: 3tb wd red pro or 4tb hgst ultrastar

RAM: stock 64mb(1.6 models and 2 1.4s) or 128mb upgrade(all other models)

console capacitors: all replaced on both the motherboard and PSU with Panasonic FM(mouser) or Nichicon (console5 kit)

DVD drive caps: all replaced on Samsung drives only

BIOS: Cerbios 2.3.1 UDMA5 (tried UDMA2 did not help)

Xbox motherboard revision: I have all revisions from 1.0 to 1.6b

 

The issue I am having is that XBMC4Gamers gives the DVD "Busy" signal when I try to boot a game(game is brand new, no scratches), and the stock 5960 dashboard will just give a disc read error. The error can be fixed by simply rebooting the console into xblast OS then loading cerbios from there. Once the console boots again the game reads fine first try and works without stutters(the lasers are fine). The issue will happen again if the xbox is turned off then unplugged and allowed to sit a bit. If I turn it on again using the power button (instead of using disc button to boot to xblast first) the issue will happen again until I go back into xblast and reboot the bios. Also, the game will boot if I have the disc in the drive when first turning on the console. It only doesn't work when trying to insert it after reaching the dashboard (stock or xbmc).

 

This issue only happens on the samsung drives. I have many thomson, philips and even 1 hitachi drive and the issue does not happen there. On first boot with these drives, the games always load first try without having to reboot the console. I can rotate these samsung drives between consoles and the issue follows them to whichever console I put them into. I am convinced that this is not a hardware issue because of this but some problem with either the BIOS or xbmc4gamers.

 

I really hope someone can help me here as I have no idea what the issue can be and troubleshooting this had led me nowhere so far.

Could this perhaps be related to the no-dvd checking that some bioses feature? 

[Raidernick]

3 hours ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Could this perhaps be related to the no-dvd checking that some bioses feature? 

I'm sorry that I forgot to mention this in the first post but I did try changing that setting. If I change cerbios to require a DVD drive AND HDD(by default it only requires hdd) it will actually throw an error on first boot indicating the DVD drive is missing. I then need to reboot it and the error doesn't happen again and will boot normally. This indicates to me that on the initial boot the dvd drive isn't "ready" and not being seen by the console for some reason. Again, this only happens with Samsung drives.

Edited November 25, 2023 by Raidernick

[SS_Dave]

Check the 4 resistor banks next to the IDE connector

You should get around 330 ohm on each resistor

Test the 2 yellow dots then the 2 orange dots and so on for all 16 resistors, If you get a reading above 350 ohm then that resistor is faulty and you can tack a 330 ohm resistor across the faulty one.

You should also consider recapping the board as well.

Cheers

SS Dave

Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

 

[Bowlsnapper]

1 hour ago, Raidernick said:

I'm sorry that I forgot to mention this in the first post but I did try changing that setting. If I change cerbios to require a DVD drive AND HDD(by default it only requires hdd) it will actually throw an error on first boot indicating the DVD drive is missing. I then need to reboot it and the error doesn't happen again and will boot normally. This indicates to me that on the initial boot the dvd drive isn't "ready" and not being seen by the console for some reason. Again, this only happens with Samsung drives.

Yeah, it seemed like a ready signal error. Although the cause is possibly what SS Dave suggested.

[Raidernick]

27 minutes ago, SS_Dave said:

Check the 4 resistor banks next to the IDE connector

You should get around 330 ohm on each resistor

Test the 2 yellow dots then the 2 orange dots and so on for all 16 resistors, If you get a reading above 350 ohm then that resistor is faulty and you can tack a 330 ohm resistor across the faulty one.

You should also consider recapping the board as well.

Cheers

SS Dave

Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

 

As I mentioned in the OP all Samsung drive boards have been recapped. I did check these resistors on all boards as I know they are known to fail on samsung drives. Only one drive out of 12 was out of spec and I replaced those resistor packages with new ones. This did fix the issue of the drive not working at all but did not fix the issue I am describing above.

[Fringle]

Your cable may be faulty.  I had this issue with a faulty cable and was rectified with a new 80 wire IDE cable.

[Raidernick]

I figured out at least PART of the problem I think. It only causes this error on HDD's of 1tb or larger. I tried on several brands of 250gb sata, 400gb sata and 750gb sata drives I had laying around and the problem is not there. As soon as I use any 1tb, 2tb, 3tb or 4tb drive though the issue happens again. This is on a fresh format of the drive with ONLY the cerbios.ini, bootanims on C and xbmc4gamers on E and nothing else at all.

This doesn't tell me why it is happening though or how to fix it. Anyone here have any ideas on that?

[Raidernick]

Issue has been confirmed to be a problem with the startech adapter and compatibility with Samsung dvd drives by the guys on the cerbios discord. Will need to use one of the china adapters on all consoles with a samsung dvd drive.

[Bowlsnapper]

31 minutes ago, Raidernick said:

Issue has been confirmed to be a problem with the startech adapter and compatibility with Samsung dvd drives by the guys on the cerbios discord. Will need to use one of the china adapters on all consoles with a samsung dvd drive.

I think that I have seen this happen, actually, and it would explain why it keeps happening... The problem could be fixed by using another drive besides Samsung, then?

[Raidernick]

2 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

I think that I have seen this happen, actually, and it would explain why it keeps happening... The problem could be fixed by using another drive besides Samsung, then?

Yes all Thomson, Philips and Hitachi drives work flawlessly with the startech as far as I've been able to tell. Both the Samsung B and F variants do not work correctly. Also, according to the cerbios discord the B drives also have some bug in the current cerbios as well that is separate from the startech issue.

[Bowlsnapper]

4 minutes ago, Raidernick said:

Yes all Thomson, Philips and Hitachi drives work flawlessly with the startech as far as I've been able to tell. Both the Samsung B and F variants do not work correctly. Also, according to the cerbios discord the B drives also have some bug in the current cerbios as well that is separate from the startech issue.

Thank you for bringing this to attention for us! This could be the answer to several threads that never had a solution and as well as threads in the future. Right on!

[Raidernick]

6 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Thank you for bringing this to attention for us! This could be the answer to several threads that never had a solution and as well as threads in the future. Right on!

No problem. I'm just glad I've gotten and answer to this finally that can be shared with everyone here. I've been sitting on all the samsung drive xbox's for months without being able to sell them because of this issue. I assumed the drives were just being flaky since the samsung lasers seem to have an insanely high failure rate(even more than the thomson ones amazingly in my experience), so I never bothered to look into it further.

I would like to note though that I was told that the only one of those china "green pcb" adapters that actually works correctly are the ones that have the master/slave jumper on them, and even then it only works at UDMA4 with a DVD drive connected. There are several different types that look extremely similar so you need to choose carefully. I'm ordering several of these from different sellers to try out. I'll make a post here to confirm if they work once I receive them in a week or so.

 

Image below shows the exact adapter that supposedly works with the samsung drives.

 

[Lisko]

9 minutes ago, Raidernick said:

No problem. I'm just glad I've gotten and answer to this finally that can be shared with everyone here. I've been sitting on all the samsung drive xbox's for months without being able to sell them because of this issue. I assumed the drives were just being flaky since the samsung lasers seem to have an insanely high failure rate(even more than the thomson ones amazingly in my experience), so I never bothered to look into it further.

I would like to note though that I was told that the only one of those china "green pcb" adapters that actually works correctly are the ones that have the master/slave jumper on them, and even then it only works at UDMA4 with a DVD drive connected. There are several different types that look extremely similar so you need to choose carefully. I'm ordering several of these from different sellers to try out. I'll make a post here to confirm if they work once I receive them in a week or so.

 

Image below shows the exact adapter that supposedly works with the samsung drives.

 

I've also noticed that to get the dvd drive working again it's enough to reset the console with the full IGR gamepad combo on cerbios if you don't have xblast or have a single bank hardmod.

[Bowlsnapper]

31 minutes ago, Raidernick said:

No problem. I'm just glad I've gotten and answer to this finally that can be shared with everyone here. I've been sitting on all the samsung drive xbox's for months without being able to sell them because of this issue. I assumed the drives were just being flaky since the samsung lasers seem to have an insanely high failure rate(even more than the thomson ones amazingly in my experience), so I never bothered to look into it further.

I would like to note though that I was told that the only one of those china "green pcb" adapters that actually works correctly are the ones that have the master/slave jumper on them, and even then it only works at UDMA4 with a DVD drive connected. There are several different types that look extremely similar so you need to choose carefully. I'm ordering several of these from different sellers to try out. I'll make a post here to confirm if they work once I receive them in a week or so.

 

Image below shows the exact adapter that supposedly works with the samsung drives.

 

Thank god that a priority jumper cheapo works. Do those guys have any idea what the problem is with the Startech?

 

15 minutes ago, Lisko said:

I've also noticed that to get the dvd drive working again it's enough to reset the console with the full IGR gamepad combo on cerbios if you don't have xblast or have a single bank hardmod.

Thank you!

[Raidernick]

37 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Thank god that a priority jumper cheapo works. Do those guys have any idea what the problem is with the Startech?

 

Thank you!

There was no explanation from anyone why it didn't work, just that it didn't. There are a few startech-looking clones made by delock and renkforce that don't have the problem with the samsung drives(supposedly). These clones look exactly the same as the startech adapter in every way but apparently work? I don't know how, I guess they have some different firmware or something on them. I have no way of testing this as I can't find them in the US and importing them is prohibitively expensive on top of their already double cost of a startech.

Edited November 26, 2023 by Raidernick

[Bowlsnapper]

1 minute ago, Raidernick said:

There was no explanation from anyone why it didn't work, just that it didn't. There are a few startech-looking clones made by delok and renkforce that don't have the problem with the samsung drives(supposedly). These clones look exactly the same as the startech adapter in every way but apparently work? I don't know how, I guess they have some different firmware or something on them. I have no way of testing this as I can't find them in the US and importing them is prohibitively expensive on top of their already double cost of a startech.

An adapter twice the cost? Do you have any links perhaps? I assume you're not in the US? Or maybe I assume wrong and they are only available outside the US?

 

I WAS HERE!

[Raidernick]

5 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

An adapter twice the cost? Do you have any links perhaps? I assume you're not in the US? Or maybe I assume wrong and they are only available outside the US?

 

I WAS HERE!

https://www.delock.com/produkt/62510/merkmale.html

I am in the US sorry if I made the above confusing. You can find various online shops throughout Europe on their site and the prices converted to USD range from $30 to $60 without shipping. I can get the startech adapters on amazon for $16-$18 shipped. This is an insane price variance and I can't justify buying them for those prices and then paying the ridiculous shipping costs on top of that to import them to the US. I'm not even sure if they REALLY work. I mean they look 100% identical to the startech adapter, enough so that I'd be willing to bet they are all made in the same taiwanese factory and rebranded for each country like most products are. That being the case I can't really see how they can be all that different but I'm not willing to drop the cash to find out.

[Bowlsnapper]

8 hours ago, Raidernick said:

https://www.delock.com/produkt/62510/merkmale.html

I am in the US sorry if I made the above confusing. You can find various online shops throughout Europe on their site and the prices converted to USD range from $30 to $60 without shipping. I can get the startech adapters on amazon for $16-$18 shipped. This is an insane price variance and I can't justify buying them for those prices and then paying the ridiculous shipping costs on top of that to import them to the US. I'm not even sure if they REALLY work. I mean they look 100% identical to the startech adapter, enough so that I'd be willing to bet they are all made in the same taiwanese factory and rebranded for each country like most products are. That being the case I can't really see how they can be all that different but I'm not willing to drop the cash to find out.

Which cjhipset are they using?

Edit: It looks like the Marvel chipset. Interesting...

[Raidernick]

Got the chinese ide/sata clones in today. They all work with the DVD drive correctly now. They even work with UDMA5 instead of the advertised udma4(according to cerbios discord). They do take slightly longer to load past the cerbios image though. The startech adapter would load past that image instantly to the bios animation, these adapters take 5-8 seconds. It's a fair tradeoff to have properly working dvd drives though.

[MadMartigan]

They may work with UDMA5, But might not take advantage of the speed increase it offers. It's always up in the air with the cheaper adapters. I've used plenty myself with no issue and also had some that don't work at all. Even after reflowing all solder joints. 

[Raidernick]

I'll test the write/read speeds using the andy speed test utils tool.

 

EDIT: Speed test with UDMA4 is about 60mb/s. Speed test using UDMA5 is around 90mb/s. I believe UDMA5 is supposed to be 100mb/s correct? So it's not using the full speed but it's still better than UDMA4.

With the startech adapter I get 100mb/s at UDMA5 and 113mb/s at UDMA6.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Raidernick

[Raidernick]

I got more help from the cerbios discord. A user there told me that adding a 100ohm resistor to the R4 pad on this adapter will fix not only the speed but also the boot times. I added this resistor and the xbox now boots instantly(same as the startech) and UDMA5 works at full speed now (same as the startech). That makes these adapters basically as good as the startech with some very basic modification.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Raidernick

[FrostyMaGee]

3 hours ago, Raidernick said:

I got more help from the cerbios discord. A user there told me that adding a 100ohm resistor to the R4 pad on this adapter will fix not only the speed but also the boot times. I added this resistor and the xbox now boots instantly(same as the startech) and UDMA5 works at full speed now (same as the startech). That makes these adapters basically as good as the startech with some very basic modification.

That’s cool and definitely worth playing around with for those of us that don’t mind solder work.  Thanks for sharing the info! I love the startechs but not the price per unit. If I could get the same use out of a cheaper unit with an extremely easy mod that would be nice. I’ll definitely have to try that out. 

[Lisko]

On 11/29/2023 at 11:37 PM, Raidernick said:

I'll test the write/read speeds using the andy speed test utils tool.

 

EDIT: Speed test with UDMA4 is about 60mb/s. Speed test using UDMA5 is around 90mb/s. I believe UDMA5 is supposed to be 100mb/s correct? So it's not using the full speed but it's still better than UDMA4.

With the startech adapter I get 100mb/s at UDMA5 and 113mb/s at UDMA6.

Hi this speed test you are using does run on the Xbox itself?