I am a brand new member, and I am glad to be a part of the afterdawn forums.
So to be short, I got my 360 flashed last december by a poster on craigslist. It works great with no problems at all, even xbox live. Now with "Wave 4" I cannot play new games (such as Modern Warfare 2, for instance....).
I am on a 24" Aluminum iMac running Snow Leopard. Is there any programs for Mac which I could flash my 360 with? If there is nothing for Mac, I have no problem buying XP / windows 7 because I may need it anyways down the line. For hardware, I would get a USB to SATA converter such as THIS ONE or THIS ONE. I've looked relentlessly online for posts / articles online to no avail.
Has anyone had success flashing their 360 on a mac?? Running windows or OSX? &&& my 360 has a Toshiba / SamsungDVD drive
I have successfully flashed both an OEM and a previously flashed Liteon drives on my 2008 Mac Pro 2.8 8-Core, running Windows XP SP3 using the onboard SATA ports (Intel). I also reflashed a Liteon drive under Windows 7 64 bit as well. I just never got the drivers installed to use the Xtractor.
I used a power connectivity kit (for ease of use) as well as a Maximus USB Xtractor. For XP, I installed the latest .NET framework, PortIO32 drivers and FTDI drivers (Xtractor). For Win7 64bit, I didn't have to install any drivers to reflash my Liteon, though to get the Xtractor to work I probably need to install PortIO64 and FTDI drivers (it was taking forever for Win7 update to download the FTDI driver that I gave up).
I was not successful using the "unused" SATA ports of the Mac Pro so I pulled a drive bay out and used them, and because JungleFlasher can not select Port 1 (at least, I found no way to do so), you must attach to a Port 0 (master). Interestingly, the Xtractor software is able to see both Port types. Anyways, I used Bay 2 which is a Port 0. FYI, Bay 3 is a Port 1.
Unlike Kavey, I didn't want to "hack" my Mac Pro in any way nor its cables, so I simply bought a 7-pin internal SATA 20" extension cable. I actually bought TWO and connected them in series to give me plenty of length to have the drive sitting on my desk (my tower is located on the floor). I didn't even have to lay my Pro on its side and simply felt my way to the internal SATA port and connected my extension to it, and the other to the X360 optical drive. I didn't disconnect any other items from the Pro, other than Bay 2.
The biggest pain was ensuring the power connectivity PCB was firmly attached to the drive as it is a loose fit. I operated the tray a couple times to verify power connectivity, powered down, manually set the drive to half-open, powered back up then did a "cold" boot of the Mac to ensure the optical drive is sensed by the Pro (the Mac SATA ports are not hot-swappable so all SATA devices you wish to use must be connected prior to power-up).
The itemized list of equipment used:
1 - Maximus Xtractor $25
1 - Power Connectivity $17 (optional)
1 - Power Adapter $8 (optional)
2 - 20" 7-pin SATA extension $10 (includes shipping cost)
The Xtractor software is not really used in the flashing of the Liteon drive, though it was useful in scanning for attached X360 drives on any Port so it was valuable in troubleshooting connectivity issues as JungleFlasher would NOT show any devices attached to a Port 1.
I almost freaked when my first attempt to erase the drive failed. I nervously tried again and it worked. Then it failed the first attempt to write to the drive. I started back with erasing and then writing and it worked the second time. Just something to keep in mind to redo the steps in case of any failures (FYI, the JungleFlasher tutorial does NOT tell you what to do in the event of any flashing failures).
I dont know if a USB to SATA adapter would function; it depends if JungleFlasher would be able to see the port at all. Even with the built-in SATA ports on my Mac Pro, JungleFlasher would not see the slave Port 1 ports at all. In addition, I've read that you should avoid all Silicon Image based SATA controllers, but my research indicates the vast majority of SATA PCI cards and most likely USB-to-SATA adapters are based on SI chipsets.
