I was given a 360 that is a couple of years old, flashed and already banned, but it didn't cost me anything and I figure I could have some fun with it. The thing is I don't really know many details about it, I know it was manufactured in 07, but I'm not sure what drive is in it, and what it's flashed to.
From my limited understanding, "waves" are generations of games to come out? Like a game just coming out now might be a higher wave, which requires the drive to be flashed to a certain version firmware to be playable? I'd prefer to not bother flashing the drive again to an updated version. The only way I see myself doing that is if FF13 turns out to be unplayable.
Also I'm a little confused what "wave patching" is and how that works. I looked in the "grand sticky" but didn't see any posts dedicated to discussing what it is and what it does.
Every Xbox 360 disc has a video partition which contains a video that says "To play this disc, put it into an Xbox 360 console" in various languages. The partition may also contain a dashboard update (waves 3-6). When the contents of the partition change, that denotes a new wave.
Once you've done that you can hunt down a non-stealth firmware that will allow you to play any games, past, present and future.
Wave patching allows you to replace the video partition with a different one, usually an older one, in order to get newer games to boot on older stealth firmware. Some stealth firmwares have strict compliance with certain waves in order to prevent the user from booting a bad rip, but this also has the side effect of not allowing the user to boot a legitimate rip if the wave isn't supported by the firmware. Personally, I think it's better to make sure that your discs are properly stealthed and as close to the originals as possible, because then if you ever decide to get a new console and flash that to play online, you won't have to reburn any of your discs. It's also easier to just flash the firmware once than it is to mess about patching different waves.
The console was manufactured July 31st, 2007 if that helps to figure out what drive it is. My uneducated guess is the BenQ, but I'd like to hear other's thoughts.
It is a BenQ.
Take off the faceplate and look through the little hole underneath the drive. You can tell whether it is a BenQ or Lite-On by checking the colour of the wires.
