Hey, I've been searching numerous forums and websites as well as working on my 360 for at least 12 hours now trying to solve this issue. I was updating my firmware from ixtreme 1.4 to 1.6 using jungleflasher and my xbox turned off for no reason during the writing portion of the flash. Needless to say now my computer won't recognize the drive. I am using a via chipset and have already tried using xtreme boot maker to restore the firmware to the original firmware using a flash drive. Drive wasn't detected. Tried using jungleflasher. Again, drive not detected. And when I tried using iPrep, both 006 and 008 aren't working for me and say "No valid firmware" even after updating the definitions files, placing firmware in the firmware folder, and restarting my computer. Here's all the info spaced out in case it helps.
Drive ver: Toshiba-Samsung ms28
Problem: Power turned off during flash write
Firmware available: original stock FW, ixtreme 1.4, ixtreme 1.6
Programs attempted: jungleflasher 1.62 beta, Xtreme boot maker 0.5.3_rc3, DosFlash V1.7 Beta
Chipset: VIA RAID Controller - 3249 (according to device manager)
Any help at all would be great. I'm about ready to take a hammer to it and go to town, but I really don't have the cash to shell out an extra $80+ for a new drive that I can hopefully reprogram my key into or $200-$400 for a new console.
No, the drive does not eject. Well glad to know that the drives are a lot cheaper than the last time I checked. I guess the median now is about $32 on ebay. Anyway, I've read of other people getting their drives to work after a bad flash so I was just hoping that I wouldn't have to buy one. The drive does not eject. It doesn't show up on my computer or on any flashing programs (including dos based flashers). I'm currently trying to hexedit my mtkflash.exe file, but I'm having trouble trying to find the correct values to edit. Gonna do some more searching for that while waiting for responses on here. Thanks.
Originally posted by Andy Hewitt: You'll need a Bootable Floppy with MTKFLASH and your firmware. (we'll call this your original.bin)
Your Borked DVD drive attached to SATA 1 on your motherboard.
Boot from Floppy and get to a Dos prompt.
Type in "MTKFLASH W /SATA /M original.bin
You should get a response from the system with a list of possible sata ports to flash to.
(For arguments sake this is SATA 1 and SATA2 in this tutorial)
Turn off the power to the DVD drive wait a second and turn it back on again.
Now hit 1 on the keyboard to start the flash. (in response to the Sata 1 port on the screen)
OK, now it will start flashing or sits waiting at "Port: d800, Master/Slave: a0"
If it is waiting for more than a few seconds hit escape twice to stop the attempt and power off the drive again and keep trying the last part again. It will work after a few attempts.
This is what I have figured out so far and why this works.
MTKFLASH is looking for a response code 70 from the drive to start flashing.
Whilst the hitachi drives have a distinct recovery mode the samsungs show a code 70 JUST after power on.
I'm assuming this is a small recovery window that we can use.
The MTKFLASH software doesn't really care what device is on the SATA bus at the beginning, as long as it can detect something. Hence is people put a hot swap drive or hard drive on the sata bus, the software says "Ahh, SATA 1 has a device on there" and gives to the option to flash that port.
Only when you press 1 on the keyboard to start flashing does it try to detect what KIND of device it is and waits for the required 70 code to start flashing.
So in summary ..
Get MTKFLASH working so it detects a device on your Sata bus (Either the DVD drive or a hard drive)
Then start the flashing procedure JUST AFTER the dvd is given power, after a couple of attempts it should catch the Code 70 and start flashing.
