Xbox 360 DVD ROM Replacement

A week ago i decided that it was time for my girlfriend to join in my gaming fun. Booted up my Xbo

Rob’s new toy

Just in today. MacBook Pro 13″ i5 with 8GB RAM.

The Move – Clear Wireless to Verizon FiOS

I have embarked on a new journey (yes i am watching Star trek at the moment), I am migrating from Cl

 
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Xbox 360 DVD ROM Replacement

May 8, 2012 in Shite, XBOX 360 by rob

A week ago i decided that it was time for my girlfriend to join in my gaming fun. Booted up my Xbox 360, opened the DVD ROM tray, put in Halo 3, sat on the couch and got ready to play. I sat there and waited for a few minutes while it said loading. Then the icon when back to open tray. Tried to use my DVD lens cleaner, nothing. Looked at the DVD, not a single scratch.  Googled a bit, everyone said the drive is dead. Bollocks!

First I needed to determine what drive I have. To find out, what drive I looked under the Xbox 360 faceplate. If you look under the Xbox logo on the drive there is a little opening that shows the wires. I have two yellow wires, so it was the lite-on DVD ROM. Finding a new drive was as easy as a google. I ended up ordering one from Amazon for 29.99 + shipping.  I did the expedited shipping and got it in two days. Once the new drive was in hand, I then opened the case (Yes I voided the warranty) and removed the dead drive. Easy enough, I just put the new drive and plugged the SATA cable and power cable back in, then put the case back together again. With great anticipation I booted it back up and was welcomed by the Xbox 360 screen. Much to my dismay, it would not read the game. Another quick google reveled :

“The Xbox 360 is designed so that the DVD drive works only with the particular game console it is installed in. Replacing a defective DVD drive with a replacement DVD drive does not work, since the replacement has a different DVD drive key, which the game console won’t accept.”  ifixit.com

So after finding out this disappointing bit of information, I had to make a choice.

1. Flash the new drive

2. Replace the PC board on  the new drive with the old one.

I decided to crack the old drive open and have a look at how much work option two would entail.  Once the drive was open I could see three ribbon cables and six soldered wires. At this point I decided the easiest path would be to option 2.  I marked each wire from left to right with a mark indicating numbers 1 – 6, so that after I had them off the board I wouldn’t be confused. Luckily they used a good amount of solder when they attached the wires at the manufacture, so I didn’t need to add any myself. Once the wires where reattached, I then reattached the ribbon cables and put the case back on. This time I opted for turning the console on naked. No sense putting the case back together if I was to make anymore adjustments.

I booted the console up, inserted Halo 3 and it instantly booted into the DVD! I guess I have solid soldering skills after all. So that’s it, the whole process took 3 hours and I am back in business. BTW my girlfriend, totally hooked, loves Blades of time. ;)

 

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Lite-On Board

Clean Xbox Case

Ready for new DVD ROM Drive

Naked Xbox Booting Halo 3

Halo 3 Ready For Game Time

 

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Rob’s new toy

March 5, 2012 in Uncategorized by rob

Just in today. MacBook Pro 13″ i5 with 8GB RAM.

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The Move – Clear Wireless to Verizon FiOS

January 24, 2012 in ISP, Shite by rob

I have embarked on a new journey (yes i am watching Star trek at the moment), I am migrating from Clear Wireless

(AKA Crap

Wireless) to Verizon FiOS. I have to say, the online signup process was extremely simple. I entered in my address, they told me FiOS is in my area. I selected  only Internet, entered credit card info and that was it. I chose my installation time, the next day from 8AM – 12PM. I was pleasantly surprised to see at checkout I had no installation fees at all, so paid exactly $0.00. 10 Minutes later I received a email to verify the installation time. Very nice!

So this AM, i woke up excited to receive my new on-ramp to that wonderful information highway we call the Internet. I waited, and I waited… I made breakfast, I made tea… 11:30AM I decided to give a call to Verizon to see what the holdup was. I called and I received a message from the IVR that the technician was going to be on site at the original window of 12PM to 1PM. Well that is a load of shite! I received a email stating 8AM to 12PM. I then navigated my way out of the IVR to a live person. I asked “soooo the IVR told my a window of 12PM to 1PM, this is not correct, my window was for this AM. Whats the deal and why was i not notified?” I received the typical gibberish from her, “the tech is running late due to extra wireing performed at the last client. He will be there between the window stated.”

So now it is 1PM, no tech, and no phone call letting me know anything! Seriously, how the hell do domanys get away wasting our time like this?!?!? This is complete shite!!!! So now I am making another call to them to ask why they have wasted half my day. Now on the phone with Verizon CS, I hear disbelief in her voice that I have not received a call in regards to the tech running late. LOL So after 15 minutes of hold time the CS rep came back and stated she was still waiting on dispatch to see where the tech was. She also said she would call me once she has an answer. Now at this point they have missed both windows, and wasted my day completely. Hummm I think it’s time for Verizon to do something for me!

They are taking the piss if they think I will let them get away with this!

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Clear Wireless = Taking The Piss

January 23, 2012 in Shite by rob

So in efforts to support new emerging technologies, I decided it was time to ditch my Comcast service in favor of Clear Wireless. Clear is a 4G WiMAX service boasting 6MB download and 1.5 upload speeds. I read a ton of good things about Clear in Philadelphia and thought that it would be a good fit. While I was at it, I also looked at Clear’s maps to see exactly where the tower in my area is located so I could place the modem in line of site for better signal. 11 days ago I was off to Best Buy to pick up my new toy. Once home I deployed the modem directly facing the tower and then hopped on http://speakeast.net/speedtest. Much to my surprise I was pulling down 10MB. I was a happy man! I then went to my favorite bittorrent client (uTorrent) and started to download some of my favorite shows (I also canceled my cable). Again, I was pulling down at speeds of 2MB, simply beautiful!

Over the last few days I have noticed my speeds slowing down to a crawl. I reset the modem a few times, this did nothing. I then decided to make the call to tech support. I explained to the tech exactly what was happening, explained I had full signal on my modem. Now what he told me in return turned my face blood red! He stated that I was congesting the tower, and that they are throttling my usage. What!?!?!? When I signed up for the service, I signed up for an unlimited service! Unlimited freaking data!!!! I asked him “why the hell are you doing that?” He went on to give some gibberish about my usage is causing problems for other users. Clear Wireless you are worthless! Your network is a piss poor design if this is the case! I fire you as of now! You are taking the piss if you think you will keep customers doing shady things such as this! My company was looking to go with you for secondary pipes for 12 of our locations. Guess what, you just lost that!!!!

Lesson learned my friends, lesson learned!

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Xbox 360 ESPN App

December 26, 2011 in MatchDay, XBOX 360 by rob

This AM I decided that 10AM was way too early to stumble down the pub to watch the Man U v Wigan match. I also didn’t want to stream from my bedroom Media Center and the iPlayer won’t stream on the Xbox 360 extender. As I am Always on the lookout for new football viewing experiences,  I decided to have a poke around the new Xbox 360 dashboard to see if there was a app to stream the match. While poking around, i didn’t want to miss any of the non stop action, so i popped into espn.com on my laptop. After kicking off the stream i noticed something interesting in the top navigation bar.

Very interesting eh? ESPN Xbox Live

So all you need to do to have it up and running is go to your Xbox Dashboard and then Apps. ESPN will be one of the first apps you see. Click on it and install. You will have to wait a bit while it runs through updates. It took around 2 minutes for mine to update and install. Once it finishes you have a player similar to the player at ESPN. Again… Bloody Brilliant! The quality isn’t HD, at times it’s pixelated, but overall quality for video is an 8 and the audio is a 10.

This whole new app interface M$ has introduced to the new dashboard has a lot of potential. I am seriously considering dropping my cable all together. Between my RSS torrent downloads, Media Center and now the Xbox apps, really is there any need?

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Stream BBC on Windows Media Center with UK Proxy

December 24, 2011 in Windows Media Center by rob

Currently the BBC iPlayer will not allow US viewers. Big bummer, I want to watch REAL FUTBOL, not this lame crap we have over here (it’s really handball). Not to mention I want to watch Misfits on Channel 4 without having to wait for a torrent to be uploaded. For the topper, I want this all to be packaged up in Windows Media Center. Is this asking to much? I don’t think so… With a little playing around i was able to trick the BBC servers into thinking I was indeed a citizen of Great Britain. Bloody Brilliant!!!

Tools you will need

1. Vidalia Bundle

2. List of Tor servers in the UK. Tor UK Servers (this is a list i generated from https://torstatus.all.de/)

3. TunerFree MCE

Installation and Configurations

1. Install the Vidalia Bundle. Once it opens go to settings > Advanced > Tor > torrc and add the list of UK Tor serves like so: ***NOTE*** They must be separated by a comma.

StrictNodes 1
StrictNodes Tn3tComAlpha,tor488,TorLand1

Save config.

2. Open Internet Explorer

Settings > Internet Options > Connections > Proxy Server : Advanced. Make it look like the image below.

3. Click ok out of everything and visit https://check.torproject.org/ in Internet Explorer to verify you are setup correctly.

4. Install TunerFree MCE and select Typical.

This will install both the US and UK Features. Once you finish the installation exit media center, then fire it back up. You will see MillSoft in the strip. Click on TunerFree MCE. The first run will complete the install. This will take some time. Once it had completed click on BBC One and enjoy.

If you would like to add additional video plugins, visit: MillSoft Plugins

Enjoy, and Cheers!

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SQL Cluster FAIL!

May 13, 2011 in Uncategorized, Work by rob

So I am on site at one of our potential acquisition’s, I get a call that power is down at our corporate office. Some drunk or Philly ID10T decided to drive into a power pole and take it out snapping the power line. About two hours later PECO restored the power to the office and everything is right as rain, not quite! I get a call that i need to rush back to the office, our iSCSI target for our SAN on the SQL cluster is not mounting.

Once i get to the office, i am checking the SAN (IBM DS4300) , everything is showing good. I have targets mounting on my Exchange server, File Server is able to mount and access targets. No configurations have been modified in over a year on the servers. At this point i am thinking it is the cluster service that is the issue.  I dive into device manger and view non plug and play drives, disable cluster disk driver, rebooted the server and wallah, i have the SAN mounted. Now what happened with clustering to interfere with the SAN mounts?

Next i started looking at the groups and how they are setup. Like is said before nothing has changed in over a year. So what could be causing the issue? Turns out it was Symantc Endpoint Protection that was grabbing the handle on the drive and trying to run a scan before the sql disk driver could grab the handle and mount.

Article: A physical disk resource may not come online on a cluster node in Win2003 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981475

Good times hu?

 

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End of Day DC Issues…

May 10, 2011 in Uncategorized, Work by rob

Over the last three weeks, another Admin and I have been noticing a steady decline in connecting new exchange users up over RPC over HTTPS. Today i was getting a little pissed off over this. I decided to have a look at one of the DC’s to see what was going on. Talk about opening pandoras box! This DC (i was told later always had issues) was throwing errors left and right. I decided to give her the old M$ magic touch, a reboot.  Once she came back up, I tried logging in over RDP, to my supprise i received an error advising me that there was no domain to log into. LOL

Took the server down, verified that that the Exchange servers are pointing to the secondary DC. My plan is to grab and seize all roles on the second DC and demote the first. Then blow out the OS and reinstall. With it not realizing that it is in fact a DC or that there is a domain to log into, i am going to run DCPROMO with the /forceremoval switch from the get-go. After I use the dcpromo /forceremoval command, all the remaining metadata for the demoted DC wont be deleted on the surviving domain controllers, and therefore I will manually remove it by using the NTDSUTIL command.

No time for love DR Jones!

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New Site

May 8, 2011 in Uncategorized by rob

I have decided to recreate my WordPress installation and revamp the site yet again. Over the last year i have been working on some crazy projects. I will be posting them up over the next few months. They are a mix of M$ and Nix projects. I will try and post as much detail as i can for everyone to scrutinize. :)

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