it shouldn't matter.

did you lift pin A18 off the board? it shouldn't touch the board, only be soldered to the PIC pin.

not here, you don't.

I think the diagram may only be for the 12F629.
basically: pin 1 goes to a 5v supply. pin 2 goes to the power supply connector (on the xbox360 MB), that's most likely standby power. pin 7 goes to A18 (not pin 18!) of the flash chip. A18 has to be connected ONLY to the PIC, not the drive board too. pin 8 goes to any ground point.

generally I agree, it is fraud. however, there is a difference IMO between actually breaking the console while you are f***ing around with it, and the RLOD killing it, which is a known issue with the system and nothing user-made can really cause it. for the latter, I feel inclined to agree that it is ok to replace the sticker and have MS fix it. besides, if you send in a system now, you end up with a currently unmoddable drive, so that actually helps MS.

There used to be talk that the standard (!) USB ports are indeed read-only. of course the memcard ports are not, they're on a seperate USB channel and can be accessed differently by the kernel, or are "unlocked" by the extra security chip on the device.

I doubt it's a fake. make sure you wired it up correctly.

con packages are signed. downloadable demos also are, as far as I am aware.

cause then the drive itself would have to contain a public key and do the decrypting etc. MS wanted to save cost by using standard PC components.

exactly. only warning, next time you are banned.

that sounds like the "standard" backup firmware that has existed for benq and samsung all the time already.. you can always reflash if the firmware is bad, due to an emergency flash routine that runs independantly from the firmware.

load the orig.bin in fwtoolbox. you should get the key if the dump is valid.

let's put it this way: if you are really lucky, your great-great-great-grandchildren may get the correct key.

if you are sure that's a proper dump of the drive, then there is no way to recover the key, and your box is useless.

there's only one TSOP flash chip on there. you can use the flash from another MB, but the HDD key will also change then.

the code to switch between the two banks is in the posting above, the PIC code.

if you never got a good dump of the nand in the first place and the nand is corrupted now, then your console is gone for good.

sure. but that won't happen. it never happened for xbox 1 either for that matter, and that's "only" a 1024 bit encryption.

that file is complete garbage. there is no key in that.

why would it be tough? you just copy and paste both firmwares into a new file. or use a command prompt and do

copy /b firmware1.bin + firmware2.bin combined.bin
combined.bin will be the 512 kb firmware.