Okay, I wanna modify my drive. What path should I follow?

[mickrick]

I got a 360 premium pack for Christmas. Although it was only bought 3 weeks beforehand, it has a manufacture date of 2006-06-21 and a Toshiba/Samsung drive (according to the tray cutouts anyway). I also won an Xecuter 360 connectivity kit in a rival forum competition and would like to use this to modify the drive instead of the SATA controller on my Asus A7N8X Deluxe mobo (Silicon Images Sil 3112A chipset) if possible.

I've grabbed the Xtreme5.1 firmware pack, found a site detailing opening the case without marking it, and I think I now have everything I need. Now all I'm missing is a good, detailed walkthrough to flashing the drive. This is obviously the important bit. So if someone cold point me in the direction of one, or could reassure me that it is as simple as it says in the Xtreme instructions, then I'd be very thankful.
A couple of other questions though.

1. Can I flash directly to 5.1 from the stock firmware?

2. Is the manufacture date early enough that I will not need the enable0800, or am I best to use it anyway?

Although I'm an oul' hand at Xbox 1 modifying, both modchip and software mods, the sheer cost of the Xbox 360 makes all this a bit daunting so forgive me if I sound like I want my hand held through the whole experience.

Thanks from a complete noob!

[pas7680]

First of all here's one of many tutorials out there: http://www.360mods.net/Downloads/details/id=61.html To answer your two questions yes of course you can flash from stock firmware, this is usually best to do - if you had a flashed machine it's always recommended you flash back to stock before upgrading. Secondly you only need to use the enable0800 disc if your machine is flashed with xtreme4.0 or above firmware, as your is stock you couldn't use the disc if you wanted too.

[gigabite]

First of all, read and resaerch there are many topis which are on this forum wich already answer your questions..
1 Yes
2. You do not need the 0800 disk if you are using stock firmware or you are using a VIA chipset and are using teh 10 second trick..

this tutorial will help you (http://www.360mods.net/tutorial/HitachiSamsungTutorialV41Merged.pdf)
Ask no more, until you have read everything here and on the Xbox scene tuorials page...ask questions to g00gle, then if you still puzzeled here :p
 
giagbite - lol someone posted before me :p

[mickrick]

Thanks guys. You've set my mind at rest no end.