Quote:
Originally Posted by kittychloe
Ive found when hdds die its usually a permanent situation as the magnetics die in the process never seen aftermarket hdd parts personally
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hard drive technology is well documented and pretty standard, so guys with a bit of programming and electrical knowledge can generally work out a solution for getting an alternative to work.
the original Xbox for instance can have it's Hard Drive replaced with any standard PC IDE hard drive, the only requirement is that you would need to run a special program to format the drive properly.
Some systems are more locked down such as the hard drives used in original "Ultra 64" arcade machines. where the drive was serialized and locked to the hardware. Even in these cases people have found work-arounds where the eprom with the serialization was modified to accept alternative storage devices... alot of people with these machines have used these modified eproms and replaced the original hard drives with flash media as it's much cheaper, faster and less prone to failure.
I worked in arcade machine repair for a number of years... it's pretty rare you'd come across a hardware failure that couldn't be overcome... typically the older the device the easier the electrics are to fix using modern parts.
There are of-course exceptions... usually when the materials themselves are unobtainable... for instance I'd be willing to bet that in 20-30 years any old machine that uses a tube-based display will be very difficult to "fix" without just replacing it with a more modern display.