Squirt 1.2 BGA + 16mb Nand PCB Dual nand Slim Review

[XDK]

Squirt 1.2 BGA dual nand Installation
Difficulity Moderate
Installation time 1.5 hours (taking your time)

Installation is pretty straight foward begin by disassembling the xbox 360 your going to be installing the Squirt dual nand system on.. Most of how to disassembled the Xbox 360 is covered by google search and will not be covered in this review to save some time and length of reading the article.

The Squirt 1.2 BGA glitch chip is an all in one chip, nand reading/writing and CPLD glitching duties. that consists of your average RGH connection points as well as the SPI bus connection points as seen below.

Connections

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Following the Squirt installation tutorial/pdf avaliable on their website in the "Support" section you will aquire all the tools nessecary to install the chip/s and have you up and running in no time. I do suggest if you cannot solder to some very tiny points on the xbox 360 motherboard that you leave this job up to a professional. Myself / VGCRepairs and many other compitent folks on Tortuga can preform the installation for you if need be just contact one of us .

Overall Installation

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The above pictures are of your common rgh/spi bus installation what really gets into our Moderate rating on this installation is the nand pcb itself , should u choose to purchase and install this pcb I hope you have been praticing your soldering

Nand PCB Installation

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The nand PCB can also be connected by flat cables with in combination the 360-clip to make the nand pcb portion a nearly solderless addon. you can find more information about the 360-clip installation on the Squirt Team website.

The Squirt programmer from the kit connects very easily thru a 15pin flat cable for connection from the Squirt 1.2 BGA chip to the external programmer. This external programmer is capiable of not only programming the Squirt 1.2 BGA chip with a new bitstream but also programming the onboard TSOP 360 motherboard nand as well as the secondary nand so that you can use retail xbox live and glitch nands.

The external programmer can also be direcly wired to the xbox 360 spi bus following another tutorial on the Squirt website should you need to read/write and even program a different manufacturers CPLD (glitch chip) or a different xbox 360 system. In this case it is not a one time use programmer.

Programming is handled by a program released by Squirt called the "Squirter" this has a DOS interface for reading/writing the nand and sending a new bitstream to the Squirt CPLD.

Squirt Programmer

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Programmer 2

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Video from : www.youtube.com

Manufacturer Source: http://www.squirt360.com
Reseller we recommend http://www.vgcrepairs.com


Stick to the installation pdfs and you should have no troubles installing this dual nand system on your console

If you have any trouble feel free to contact me xdk at tortuga-cove.com or on IRC #tortuga-cove on EFNet ( irc.efnet.org )

I will be adding some more to this shortly.

[XDK]

Important bit of information

This bit of information was a vital key to getting everything running properly and was a bit "hard" to find in their documentation at first.

Only for the first time flashing of the SECONDARY NAND follow this procedure:
1- SWITCH OFF the console and UNPLUG the power cable.
2- PRESS the “SYNC” button and in the same time connect the POWER CABLE
3- Release the SYNC button
4- Turn on the console (the fan will run very fast, because the SECONDARY NAND is
empty)
5- Connect the SQUIRT PROGRAMMER to FLAT 15 Pin cable
6- Use SQUIRTER.EXE to read and write the SECONDARY NAND.
7- To switch back to ORIGINAL NAND if necessary simply press one time SYNC
button in standby mode.


this only has to be done ONCE.

[atreyu187]

Thanks for this as it was a good read to get me ready for the awesomeness that is about to explode when Fed-Ex delivers it thanks to the sweet contest you guys just had this month!!

[XDK]

Thanks for this as it was a good read to get me ready for the awesomeness that is about to explode when Fed-Ex delivers it thanks to the sweet contest you guys just had this month!!

u wont need to know any of this this is for the person installing the stuff.. now that both of your nands have data on them you can read/write each using the external programmer by using the sync button to switch back and forth...

[atreyu187]

Yes but what happens when a new dash comes out? Can I just update or will I need to write to the new NAND? And watching the video on how to boot each NAND was what I was really referring to in my comment.

[S4BRE]

you just build a image and install via xell. profit.

[atreyu187]

Ok I have had a JTAG and get the jest of what is going on but it took a crap on me and is in the closet till I can find someone to reball it. Now as for the stock NAND can I just update as usual via Xbox LIVE? Also how does one get Xell to boot using RGH? Just press eject as with the JTAG?


EDIT

XDK just got back to me and I have ZERO bad blocks on either NAND so my life just got a whole lot simpler.

[Nico-Arg]

Great Review!!

Just to say that XDK is GREAT!! Gave me the better advice to buy this dual nand solution.
I installed mine today, works amazing.

My customers will appreciate this

Sorry the video is not great but...blame the camera (?)



Thanks for all the advice and tips!!