a few months ago I was experimenting with sending vendor commands to Xbox 360 DVD drives via a USB SATA adapter, i was able to dump the DVD key from a Xenon's busted DVD drive but unfortunately can't do much else like flashing firmware since a lot of commands are undocumented...
what's the point in this post? I guess it's a message to would-be future modders to document your work and put it online, in a way that's easy to preserve. it might be tempting to hold things tight, obfuscate info and make a quick buck, but future generations will hate you