>>11954817
No need for a modchip to softmod a broken Xbox, get yourself one of these adapters and an appropriate ROM reader so you can dump the HDD key even from an Xbox that has no hard drive at all.
Then you can just use FatXplorer to create a new hard drive on your PC using the HDD key you just dumped and shove that drive into the Xbox.
Just did this a few weeks back on a 1.6 version Xbox I'd had hanging around with no HDD for years. Couldn't be arsed to hardmod since being a 1.6 it'd need an LPC rebuild as well.
The only hard part of softmodding this way is knowing exactly what files you need to put on the HDD.