LEDs
This was pretty simple overall. The hardest part was getting the PCB with the power/eject buttons on it out of the front bezel. There’s a helpful thread on Xbox-Scene’s forums about how to get the front bezel off. After that, you should see how everything else comes apart.
To change the power/eject LEDs, I followed this tutorial. It was pretty easy, you just have to make sure you get your LEDs installed so that they can be bent down into the holes in the PCB as much as possible. You’ll still probably have to trim away some plastic on the back of the front bezel before you reinstall though (sorry, I don’t have pictures of that).
I also cleared the “jewel”, as the Xbox logo on top is called, cut out the hole underneath the jewel with a Dremel, and installed a ring of eight 5mm white LEDs to shine onto the underside of the jewel. I generally followed the guidelines in this tutorial, but I didn’t use just one resistor for all the LEDs. Following Kevin’s advice (Kevin is a masters student in Electrical Engineering — I usually listen to him about this stuff), I installed one resistor per LED. The LEDs, which I got from SickMods, each came with a resistor anyway so I didn’t have to buy anything extra. I also made a plug so that I could easily detach the lid from the rest of the Xbox when I open it up. See the images below.
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