Bought a broken Xbox to try to repair, looking for advice and answers (failed DVD drive)

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I've been picking up busted consoles from a local used game store really cheap and fixing them up for a little while. This particular one looks kind of sketchy, though. Customer who returned it to the store claims that it worked for a few days then quit reading games suddenly. Claimed he didn't drop it, but there is a very clear scuff on the faceplate on the DVD drive front corner and something rattling around inside that suggested otherwise, so I figured the DVD drive broke from being dropped. Did my research on DVD drive swaps, looked at prices on eBay and bought it.
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Unfortunately, I goofed when doing my research on this and thought the replacement drive was going to be $15-$25. Turns out those listings I saw were for Xbox One drives, but they were called "Original Xbox One DVD drives" and tricked me into thinking it would be a cheaper fix than thought (in my defense, Xbox One doesn't have a DVD drive... But a Blu-Ray... So the bad title threw me off.) OG Xbox DVD drives are around $90 on eBay right now. More than I can justify to repair this if I wanted to resell it afterwards.
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It looks like it has been opened before. The rattling noise was from one of the T15 hard drive screws bouncing around and the silver sticker was peeled back and taped back down (didn't notice that until I was opening it.) Skeptic in me thinks the previous customer bought it, swapped the DVD-ROM drive with a junk one and returned it (I don't suppose there is a way to verify if the DVD drive in here is not the original?) Then again, it's a Thompson DVD drive on a 1.0 motherboard, so it's probably the original. Maybe he tried to fix it himself and did a sloppy job putting it back together?
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I wanted to see if anyone could direct me to guides on attempting to repair the DVD-ROM drive itself or if there were cheaper off-brand drives that were compatible even if the console has to be modded to use them. Otherwise, I'll probably just throw it on eBay as a parts/repair listing (it is a 1.0 board, so maybe it will be worth it for someone else to fix?)

submitted by /u/Arvex
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