Electronic – Can you identify the Xbox 360 battery pack connector

Well, just filtering by what you know about the connector yields about 20 possible options on digikey.

From the results, I think it's either a Hirose or JST connector.

Looks pretty close.

Also looks about right. However, it's black.

Is also promising.

One critical thing is that there may be markings on the header for the cable, rather then the connector itself. Since you say this is an xbox of yours, I assume you have both ends for the connector.

Considering that most of these headers are about 75 cents each, it may be perfectly reasonable to just buy a few of each, and try them.

The trick here is filtering.

Start at the digikey "Rectangular Headers, male pins", and start filtering by what you know:

• 12 Pins
• "Connector Type" - "Header, Shrouded"
• "Pitch" - "0.079 (2.00mm)"
• "Number of Rows" - 2
• "Mounting Type" - "Through Hole"
• "In Stock" checked

And that gets you down to a grand total of ~20 options.

From that 20, there look to be two or three possibilities, and the rest can be ruled-out visually. The trick is to look for the indexing tab positions.

Next I thought that cutting the trace on the bottom side of the board leading to the antenna (shown in red) would surely do the trick but again I was wrong; it would still connect if I was within a foot or two of the Xbox One. As an aside, what exactly is that trace's functionality?

The red line you cut IS the antenna path. But not it's radiation source. The reason it now only connects at 1 foot instead of its usual range is because you crippled it. Two ways to completely (for practical purposes) remove the signal is depower the entire antenna/wifi section, which the sub-board is, or connect the antenna trace to ground.

For theory, Antennas should be a full or 3/4th or 1/2, or 1/4th of the wavelength for optimum propagation. Just because it is not that size does not stop it from working, it just stops it from working well. Your antenna is now a few millimeters long instead of a few inches.