trencherfield
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Everything posted by trencherfield
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Tutorial - Lets repair a broken Team Xecuter 3/CE Modchip...
trencherfield replied to trencherfield's topic in Modchips
PART 3 We can't program the LC4128V(B) because the fuse map will be different, so we can't use the r3dux code here of course... No option, this CPLD is duff anyway, its coming off. Time to fire up the hot air station then. Points to note; The Xecuter board is thin, very thin like a wafer. Things will go tits up very quickly if you use too much heat for too long. Don't forget its an old PCB too. Shield the other parts with kapton and ally tape. Be careful. Don't yank the cpld off until its free, you'll tear traces. Use the flux! -
Tutorial - Lets repair a broken Team Xecuter 3/CE Modchip...
trencherfield replied to trencherfield's topic in Modchips
PART 2 Connected to ispLever here's what happened... So somethings obviously wrong. I knew the original Xecuter 3 used a different CPLD than redux, so lets scan the chain... Yeah, its an LC4128V CPLD instead. Maybe we can read it... Hmmm okay, can we reprogram that back to the CPLD? Nope.... onto part 3 then. -
The once king of modchips that circles around still to this day with 'legendary' status and of course it's sought after front faceplates and other accessories. Unfortunately somewhat prone to miss-handling, reverse pin header accidents and cpld failure meant people have been left with the Xecuter kit, faceplates and such, but with a blown chip. This sucks. So alas, I had two blown purples myself, acquired in non-functional state that came in with Xbox's. Now after building the new R3dux X3 replacement, I thought lets see what we can do with these. This tutorial seeks to help those with the time, tools and patience to bring their Xecuter 3 setup back from the dead. -- Usual obligatory: If you blow yourself up and it doesn't work or whatever transpires therein, it's at your own risk! -- ***Tutorial difficulty rating: at least 3.75 out of 5 chainsaw rating!*** Tools. Decent temp controlled soldering iron with changeable tips (goes without saying here, your gonna need an asian sized winkle for this job!) BGA flux - something like RMA-218 Good solder, not naff stuff - something like 63/37 rosin activated leaded. Temp/Flow controlled Hot Air station - doesn't have to be some arty farty high end bumph. Preferable silicone mat for above so your desk doesn't RIP. Magnification of some sort - if you have eye's like me & Mr Magoo then some scope would be great. Solder braid - 1.6mm wide is fine. Tweezers - point tip/fine/stainless. Some stranded fine AWG wire - we want just the tiny strands. IPA/cotton buds - cleanup. Replacement chip: Lattice LC4256V - usual sources. JTAG programmer suitable for Lattice 4000 series. Some sodding peace & quiet! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PART 1 Right enough faff, lets see what's up with the damn thing. Usual scenario ... with it setup/installed as per Xecuter guide, we don't get the correct operation upon starting the Xbox power button with a 'quick press'. Either continual fragging, no matter what switch position, switch unplugged, nor pressing eject & power (backup). Switch light either just staying red, some times blue, but chip itself won't 'hot swap' to flash either and tried the hotswap method to use the X3erase.xbe. Still nothing. Zip, nothing working. We've exhausted all those guides.... In the first case then, we will give it a visual under magnification for any damages that may be spotted by chance (stray previous solder blob/wire generally anything). Nope nothing, well lets give it a clean & IPA wash and fire up the soldering iron. Initially I started to remove and replace most of the small SMD parts for higher quality new parts, like better ESD 10K resistors, filtered 0ohm jumper, new double mosfets etc as I have them on hand for building new chips. Simple answer here was, that none of this worked or improved things on test. So also then removed the switch out of the way and fitted a new eeprom too. Same again - nothing helped. I'd changed virtually everything including the mosfets as they control D0 etc. I'm purely adding this here just for info. Well okay, maybe if we can connect the X3 chip to ispLever lattice suite we'll see if we can get any info. To do this we need to get the 4 JTAG points to the Lattice chip. Xecuter had pads made on the PCB design for programming, you will see them around the chip. Match them up off the chip PDF or redux repo. My programmer is setup for the redux Xecuter 3, so it connects to the 4 unused pins inside the LCD connector. So I needed to solder those JTAG pads to the 4 LCD connector pins. This is where I started to solder the wires to the LCD connector. Now I'd done this in the anticipation I'd later be removing the CPLD chip, you on the other hand can just solder 4 wires to the pads later on and skip this above process if you wish. You will notice since I removed the large flash protect switch, I was able to utilise the large vias which were close to the other JTAG pads. (I cut the protect trace by the hole) Then brought them through across the back within kapton tape laid down first and over the front LCD pads to avoid possible shorts. Then covered again in kapton for protection. Now we can connect this sucker up to ispLever...
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Would using this ATX PSU cause any issues?
trencherfield replied to ConsoleTechUS's topic in Lighting & Electrical Mods
There is some truth yes. As these are switch mode SMPS these often have a minimum draw (Amps) on some voltage rails, usually stated on the spec sheet. -
Due to our 'power-centric' shortages more EU/UK side with everything being Eco save these days and the cost of it, you generally find more people here like to switch off at the wall so to speak. Having most of these retro older items especially in a power bar to switch off all in one go. So this RTC mod would likely be more popular over here overall at a guess. Especially given the age of those power supplies inside the Xbox. Not something you want to leave powered unattended if you are away for a few days etc. Having this mod means no worries in doing just that, and full power off.
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Project Stellar missing nearly half of 1TB...
trencherfield replied to Persian_Mclovin's topic in Modchips
Depends on which BIOS you are using? And also depending on which BIOS may also need settings for it changing to see the G partition. Also, XBpartioner 1.3 used to be a bit buggy and you had to save the partition setting 3 times in it before it would properly take. May have been fixed, dunno, long time since I've been setting them up since I tend to do more soldering than anything these days. Try a different BIOS first. Someone else will prolly chime in with more up to date advice. -
Much appreciated bud. I just like to solder and take my time, seeing how good I can test my skills really as a hobby which is why I only do a few as and when I can. I really like that RTC board you've done, proper nifty is that and your chips too.
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Here I have another very small batch of four complete kits of the Xecuter 3. Meticulously assembled, hand soldered pin by pin on every chip for the best I can achieve. Made over months. An enormous effort goes into making these available to this standard. These even have the correct sized thumbwheel for the LCD, complete with all professionally made cables and switches, also 3M adhesive backs (not tape) made to size. All have been fully tested including with standard HD44780 20x4 LCD output. Pin header protrusions on reverse have been smoothed so nothing sticks into your thumb etc and for overall aesthetic finish. There are 3 red kits and 1 purple kit. The purple kit comes with the white switch & purple power eject board. All are £65 each plus post. Packed as per pictures and are ready to ship. Paypal either F&F or fees to you, either way. See previous sale thread for ref if desired. Thanks. More pictures link.
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Suggestions on what games to pick up
trencherfield replied to XboxLuver's topic in General Xbox Discussion
Grabbed by the Ghoulies Stubbs the Zombie OToGi OToGi 2 Dead or Alive 3 Dead or Alive Ultimate Psychonauts Soul Caliber II (looks awesome in 720p - native) Edit: Just realised Project Gothem Racing 2 has not been mentioned. -
Well at least you know what the prob was.
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Yeah no problem. These things are sent to try us.
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You'll never know 100% what they are. The chinese produce new clones and also refurb used chips, skimming the tops and re-etching the markings. You will often see this under a good scope easily. The chips were discontinued a long, long time ago. Worrying about what they are is futile. Just fit them, test and be happy.
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It will be an issue with the ram, one way or another. For what it's worth; 1) I never use hot air installing ram. The chips are more susceptible to heat than other types of IC's. You will find a lot of people using hot air and have no problems, but it does stress these chips. There's no need to use it either, they are easy to solder in place and do not take long to do at all. 2) The ram chips themselves are generally re-made clones, sometimes used and of general unknown quantity, no matter where sourced. Only exception would be to lift them from a donor board to be sure. 3) Even hand soldered, due to the above, one can never be sure every IC is 100% perfect. Most of the time they are fine if handled and installed correctly. I have been modding this console since mods were first released, some 23yrs. I've not had a bad ram chip yet, but that's not to say it couldn't happen. I've had duff CPLD IC's though. As I said before, if you remove the added 64mb ram, you will find it will boot. Your options are either to do that, or go over it very carefully under magnification first or try replacing each ram and testing in sequence, you may get lucky finding the offending IC rather than removing them all. Up to you. Best of luck with it anyway.
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Yes it should work. As long as it's identical flash on top if you wish to stack. You can see this on some modchips that use two flash chips like the X3 that the lines are connected where there are two AM flash chips in this instance. Switch the appropriate pins. You can also just fit a socket and swap chips, or even make a pcb with a socket on it and a remote switch and you'd have both options. This is just an exercise for fun though, as otherwise as said, you'd just fit a modchip on the LPC like everyone does. r3dux_v1_schematic.pdf
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You either have a small bridge and/or a fault on one or more of your ram chips. The fact that Xblast loads and passes the ram is not an infallible result. This has happened before to people. This is the reason why Xblast and only Xblast loads up for you. It is designed as such so it can individually test each ram chip. It may be very hard to see a bridge, it may be residing under the arch of the pins or it may simply be a damaged/faulty ram module. My bet is if you remove all the ram and hand solder fresh ram on, then it will boot. Also, make sure you are testing the board within it's metal shield enclosure and the board ground tabs are clean and to the PSU as well. I have a 1.0 board that exhibits that behaviour out of its case/shield.
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Excellent to see people still working on the original XBMC dash. You can see more on the discord channel for XBMC as the Prometheus LCD settings etc have been added for various new modchips and will be pending a release in due course.
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In theory you should be able to run the same 256mb mod on a 1.6 since the same footprints are there with the eight CS lines and enough PCB work. But it's not a currently viable option either since as said it requires BIOS/Software mods, doesn't run at full speed and he hasn't publicly released any of it either for anyone to test or take it further. Even then it will throw up incompatibilities, like the CPU upgrades with games and so on until it gets worked on.
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No. These chips have a different memory address and require BIOS/Software mods and still don't function at full speed. You also need the CS (chip select) lines. Given the above and the overall work involved including interposer (not released) it's much easier just to do the piggyback 1.6 ram mod. Stick with that.
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I can make a small batch of Gen5 if peeps want some UK side. Have an impending PCB order to do shortly so can add some of these if wanted. Trench. aka Sick Git.
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Glad you got sorted
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Certainly. Just something to test for the OP initially. May or may not be the issue, but something to check first. I would.
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LFrame control within the chip may not be optimised.
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You could try cutting the Lframe trace and see if that improves the situation. If it does, then you could fit a small switch via wires to the cut so you can switch the OG bios back in if you wanted to.
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The ripple current spec is the ability of the capacitors capacity to reduce the amount of ripple in the voltage at max 2.5a. So these cope with upto 2.5a each which is well above what we need. Since I fill all 5 positions it gives 5x this. Also, when capacitors are in parallel, it lowers the equivalent series resistance, ESR. Which means with all 5 in there you get even better performance. Fit these. No point trying to save cents/pennies on anything else at this price point.
Board Life Status
Board startup date: April 23, 2017 12:45:48