Shmingers

Lightwish, after years of working on these, I've often learned not to ignore the obvious things. Are you sure that GPU fan is spinning? It looks badly gunked up. Try cleaning it and make sure it's working. If you still have the problem, I defer to my knowledgeable colleagues who have already given you excellent advice.

You might be able to salvage the drive by purchasing a new Top-60 laser.

Splitting the TSOP is surprisingly simple, and when it works you feel like a miracle worker. I've already modchipped that unit, and I think I might just drop the dodgy DVD drive and make it an all-digital edition. lol

Hi arfows, sorry to dig this thread up, but I just tested the Philips drive I was having problems with in my thread in a modded environment and got the same thing. I'm pretty sure we're both facing the same problem, a borked board in the drive. I bet everything else is fine in yours as well. Bowl I just got my first coma unit this year. Had heard of the problem but hadn't seen it before. Sadly, I got the 1.1 working in 256k mode, then got greedy and tried to flash a 1 meg TSOP. Of course it failed at 25%...not making that mistake again.

Hey mate, no, I got side-tracked with other projects, but I fear it's the board. I was hoping to swap the board with another drive but I haven't encountered another one of this kind. I have a fully working Philips drive, but it has the split PCB, not the big square one. If I figure out a solution, you will be the first one I reach out to. Also, happy holidays my friend. Hope all's good with you!

Hey, I recently had two Philips drives go bad on me, so in working on them I can confirm the ribbon cables push in farther than you think. Just gently push a bit more. You'll feel it when they seat properly.

Hi, yes it's constant when the system turns on. Now that I think about it, it does sound like the screech of a dying motor. Yep, the tray moves smoothly when I manually try to move it. I was hoping to try swapping in the working PCB from a second Philips drive I have, but that drive has the other type of control board (the split-style one). I'll try taking the drive lid off and observing it during startup. I'm also super-paranoid about looking at the laser, so I will follow my GameCube approach and put a small section of post-it over the lens.

Thanks for replying! The Phillips drives don't have a secondary board...I tried cleaning all of the contacts on the PCB (I have the large, one-piece board, not the other split-L type one) but I didn't check the motor wires. I'll give that a shot. Also, Thompson and Phillips drives do give a small whir when they start up, but this is different, it's a very high-pitched whine, like a motor is spinning freely that shouldn't be, or faster than it should be? It's a very unpleasant sound.

Hi all, first and foremost, as the season approaches I want to wish everyone a happy holidays! I bought a "for repair" 1.1 unit that needed a LOT of work. (This is a different unit than the Sharp TSOP unit from my other repair post.) Luckily I was able to repair everything except the Philips DVD drive. It was relatively clean - I cleaned the lens, replaced the drive belt and cleaned up a bit of corrosion on the board, but it's still dodgy. Question, can this Philips drive be saved? On startup there is a high-pitched whine from inside the dvd drive, and when I push the eject button, it wants to open and close, but it will only travel about an inch or so and stick, then if I keep pushing the button it will eventually open fully but refuse to close again. Is this a control board issue, or a motor issue? I rarely encounter DVD problems, so this is a new one for me. Thanks all!

Ok all, it took me three days to figure this out and I'm a little embarrassed, but I have figured out the solution. Long story short, I learned a Sharp TSOP requires more than just bridging the points and adding the jumper wire. After trying MANY other solutions, I found Dphirschler's guide here on how to flash a Sharp TSOP, and they mentioned if you bridge everything right away, you'll get a blank screen. I removed the solder bridges and the jumper wire, and surprise surprise, it booted up successfully. While I'm happy to have learned something new, I'm so annoyed at the time lost that I don't want to see this console ever again. Thank you all.

I'll try again, thanks. Sincerely hoping the traces are the issue and not anything worse.

Yep, if not for the blank screen, I'd assume it was starting up normally. Hmm, I used canned air on the board, but I vacuumed the case. I hadn't considered static. Dammit please tell me I didn't create a charge that cooked the board when I put it back in... X3 box is separate for now. I was treating this 1.1 as a stand-alone - softmod, clean, TSOP flash, then if I was happy with it, I was going to replace the 1.2 in the X3 with the guts from the 1.1. BTW the X3 project is going swimmingly. Replaced the power rail caps and got the clock cap damage repaired. Thanks, but as per my note to Bowlsnapper, this 1.1 console is separate from my X3 project.

Ok, I've never seen this before, and I'm hoping some of you awesome mad scientists might have a solution. I bought a v1.1 in decent condition hoping that I could do the necessary maintenance and use the guts in my X3 project. Got it home, turned it on and it worked...well enough that I was able to softmod it. Today, I opened it up to work on it and it was caked in dust (I've seen cleaner attics). Cleaned it thoroughly, removed the clock cap (neutralized and cleaned the small amount of leakage), cleaned the DVD drive, bridged the two TSOP points, installed an X3 pin header and replaced the thermal pastes. Pretty standard for what I normally do with an OG Xbox. Long story short, I put it back together to flash the TSOP, and it won't boot properly. It sounds like it's booting and the eject button ring turns green, but there's nothing on screen. The other odd thing, is it keeps scanning the DVD drive, and if I push the eject button, it turns off, then turns back on again. I confirmed the cables are good by starting up my primary Xbox. I'm thinking it's one of two things: 1. Trace damage, but I'm not seeing any obvious damage, the buttons work fine and the ring lights up properly. 2. Bad power rail caps, but they're not swelling (I've had caps go bad without swelling before) Before I make the effort of replacing either option, I wanted to see if this was familiar to anyone here. Any ideas? I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thanks all!

Hah, funny thing is, there's a Bell Canada blue Xbox for sale on my local classifieds...it's a special Canadian model, same as the blue Halo 2 console but it has silver sparkle logos. Watching to see if the price drops...it's sitting at $800, too rich for me TBH.

As Bowlsnapper pointed out, I was paying his transit fare, and even at $15 he was under-pricing it. He was selling it as box-only, with no idea if it worked. $40 was a reasonable price for the risk. Even if I was only able to salvage the faceplate, it would have been worth the price paid. Thanks man, the LCD works fine, and I'll think about the buttons. TBH I'm not too put-off by the exposed switches. I think it gives it character.

So I was roaming Kijiji in my area (Toronto, Canada), and I saw an ad for an OG Xbox, selling for $15 CAD. The main pic was just the dusty, dirty lid, so I'm not surprised it wasn't quick to sell, but the second pic was the front. I offered him $40 to meet me at a subway station near to him (across town from me) and he agreed. Long story short, it needs all the typical work (clock cap, power rail caps, deep clean and a new hdd), but it's all there and it works. It's a 1.2 with a Samsung DVD, a 300 gig IDE drive, a very old install of Avalaunch, and some screen flicker. Pretty sure the new power rail caps will take care of the screen flicker. It was starting randomly at first, but that stopped after I removed the clock cap and cleaned up all of the spillage. I've ordered the internal parts and I'm really looking forward to working on this. I've never had an X3 system before...it's like answering an ad for "old car" and discovering it's a Porsche. I'd be happy to update this post if anyone's interested!

That would explain a lot TBH. *sigh* Thank you for chiming in!

Hi, yes sorry I didn't mention that I tried it with the original composite AV cable it came with, the composite AV cable from my own Xbox, and a Pound cable I keep for testing. No luck on any of the three. Exact same problem. The other caps on the board are flat with no leakage, including the power rail caps. TBH I assumed it was those myself, until I opened it. Out of curiosity, I soft-modded the unit to see if broader access to the settings would help, but no. And yes it's in stereo.

Hi everyone, I picked up a never-opened "for repair" 1.0 Xbox...the previous owner mentioned it would boot, but had audio issues. I've seen many issues that turned out to very minor fixes, so I said what the heck I'll give it a shot. He was right. It boots fine, but the audio has severe crackling whenever a sound should be playing. Boot sequence, main menu, games, all have crackling noise over the audio. I've tried the obvious things like changing the IDE cable, cleaning all contact points in the AV port, opening it and giving it a thorough cleaning, plus removing the clock cap. There was some clock cap leakage, but nothing too severe. I checked the traces and everything seems in order. I even tried cleaning the spots under the screws to make sure there was proper grounding. Is it possible there's clock cap acid damage to the audio hardware? Does the MCPX chip control the audio? I'm trying to determine whether this board can be salvaged, or whether I should just stop trying and just replace it. Thanks all in advance!

Hi Dave, here are pics of the bracket. I've never seen this happen before. I even checked my 1.4 and 1.1 consoles, as well as a donor mobo I have saved. In all cases, the bracket is flush against the motherboard. I assume this is reducing the pressure of the heatsink against the chip and resulting in the higher temperatures?

Hi all, I grabbed a v1.6 from a local seller and after confirming it worked fine, I opened it and gave it a good cleaning along with new MX-4 thermal paste on the CPU and GPU. I then soft-modded it and once UnleashX loaded, I saw the temps were floating around 65 degrees celsius. I figured ok, the pastes were fresh, those would go down. Long story short, they didn't. The system idles at 55 celsius and reaches 75 after gaming. Every other console I've owned/worked on hovers around 55 degrees under heavy load and drops back to 45 on idle. I opened it and took a closer look - the heatsink bracket seems to be warping away from the board. Where I've seen it sitting flush on other consoles, there is a good 2 mm gap under the GPU. I assume it means the heatsinks aren't as snug as they should be, causing the higher temps? The clips are still seated properly, but it looks like the heatsink bracket is pulling away. Is this a common issue? Should I just try to ignore it? Thanks all!

I was hoping you were right, but no, the d0 and ground don't break-away from the plug. It was almost an easy fix! I'll look into replacing the dip switch bank. Thank you! Totally understand where you're coming from...I assumed I could boot Hexen or OGXbox Installer and use it to unlock the HDD then re-lock it to the console, but the console wouldn't boot from the DVD. TBH the whole mobo was a mess, so I gave up and ordered a replacement. Once I have the dip switch bank repaired, the X2.2 chip will likely work fine. Thank you again!

Thank you all! I didn't include it in my original post, but I tried HeXEN 2019 and the 2021 OGXbox Installer...neither worked. I also tried hooking up a second stock Xbox hdd I know works, and that gave the same pair of errors. Honestly, that mobo is the bane of my existence and I've already lost days of my life to it. I've ordered a new 1.1 mobo with a paired hard drive to install in the console. Is this X2.2 usable as a pin header installation with what I have shown?

Hi all, I bought a "broken: for parts" Xbox. It was in good shape externally and when I opened it, it was a 1.1 and all five power caps were leaking. It did, however, have this X2.2 Pro modchip installed. I figured the problem was just the five leaking caps, so I replaced those with equivalents and assumed I had the problem solved. When I turned it on, I discovered it wouldn't move beyond the "Xecuter config live loading" screen. When I tried turning the chip off via the bank switch, the system would boot as far as the flubber animation before showing error 06. Long story short, I'm pretty sure the mobo is a write-off (clock cap was removed but I'm seeing a lot of old leak damage), so I pulled the chip off in hopes of installing it on a replacement motherboard. I'm not super familiar with Xecuter chips...is this chip salvageable? Do I have enough here to do a pin header install? I have a spare pin header, so that's not a problem. Based on my research, I know there was a second smaller cable that included the ground and D0 wires for that purpose, but I don't have it. (Of note, as you'll see, the bank switch is missing the blue dip switch cover, so I'd be ok doing a full 1mb BIOS flash and not using the switch bank.) Thank you in advance!

Awesome. Thank you so much! I think I can put my hands on 10K 0402 resistors pretty easily...I'll order a handful of those. This 1.1 is my white whale...really looking forward to getting this one working!