gears_fan

Thanks for chiming in. I will take another good look at the video chip.

I cleaned up the solder a little. It had no effect on the behavior of this Xbox. Here are the pictures:

Those "silver bits" are most likely reflections from the light source. There is no solder there. Here is a picture of the bottom of the LPC:

Here is how the LPC debug port looks after I removed the Xecuter mod chip:

Quick update: it is not the power supply. I put a working Delta power supply in this Xbox and it is still FRAGging.

So I finally received the SATA/IDE to USB adapter and built a new stock drive for this Xbox. I then proceeded to disconnect the modchip and booted the Xbox. Unfortunately, the behavior of the Xbox did not change at all – it either boots straight to MS dashboard (i.e. no issues), FRAGs or loses video connection. My next step was to connect an RCA socket to pins 21 and 23 (composite video) and bridge pins 9 and 10 on the AV port and see if it changed anything. Surprisingly, there was no change at all. The FRAGging was still there and I could still make the Xbox lose the video output by knocking on the table or touching the AV connector. Any thoughts? Could the FRAGging issue be caused by a bad power supply? Could the video issues be caused by a cracked trace on the motherboard? If so, then which pin(s) on the AV port should I look closely at? Thanks.

I tried composite, S-Video, and component video leads, but to no avail. The inductor L4A1 seems to be fine. Please see the attached close-up picture. I am still waiting to receive the compatible SATA/IDE to USB adapter to create a stock drive for this misbehaving Xbox. It is disappointing when that happens. Luckily, the only leaking capacitor in this Xbox was the clock capacitor.

Thank you for the suggestions. I tried all my external hard drive enclosures, but, unfortunately, none of them appear to be compatible with xboxhdm/smartmontools (yes, I also tried adding “-d sat” to the smartctl command). I have also been trying to locate the original hard drive, but, so far, I have had no luck. Consequently, I cannot boot this console from the stock drive at this moment. This will have to wait until I receive a SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 adapter compatible with smartmontools. I will post an update when this happens. As far as bad solder joints around the video encoder chip go, everything appears to be in good shape. Please see the attached close-up picture of the Conexant video encoder. Also, I am fairly certain that it is not the fault of the electrolytic capacitors next to the CPU heatsink since this particular Xbox started having all these issues when it was still only 2-3 years old. Still, I desoldered one capacitor to test it out and its ESR was well within the norm.

Hello guys, This post will be somewhat long because I want to include as much relevant information as possible. I have a v1.1 NTSC-U Xbox console, which I purchased brand new back in 2003. I modded it with a Xecuter 2.0 Pro mod chip sometime around 2004. It worked great for 2-3 years with no issues whatsoever. Then, out of nowhere, it started to intermittently FRAG. Sometimes it would boot just fine, but other times the Xbox would flash red and green and require me to reboot it 10 times in a row before it would boot to dashboard. Also, sometimes the Xbox would boot just fine and work for 2-3 hours straight and then, for no apparent reason, lose the video output. Interestingly enough, it would lose the video output only, but not audio. I tried different BIOS versions as well as different banks on the Xecuter 2.0 mod chip, but to no avail. After all that, I decided that it was too much trouble and just stopped using this FRAGging Xbox. Fast forward to 2020, and I decided to connect this old v1.1 Xbox to my TV and test it out. It worked great for the first two weeks, but then started FRAGging just like 14 years ago. It behaves exactly the same way as it used to – it might boot just fine 10 times in a row, or it might FRAG 20 times in a row. I reflashed the BIOS again, but to no avail. I also noticed a few more things. First, the removal of the DVD drive and/or hard drive does not seem to affect the FRAGging at all. The console can still FRAG with both drives completely disconnected. Also, if the Xbox boots to dashboard with no issues, I can easily make it lose the video output by knocking on the table on which the Xbox is sitting or by touching the AV cable. If I reboot the console immediately after that, the Xbox would usually FRAG. Bad AV cable, right? Nope. I tried four different AV cables/adapters and this is happening with all of them. All said cables work perfectly with my v1.0 Xbox and no amount of knocking on the table or touching the cables can make this second Xbox lose the video output. Here is the list of AV cables that I tried with the same result (i.e. intermittent FRAGging on my v1.1 Xbox and no issues on my v1.0 Xbox): 1. OEM Microsoft Composite cable 2. OEM Microsoft AV pack 3. OEM Microsoft HD AV pack 4. Third party HD AV pack Here are a few more things that I did: * Sprayed the AV connector in the Xbox with DeoxIT D5 and inspected it for damage * Reflowed all solder joints on the AV connector, twice * Inspected the traces on the motherboard near the AV connector Here is a list of things that I could still do (but would rather not): * Stop relying on the AV connector. Instead, solder the wires to it and add component video and coaxial audio jacks to the back of the Xbox console. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that this will solve the FRAG issue. This Xbox was used by an adult and was never dropped or abused. At this point, I am not sure what else I can do besides soldering wires to the AV port and adding audio and video output jacks to the back of the Xbox. Does anyone have any idea of what might be happening? P.S. The pictures of the motherboard are attached to this post.