Raidernick

I've not discovered any incompatibility with just having 128mb installed and not patching any games, it just won't affect them at all if they aren't patched. It will greatly help the dashboard load times though, especiallyif you have a lot of games.

That's actually a ceramic capacitor and it looks like it exploded.

Yeah at least that one trace is bad. There are test pads from the beginning of the trace to the end of the trace that you can test on to see if there is continuity through the whole thing. As for the clock cap area, you DEFINITELY need to clean than before doing anything else, and make sure you get under the caps around where it was as they all definitely have corrosion under them.

Kind of hard to see but on the image of the bottom of the board on the bottom right where the black square is, under that, there are several traces that run along the edge of the board. Near the bottom of the black square where those traces make a zig-zag they look corroded, but it's hard to tell with the bad image and flux everywhere. If those traces are bad the xbox will appear completely dead and the power button won't do anything.

That would be a great idea if you want to destroy the console. The heatsink and die have to be specifically designed to use liquid metal. You might be able to use a clear coat of paint or nailpolish or uv mask or something over the entire interposer of the cpu and then install some kind of sponge around it like on the ps5. That wouldn't solve the problem of the heatsinks being aluminum, which will absorb the liquid metal over time(actually corroding them), drying the area out and basically causing it to act like it has no paste/liquid metal on it. It will also cause the die to oxidize on top which prevents the liquid metal from even adhering to the surface, it will actually travel away from the die and surround the outside of it rather than sitting on top. Finally, you have the issue of the gpu, it's not even metal but plastic. Liquid metal does not work on plastic. This is all besides the point that the xbox doesn't even get hot, the liquid metal even if it worked wouldn't make any meaningful difference to temperatures. Stick with paste.

I downloaded the artwork installer on 8 consoles and updated xbmc4gamers as well as the urldownloader on 2 more only 2 days ago. Are you guys sure the links are down for everyone?

They are "rare" in the fact that they were produced less than the other models, but none of the 360 drives as a whole are really "rare" so they are easy to find. Actually, as this point finding samsung drives might be harder as they were only used in launch models and other early consoles and most of those have broken and been thrown out by now.

Actually the 360 launched with the Samsung drives in them and the hitachi drives are actually the rarest 360 dvd drive as well.

I've only ever come across one ever in over 100 xbox's and it was in a 1.6b.

The 1.6 clock caps still go bad, they just have to be replaced unlike earlier revisions where you can leave them off.

Caps don't always bulge, they leak underneath which you can't see. Bare minimum you should replace the cpu caps and clock cap.

Cerbios, Startech adapter and Samsung DVD drives have a fundamental incompatibility if used with hard drives larger than 750gb. This is a 1.6 and almost definitely has a samsung dvd drive in it unless you are super lucky to have a hitachi. I have a thread here explaining this issue and how to fix it. The cerbios discord and xbox-scene helped me fix it. You need to use a specific version of the china green adapters and modify it with a resistor. So please check what dvd drive you have before buying a startech adapter. If you decide to not use the dvd drive at all the incompatibility won't matter.

If the board is extremely corroded I use a hot air rework station to remove them(this can be dangerous as they can explode). If there is little or no corrosion I will just twist them off with a pair of pliers, then desolder the legs left on the pads. A resistor array is basically several resistors combined side by side into one smd component. It looks like this: The resistors in these arrays will go out of spec on the board. This will make it stop working, these are very difficult to replace if you are new to soldering.

I replaced the caps because I thought they were bad, they were not. Unless your drive doesn't work in the stock system you don't need to replace the caps, or the resistor packs(which is what actually usually goes bad on these). I got the adapters from various sellers on ebay not amazon. I posted a picture of the exact one you need to get, they make 4-5 different but extremely similar ones and only that one will work.

It is still an issue. The drive won't work on first boot of the console with the startech and samsung. You'll need to reboot it until it starts working unless you use the green china adapter.

Yes using andy's speed test utilities xbe. I got it from the xbox-scene discord.

This was last week when I got a fresh install of the artwork installer and did a "find all missing artwork". It changed about half of my applications to Mario64 for the name and pictures. Is this v2.0 not the latest version available through the url downloader on the console? Do I need to get it elsewhere?

Well I can only speak from experience. I've modded over 120 xbox's at this point and every single one I've attached D0 from the aladdin to the D0 point on the board and I've never, ever had a frag issue until recently(and then ONLY on the 1.6s). The new batch of aladdins is crap and since I had the issue on 2 1.6s in a row I've switched to making jafars myself and the issues are gone.

The D0 does work, as long as you connect it to lframe, but it's finicky and may not work on some chips. I've gotten it to work with the crappy clones before and sometimes I can't get the xbox to boot at all and I need to swap the chip out with another. It doesn't really matter though as I've stopped using the aladdin clones altogether and I make my own jafars now and never have that problem anymore.

On the original "real" aladdin chip yes, but none of the clones, lite versions, xblasts, jafars or anything else made these days is that true. In fact, on any "modern" aladdin, including the newer variants you are seeing now on aliexpress with the transistor on them actually have the D0 and L1 traces connected together coming right out of the CPLD. This was not the case on the original versions. So with any of these newer chips you can simply use the D0 pad(some only have this pad available now anyway and did away with all the extra pads). EDIT: It's actually really hard to get a hold of the original "clone" aladdin's these days as websites like ebay/amazon/aliexpress all show pictures of the original ones with the original cloned CPLD code on them, but then when you buy them you end up with that new version with the transistor that you can't reprogram the CPLD of. I believe there are actually posts about that on this forum. For the OP the best bet would just be to buy one of the jafars from ebay/gameroomcustoms or modzvilleusa genie. These have a much higher standard of production and assembly and aren't finicky like all the clone aladdins are now.

I've done rgh3 on around 8 trinity boards using a resistor and have never had an issue with them not working or breaking at a later date. Also there is nothing special about that jrunner it's just the latest version.

hence why i said to attach it to the L1 pad and NOT the D0 pad....on aladdin chips these 2 pads go to different pins on the cpld and L1 is designed specifically for the lframe.

It seems like the super mario 64 is already on there by the fact that a lot of applications that have no art will get the art and name for mario 64. It's actually super annoying to have 5-10 apps of mine rename themselves all to Mario 64 and change the artwork every time you update it through the installer... Then you need to manually rename them all and delete the art.

You should never cut the lframe, it is totally unnecessary and will prevent the console from booting without the modchip ever again unless you fix the trace, which at your current skill level may not be possible(it is an extremely small trace surrounded by several others). Also, you should not be grounding D0 ever either. This will damage the console over time. This is why the aladdin(and other modchips) have a D0 pad on them. You solder the D0 on the mobo to this and it grounds it for a few seconds allowing the console to boot, then releases it so it's not constantly grounded. However, as you have a 1.6 you should not be doing anything with the D0 pad anyway. You should be attaching the L1 pad on the aladdin to the lframe on the motherboard. You will need to scrape back some solder mask on the lframe trace and solder a wire from that to the L1 pad on the modchip. This is more difficult than just soldering to the D0 point on the mobo.

absolutely yes.....