UltimateMe

It's a custom Coppermine Pentium III CPU and they are common for producing a lot of heat. I like lower temperatures, but between 40 to 60 degrees Celsius is common. Also dashboards aren`t always very good with showing the real temperature (Ava X for example, where XBMC is a lot better). I don`t know about the LCD screens.

I learned something new today. Never heard of Insignia (or can`t remember it). So looked at insignia.live, and saw it's an Xbox Live replacement.

I found data in the Splinter Cell "save" game. So I used Splinter Cell again to softmod it. After a check there is several previous softmod stuff to find on the disk. So why they reverted it instead of booting the default msdash if they want, is a miracle.

I have the Xbox open, but did not find any hard mod evidence (no pins, no soldering on via's). I saw Splinter Cell and Mechassault as safe games and they were also included in the lot of games. It's the first time I got a Xbox without the complete softmod, but with parts of it as left over. Therefore I opened it to see if maybe someone had put effort in the 1.6 to hard mod it. But no, also no traces that there maybe was a hardmod once.

I've bought a Xbox (1.6 version) because of the physical games that were included in the deal. So I connected the Xbox to my TV and take a look at the memory. When removing the game saves I found some stuff that I normally not see unless the Xbox is modded. Beside the UnleashX Xbox launcher also Xbox Media Center, dvd2box and some other stuff was showing up. I tried to FTP to the xbox to see what's on the disk (it's the original 10GB disk), but that is not working, but it has network connection. It boots up in the normal MS Dash. I don't have the time or desire to put a mod chip and larger disk in it. I only want to know if someone has a clue.

Seems like a nice job. The only thing I should have done different is the xbox on the DVD drive. I would keep that original silver.

With a hot air soldering station the risks are the smallest and with a good nozzle very good manageable. But also with de-soldering wick it is possible. It's important to select the right size and not overheating (but that is with everything). But hot air always has the advantage over de-soldering wick in my opinion with stuff like RAM chips.

Well, I added the boot animations, so that makes things a bit slower. But populated R4 with a 100 ohm SMD resistor. And from 52 seconds with boot animation to 25 seconds with the boot animation. So yes, this hack fixes the slowness of the cheaper adapters. Maybe without DVD it is even faster than that, but at this moment I don`t have time to do all those checks I didn`t changed anything else on the adapter. But for a few cents the slowness can be fixed and then I'm wondering why they don`t do it at production... that few cents will not prevent people buying it.

$ 0,40 per 10, so no But with manageable I mean an option to get them fast, but found some reliable company, so will have them with a day.

If I have some free time I will try it. Need to look for a 100 ohm resistor, but that will be manageable A small, tidy job I see. Need some loupe too.

Well, one of my colleagues had a Startech adapter and also a adapter with a JMicron chipset. So I tested both. - The adapter with the JMicron chipset is slower than my el-cheapo (but it was not the most cheap one). It's 5+ seconds slower than the cheaper one. But again more slow with the DVD attached (same as with the cheap one) - The Startech was a bit faster, but not more than 3 seconds than the cheap one. But again the same problem that it is much slower with the DVD attached So I'm not sure what is causing this issues. Also tried with the adapters several settings (jumper on master, slave or none). But the issue persists. As mentioned in the OP, I also tried different DVD drives. Out of ideas at this moment.

Yep. And with all my testing I tried several options

The 1500uF caps in the OG Xbox are 1820 mA on 100kHz, so the one you selected is way, way too high with its 7.785A @ 100kHz. A quick check told me that they have no lower ripple current for those poly caps. Electrolytic this are good replacements: https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/nichicon/UHD0J152MPD/2598038

Startech is hard to get here at the moment. I've ordered a DeLock which seems to be tested in the community as good alternative, it will come in next week. But besided of that: without the DVD the performance is good, and the adapter is also tested in a PC and has good performance, so I don`t expect the adapter to be the problem. But I'm curious if the DeLock changes something. I'm using UDMA4, which is the way to go with this adapter. No changes with lower UDMA modes.

Well, about ripple currency there is enough information to find on the internet, so I'm not gone give a full course here But the answer is NO on "The way I understand it generally higher ripple current is better as caps will last longer.. ". A bit higher is not a problem, but you don`t want it to high. And you certainly want it too low. Too low: - overheating of the caps - reduced performance - unreliable working Too high: - overload - less efficient Which caps do you want to replace? I can give you some advice on which you could order.