FrostyMaGee
-
Posts
559 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
9
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Calendar
Store
Posts posted by FrostyMaGee
-
-
1 hour ago, Bowlsnapper said:
True. I'm honestly surprised it ever worked with that LPC soldered the way it was. I dunno how I haven't thought of that. What IS the history of this thing? Regardless of all, if it WAS working, I'd be interested to know why XeniumOS can't even load when booted with the eject button. It looks like D0 wasn't even being triggered by the time you got it.
A brief history prior to repair would definitely be beneficial. As to the lpc some of those looked a bit off and one or two looked like cold solder joints. They can work though….right up until the point that they stop. Lol. I’ve seen it happen where many console or other electronic has worked for years with bad solder joints and then it up and stopped abruptly. Especially with poor or cold solder joints.
-
1
-
-
On 4/29/2024 at 9:04 PM, Lucien said:
Third Age arrived today, and I'm about an hour in. Man, this game so polished. So far, I haven't found any negatives. The graphics are great, the voice acting is great, the world map is great and the combat is great. This is really is a true hidden gem. Thanks again for the recommendation!
Awesome and problem dude! Glad you’re enjoying it. That game was always one I really enjoyed but I was always surprised that more people didn’t know about it. Especially given that it was a LoTR title game.
-
1
-
-
3 hours ago, Bowlsnapper said:
That LPC looks VERY janky. Smother it with flux and clean it up a bit. I can see that some pins are not even connected to their vias and are islands. Be sure to clean it up with alcohol after. I can see fluxy crud around the pins.
Agreed. Regardless of if that ends up being the issue it definitely needs to be reflowed and the mobo cleaned up afterwards.
-
1
-
-
-
9 hours ago, MadMartigan said:
Fitment issues with thw motherboard holder? This is the first I've seen one of them and now of course I want one. I'm so tired of putting random things under the boards to get them level under the microscope.
I haven’t seen these but I definitely want one. I also tire of having to do the same!
-
You might want to run through some of the guide here and see if removing and realigning your tray might help. You can also take a look (with the tray removed) and see if anything looks broken or otherwise askew. Glad the squeaking was resolved at least!
Edit: I want to say when I had this issue before on a Samsung it was because the gear right beneath the tray near the front (sticks up higher than the rest and actually moves the tray in and out) was broken and therefore loose. I can’t remember for sure though. It’s been a while since that one came around.
-
1
-
-
16 minutes ago, Lucien said:
No worries, man. This is actually not my first time to own an Xbox. Back in 2009 I picked up a used one for $50 just to play both KOTORS. Since then I've played through the first one roughly 10 times, and The Sith Lords a few times. They're still 2 of my personal GOATS. Also, played through most of Jade Empire, but couldn't get past the Etheral Realm part late in the game. I'd love to give it another go one of these days.
I've heard good things about Brute Force and it is on my list, as is Red Dead Revolver.
Nice! Yeah the KotOR games really were great. I liked Republic Commando too though it was a shooter type and there’s always Star Wars Battlefront. Beyond Good and Evil,Full Spectrum Warrior, Crimson Skies, and the Evil Dead games were also fun. For sports games I’d say two of my favorites were ncaa football (especially dynasty mode) and Rugby 2006.
-
1
-
-
On 4/23/2024 at 12:08 PM, Lucien said:
Just got a great deal on this. $15 with free shipping on eBay. After your reply I did a little more research on The Third Age. Initially I thought it was Strategy RPG, but to my happy surprise it's standard Turn Base. Don't get me wrong, I like SRPG's, but I have to be in the mood for them. Anyway, thanks again for the suggestion!
You probably already know these but I’ll mention them anyway. Lol. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 were great games as well. There’s also Brute Force, the Prince of Persia trilogy, and Red Dead Revolver (though GUN is probably the better of the two). These aren’t all rpg types but just a list of some fun games. Figured I wouldn’t throw a ton out there all at once. Lol
-
1
-
-
It’s possible the tray is misaligned. As to the squeaking that could be solved by proper alignment but you may also need to very lightly apply some lithium grease to the rails. Usually just cleaning everything out inside (dust, etc) from the tracks will do the trick on noise. Do you know which model drive you have?
-
1
-
-
25 minutes ago, xboxretro said:
I'll look at getting all caps replaced in time but I will do the main ones for the time being.
Yes, it's the RF shield - sorry I wasn't specific.Ta
If you just did the those I mentioned (and of course any that looked suspect) you’ll probably be fine for a while. Just thought I’d mention the full recap as an option for down the road.
If you run in to issues finding the cpu caps on the board dm me your revision or a pic of the mobo and I can give you the locations and values.
For the rf shielding I thought you might find this useful. Quite a few people chimed in with different methods they use (sanding, painting, replacing, etc).
-
1
-
-
1 hour ago, xboxretro said:
Thanks a mill FrostyMaGee! for all the great info and offer in further guidance. It has been a hell of a journey to say the least.In between reading posts, I managed to get one XBox back to stock and softmodded and upgraded the drive. I ordered the IDE(PATA) adapter 6 years ago along with the 80pin ribbon cable, so was all good to go. Had a few 2TB WD green drives that checked all the boxes. I know you said avoid them but they are very quiet and I haven't noticed any stalling when playing or loading - so far.
After my negative experience above with the wrong unlock/lock adapter, I had the workflow down pat playing around with the Warmstor brand IDE adapter from eBay, FATXplorerBeta64 and XBoxHDM-2.3-Beta4 (on the borked but recovered drive above). Quick and easy. Did not tick the right box in FATXplorerBeta64 to format the drive correctly so quickly doing that gave access to the whole drive. Managed to rip most of my games onto the HDD (a few refused to work) and have been a happy chappy since. If anyone needs a link to the IDE unlock adapter in Oz, do let me know.
The clock capacitor has been removed on this baby, but I need to replace the x3 caps near the CPU/GPU - thermal paste replaced on both chips. Parts coming in from abroad. Another XBox had a flashing orange ring after cleaning copious filth upon opening and stopped working - was working seemigly ok with carpets of filth - with the orange light indicator and refusing to show an image and then completely blank. I narrowed it down and replaced the ADM1032 Temperature Monitor with this https://au.rs-online.com/web/p/temperature-humidity-sensor-ics/7919623, which may have been indicating overheat and causing the issue. I ripped pads and spent a week micro-soldering to recreate connections but managed to get it onfor continuity. I'll confirm all is working once the caps come in so I can recap both xboxes and then add a 2TB to this one, too.
Two remaining questions I have:
1. The damaged caused over time by clock and other cap leakage should not be underestimated. I have been lucky with these two I have and will ensure I get to all the other caps in time. Please please please remove the clock cap at minimum. Apart from the four caps I will have replaced, are there others that have a tendency to do the above mentioned damaged?
2. There seems to be a lot of corrosion/rust on the metal suppoprt frame at the bottom or near the fan. I tried soaking in baking soda but that did not help - maybe I should make the bath more acidic? If anyone has any experience with this corrosion any advice would be appreciated
Glad you were able to get everything going!
There are 3-5 caps (depending on revision) near the cpu and power connector that’ll be either 1500 microfarad 6.3v or 330 microfarad 6.3v (depending on revision). These tend to be common points of failure so they’re definitely caps to replace if you haven’t already. Given the age of all the of the radial caps they could honestly all use replacing but I’d start with those even if I didn’t do any others.
As to your second query it sounds like you are referring to the rf shield underneath the mobo. Is that correct?
-
2 hours ago, Lucien said:
Hello, I'm new to retro Xbox collecting but in a short time I've already amassed a nice, little collection (40 games in roughly 2 weeks). The current prize of my collection is a pristine CIB copy of Arx Fatalis, which I got last week, off an ebay auction for $62. According to PriceCharting I overpaid just a bit, but I'm happy with it.
Along with Arx, I'm currently playing GUN and The Hobbit, which I think are both very solid games for the era. I'm a big Adventure & RPG fan, so those are the genre sets I hope to complete first. I also love Platformers, FPS' (even though I suck at them) and Sports games as well.
I'm also running my Xbox on my Hitachi Flat Screen with the LEVELHIKE HDMI Adapter. Thanks to this adapter I've discovered that most of the backwards compatible games I own actually look and run better than their Xbox One digital counterparts.
Any and all advice on how to get the most out of my old Xbox is very much appreciated.
Again, it's great to be here!
Welcome!
Since you said you enjoy rpgs I thought I’d recommend Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. It’s an rpg I really enjoyed on the original Xbox.
-
2
-
-
43 minutes ago, PRince404 said:
Is there a way to check temperature while you're in game? Without having those LCD mods?
Wasn’t there a bios at one time (or maybe still) that had the ability to display current temps up in one of the corners of the screen whilst playing a game? Did I imagine that? Lol
-
10 hours ago, kaitlin459 said:
thats not my temp tho thats just a random pic i pulled off google i just need to know what my idel temps and gaming temps should be to help me decide if i need to repaste or not
As I said my personal preference is at or over 60C or 140F at anytime but especially under load. If it was popping over that I’d pull the thermal pads and either replace with the same or go with very good quality thermal paste. That’s just me though. If you’re under that and notice no performance issues then I’d leave well enough alone. Plus you could always kick up your fan speed incrementally and see how that goes. Even a 10 percent bump in speed from default can make a difference.
Again, while I have my personal preference on max temps before I do stuff @HDShadow has some great advice above that you can easily heed and be good to go. Shadow and I have some times differed on whether doing thermal paste is worth it at all (once or twice maybe when the subject comes around lol) but I can say I 100 percent agree with his summation above.
-
1
-
-
I’ve never actually seen one with a refurbished sticker. I would generally disregard unless they give a detailed list of the work done to them and it includes a recap. For any I’ve ever sold I never called them refurbished and always listed a very detailed sheet of things done (including an itemized list of caps replaced including location, values, brand, etc) and photos of the work inside and out.
Half the Xboxes I’ve seen of late with the claim of “refurbished” appear to have been opened up and blown out with a can of compressed air. Somehow that’s “refurbished”. Lol
Btw, how did these people leave a psu screw out? They’re only two in it. LOL. It shouldn’t be missing any but I could maybe understand if one was missing from say the mobo. Maybe. The broken tabs for the heat sinks and no screws for one of the dual controller ports…unacceptable. I’d expect that in a parts box only.
-
1
-
-
For me personally I usually remove the old thermal pads and replace with a good quality paste if my idle temps are running at or over 55-60 degrees Celsius. If yours is running idle at 68.1 Fahrenheit as the picture shows you’re probably sitting really well temp wise since that’s around 20 degrees Celsius. I’d test it under load for an hour or so just to make sure you stay within decent temps. Just based on my own preference if you start running at or over 131-140 degrees Fahrenheit it would be worth applying thermal paste. Probably also be worthwhile to ensure your fan is functioning properly.
Others may have different temp preferences but that’s mine.
-
1 hour ago, Beast__Boy20031 said:
That's for the Extras Disc, i would like to use it for my .iso backups. Is there anyway i can use it for that or am i doing something wrong?
Thanks
There should be a default.xbe file in that zip. One way you can do this is to make a sub folder inside your Games folder. Inside that subfolder place the game xiso and that default.xbe file. You would then go to File Explorer and navigate to that default.xbe file. Once highlighted you press the white button (if I recall correctly) and then select “rename xbe title” or something very similar if I’ve forgotten the exact wording. Then enter your new title. After you do that (and probably a restart you should see your game show up under Games off the main menu with the new title you’ve given it.
That’s the down and dirty way to do anyhow. Lol. There may be a nicer way to fix game titles but that’s the way I did it years ago.
-
1
-
-
-
3 hours ago, xboxretro said:
After borking the softmod files trying to get this going, not being able to boot the drive and spending a considerable amount of time purchasing IDE adapters, and recreating the drives, I am back to the Rocky5SoftMod and will attempt the above recommendations. The Warmstor brand IDE adapter, FATXplorerBeta64 and XBoxHDM-2.3-Beta4 saved the day. Thanks to all developers over the years that got these working. Will keep the stock drive standars and now look into building a 2TB to put a few games I have on there and enjoy the hell out of it. Thanks all
The 2Tb sata upgrade makes sooo much difference. I love having games running on it and not having to use the dvd drive. I’ve had it that way for far too many years and have been spoiled by it. Lol. Oh and that warmstor adapter has been one of the most consistent adapters I’ve used for locking/unlocking the ide hdds since my old usb adapter died a few years back. I’ve never run in to an ide hdd it didn’t work with using fatxplorer or Xboxhdm.
When you get to the hdd upgrade stage you’ll need an 80 wire 40 pin ide cable to replace the stock cable, a sata to pata adapter for the hdd (startech preferred unless you have one of the dvd drives that doesn’t play well with those and then usually the green Chinese brand works. The most important feature is to have a master/slave pin designation option as you’ll need this), and obviously a sata drive. If you stay mechanical something like a WD Blue or Black works well. Avoid any of the green or power saving type hdds. If you’re not building a new drive via fatxplorer or Xboxhdm and plan on using Chimp to clone your old drive then you’ll also need a molex splitter or you can use the power from the warmstor adapter to power the sata drive during the cloning process.
It’s an easy process and everyone here can make recommendations on hardware and help out with the process when you get ready to proceed. Best of luck and glad you were able to get the current stuff straightened out!
-
1
-
-
6 hours ago, Bowlsnapper said:
Nah, I don't think you're MM.
I'm glad you had an old Aladdin to use. Looks like they had what they needed to make BT and D0 work.
"he said he did it because the pin header can corrode." - That is 100 percent BS and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Total Gibberish. If that were true then you would be seeing other people doing it. NOBODY does it. A pin header is no more subject to corrosion than soldering the chip directly to the LPC. He did it to make it hard to work on so you would send it back to him and not be able to upgrade anything on your own... He is lying to you, dude.
I tend to agree with your assessment, Bowl. I don’t see any reason to solder it directly to the board other than to make it difficult to undo or upgrade if you lacked the experience to do so. Yeah that about the pin header is ridiculous. I mean I’ve seen corroded pin headers on electronics before (though rarely) but everything else on the board around it was corroded as well. This was done to be difficult.
-
2
-
-
Nice work, Bowl! It’s looking really good.
-
1
-
-
4 hours ago, Halo_2 said:
That looks very similar to the green Chinese boards. I can’t say for sure as I’ve never bought that specific one off eBay AU. I think someone I walked through a hdd upgrade on Reddit bought a local AU green sata though in the last few weeks. I can ask him what he got and see what’s up if you want.
-
1
-
-
6 hours ago, Bowlsnapper said:
@Halo_2 My girlfriend saw those photos and said "Oh my GOD. It looks like somebody torched it!" She's not even an electronics person or anything and could tell it was really bad. I agree with @dtomcat: I cannot believe that somebody put out a chip that looks like that. I would be embarrassed, man.
Just throwin' it out there
Agreed. It’s just bad all around. The solder joints are horrible on top of all the other issues on that mod chip.
-
10 minutes ago, Halo_2 said:
The modshop has finished my orig Xbox.
Has alerted me to this issue with my Samsung drive and startech.
Is the working solution change it to a cheap chinese adapter? or should I wait till it gets fixed with cerbios?
Yeah I believe it’s the semi cheap green Chinese adapters that do the trick with the Samsungs.
-
1
-
Board Life Status
Board startup date: April 23, 2017 12:45:48
Question about Power/Eject Board.
in Repair
Posted
Agreed. Since you have access to one you could plug in to the mobo to test (with the Xbox components kind of temporarily assembled and out of the way) if the switch is actually the problem. That would be the easiest way. If you have zero problems there then you can assume it’s the switch and proceed to replacing it. If the problem still exists with the new switch then you can assume it’s lies within the power rails on the mobo most likely.
I have a few spare known good switches that I use for this purpose all the time. It’s usually the first thing I check when similar power issues arise since it takes so little time to do and I don’t have to take the entire console apart to test it. That comes later. Lol