van0014

There's a trick I like to use to repair PCB traces. It doesn't always work, but might be worth a try. If you're steady with a little knife, you could scrape off the PCB insulation for each trace. Making sure to scrape enough so the solder gets a good grip, and to use thin wires that won't tear up the trace. If you accidentally cut more than one trace right next to each other, you might need to abandon that area and start again, moving further up the trace. Ideally, you would expose traces in a staggered way, so the solder won't bridge to other traces The other way is to follow the traces till they reach a component, and solder from the components

MX-4 should be better than stock. The layer thickness is critical to efficiency. I believe the stock paste is thicker than we would apply, which would make it awful. there should ideally be areas of direct contact between the die and heatsink, with the paste only filling gaps Can you get any temps under load? Some LCDs will tell you in game, if they read sensors directly. There's a reason computer overclockers run stress tests to compare temps. The temperature difference between pastes gets much bigger the hotter they're tested at, since the paste influence is relatively linear (W/mK) Pastes are never seriously compared at idle. A small improvement at idle indicates a huge improvement at full temp

To my knowledge, noone has properly compared stock paste to a replacement. They think looking at the idle temperature is drawing a conclusion. The temp must be checked while a demanding game is running. Since OG xbox is single thread, the xbox won't tell you the temp. You could have an accessory read the serial data the sensor sends. Until then, noone has accurately concluded paste effectiveness

Here's a list of programs to help with the drive passwords. They can apparently get around the password. I haven't tried any of them, but they looked promising. This might also help. It's a list of some master passwords, including some XBox ones. They suggest using Ultimate Boot CD. You could instead burn a disk that only had the MHDD program on it

It's possible to get around the hard drive password, but you'd need access to vendor specific hard drive programs. Or a way of sending commands to the drive. I believe the data is not encrypted, but there's disc specific info on the board attached to the drive. Replacing the PCB alone won't work. I thought about reading it's EEPROM. That's possibly encrypted

No worries. That EEPROM was tailored for Australia. I'm glad you had a way to get back to NTSC. It's surprising that SS_Dave's EEPROM didn't fix it. I'm guessing the difference might have been in the last 64 bytes? I know they are different in the version I posted

You came here to troll?

CPU temps at idle doesn't draw any conclusions. Small temp changes at idle indicate the potential for larger differences under load.The thermal dissipation efficiency can only be seen under load

Sorry about that, that version was an attempt to recover my original EEPROM. It was corrupt in the RC encrypted area. This one works: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SIe6tm1KkU-O4OSD4M2WEJSl57-DwzeS/view?usp=sharing It has a different set of those last 64 bytes, different to SS_Dave's. I slightly modified all numbers except the confounder, so it's safe to use without being identical to my xbox

It's not a placebo effect, but of course for you, the cement is adequate. You have a biased viewpoint

Without thermal dissipation figures for the original paste, it's best to use known good paste. This is good practice, as long as the heatsink mounting clamps haven't deteriorated too much through age. Their pressure is important. The video didn't support it being pointless, instead noted a slower fan speed and reduced CPU temp. The GPU temp increase was probably from poor application. We didn't get to see how he applied the paste, the video was cut at that point. It might not have had any paste. A few degrees matters, and the reduced fan speed confirms this.

It's a good place for this topic. I'm new to XBox modding, but found a page that explains the LED errors: https://www.xbox-hq.com/html/xbox-tutorials-163.html#xboxerrorcodes5 Also, I know it's unlikely since the cable works and you get the flubber, but the orange light can point to a fault in the AV cable. This is one of the EEPROMs I made, and it has slight differences in the last 64 bytes. I recovered those from a corrupt EEPROM backup I made (I wrote my own Arduino EEPROM backup software, which left out a nibble when it copied any zero bytes) https://drive.google.com/file/d/17W6QdWoxXxd6Ghtwt7zlzWIIGoZ7W_fK/view?usp=sharing

What happened to the EEPROM, is the IC cleared but still working?

Aah, I was jumping to conclusions. Ethanol in a cleaning solution is a good choice. I'm thinking for any non-consumable, the manufacturer only needs to mention active ingredients and/or toxic ingredients. And for anything food grade, ingredients that make 5% or less can be unlisted

You used 38% Ethanol, what was the other 62%? 38% sounds like whiskey. The best to use is isopropyl alcohol, since it leaves no residue. I heard that traces of sugar can deteriorate a pcb.