128mb upgrade worklog — Success!

[Bowlsnapper]

1 minute ago, sweetdarkdestiny said:

You need v0.60 for the 1.6 which has the option for it enabled. 

 

First step done, congrats. But check your pins on ram chip 1. Looks like there is one pin without solder (pads looks like it`s dry). Give all of you pins a gently push with some tweezers just to be sure. 

Oh I checked multiple times. All pins are good. Some DO look dry, but they're attached, I promise. I checked before and after cleaning the flux and fixed any loose pins. Even the ones that look dry as a bone are secure

[Bowlsnapper]

5 minutes ago, lopenator said:

yeah, that wasn't my issue lol. stellar was the problem. my console kept fragging. it took a microscope and 10 hours to find the 1 pin that wasn't connected. I had no idea which chip it was until I finally found the pin that wiggled a teeny tiny bit. got the fucker.

Lol. Ah, the joys that MakeMHZ brings. This is why I am eager for the HDMI kits from Nemesis. No more proprietary horseshit.

[lopenator]

Just now, Bowlsnapper said:

Lol. Ah, the joys that MakeMHZ brings. This is why I am eager for the HDMI kits from Nemesis. No more proprietary horseshit.

that's a fact dude. I can't wait for one

[Fringle]

4 hours ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Holy shit... HOLY SHIT! I never thought 2 months ago I would be able to solder 4 ram chips into an Xbox and have it work. I can't believe I did it. What first? Chihiro games..., Half life 1... Crazy taxy? Maybe doom 3 in 720!

Thanks to @sweetdarkdestiny for the XBlast Lite that I used to test with.

@lopenator

Good job.  Nice to see it finally work out for ya.

[Marty]

Congrats, Snapper. Nice job.

[dtomcat]

Congrats @Bowlsnapper

[Bowlsnapper]

9 hours ago, lopenator said:

 

I don't know why that quote box is up there. I can't delete it.

5 hours ago, Fringle said:

Good job.  Nice to see it finally work out for ya.

 

4 hours ago, Marty said:

Congrats, Snapper. Nice job.

 

31 minutes ago, Dtomcat18 said:

Congrats @Bowlsnapper

Thank you, guys. I'm really glad I didn't give up and let my fear of ruining the console get in the way. I knew I could do it if I just kept trying and it's the first time I've ever soldered something that small and close together like something like ram chips are. It's amazing what some flux and a good soldering iron can accomplish... And having an some patience and understanding what the flux is doing and how the solder is flowing in a cognitively visual way. Thankfully I have the tools to do it properly now. Thank you to @sweetdarkdestiny for recommending all the equipment that I ended up buying. It was at the sacrifice of disability back pay, but it was something that I wanted for a long time so I went for it and it does seem to be paying off.

What I'd like to do for a living is repair old electronics. CRT TVs, VCRs, CD players... Xboxes I would really like to become adept and knowledgeable about fixing these things. Things like this are going to start to be accumulated by collectors and museums and things like that and there are not a lot of people that know how to do this or maybe are willing to. I would like to be able to repair and maintain this equipment not only because it would probably end up being good money in only a few years, but because I derive a lot of joy from keeping this equipment alive and bringing it back to life if it's already dead. CRTs are a big thing for me, since the knowledge about how they operate and how to fix them is extremely limited for whatever reason. They're very complicated and I want to understand them completely. That's why I was willing to spend the money I did on the equipment I did. I look at it as an investment. It was probably a bit impulsive and childish to do so, but I didn't feel like I could wait any longer and I had some serious FOMO going on so I pulled the trigger. I hope that I can somehow get an infrared reflower soon so that I can start doing CPU installs on the Xboxes. It would kick up the game quite a bit!

[Marty]

You should look into courses at a local college.

[Bowlsnapper]

9 minutes ago, Marty said:

You should look into courses at a local college.

I actually started attending this semester. I registered on the last possible day because it was a last minute decision, So I didn't have a lot of time to register for a class that would have gone toward this. Also I had a full load when I registered and I got dropped from the class because I missed the first week of class... Was during the last week of registration. Maybe they should fix that. Lol. But next semester I'm definitely attending classes that go toward the degree I'm trying to achieve, which is electrical engineering.

[Marty]

11 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

But next semester I'm definitely attending classes that go toward the degree I'm trying to achieve, which is electrical engineering.

Good for you, Snapper. You can do it.

[Bowlsnapper]

On 8/27/2023 at 8:53 AM, fox said:

In my noob days I killed a board from listening to some idiot recommending flooding the leads with solder and wicking off the excess amount afterward. Real smart. That just raises the chance of a bridge happening behind the ram legs, where it's impossible to inspect things. I heard from people later that even a little tiny solder short between certain leads will kill a board, and I have no doubt it happened. So I practiced on a ton on scrap boards in preparation for my second ram attempt, lemme tell you. Learned a bunch of tricks. In the next go 'round there was some low level shorting that made no sense with new ram failing to connect. It just turned out to be my cheap-o flux is a little conductive, lol. I scrubbed and dried that board at least a dozen times. One by one the chips passed the ram test, with xblast telling me which chips were finally clean and which still needed work. Without that ram tester I might've scrapped that board. I don't know Benny Diamond but I'll always be grateful to him for xblast, it even fixed the eeprom on another occasion.

The ones on my dead board were salvaged with a heat gun and they still worked. If that didn't kill them maybe an iron won't.

I'm not sure if I really read this post very well the first time. Maybe when my upgrades "fail" it's really just that they're not scrubbed well enough. Can not cleaning enough and running power kill the board permanently and you were lucky, or is it only ever temporary when flux causes a short? Because the solder bridges kill boards, correct?

I wanted to know, guys, can you use an infrared reflower to solder the Ram to the board? It's what they do at the factory is use infrared heat, isn't it? Also, should I settle on an ACHI 6500, or is there something better that I should spend my money on?

[Marty]

1 hour ago, Bowlsnapper said:

 when flux causes a short

Never encountered that. While you should clean your work for a variety of reasons, you shouldn't reasonably expect flux to be conductive.

[Marty]

1 hour ago, Bowlsnapper said:

 

I wanted to know, guys, can you use an infrared reflower to solder the Ram to the board? It's what they do at the factory is use infrared heat, isn't it? Also, should I settle on an ACHI 6500, or is there something better that I should spend my money on?

You need to practice hand-soldering.

Don't expect fancy gear to deliver magic.

Skill is gained through sweat, effort and technique. I practiced soldering and desoldering RAM on dead hard drives before I considered the XBOX upgrade. You have to learn the capabilities of you equipment as well. Every iron is different.

[fox]

  

39 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Can not cleaning enough and running power kill the board permanently and you were lucky, or is it only ever temporary when flux causes a short? Because the solder bridges kill boards, correct?

I don't know enough about electricity, shorts or flux in general to say. I know my flux was shorting the leads on my second ram upgrade. It was apparently only conductive enough to scramble the signals, not destroy anything, but maybe more conductive fluxes exist. Maybe yours?

[Bowlsnapper]

29 minutes ago, Marty said:

Never encountered that. While you should clean your work for a variety of reasons, you shouldn't reasonably expect flux to be conductive.

I don't, but I keep hearing about it and I think that fluxy coatings have caused problems for me before.

26 minutes ago, Marty said:

You need to practice hand-soldering.

Don't expect fancy gear to deliver magic.

Skill is gained through sweat, effort and technique. I practiced soldering and desoldering RAM on dead hard drives before I considered the XBOX upgrade. You have to learn the capabilities of you equipment as well. Every iron is different.

It's not that I expect fancy gear to deliver magic. I just know that MS didn't have assemblers attaching RAM chips to motherboards with a soldering iron. LOL. It's more about having proper tools for the job. If I can have a piece of equipment that is more appropriate to attach IC components with and it makes installation pretty much failure proof, I would want to invest in it. It makes sense to do so. That's why I'm asking if an infrared reflower is okay to attach RAM modules with and I would like to know if it's too much heat for them? I think I could use kapton tape over the black part of the chip and help protect it.

 

31 minutes ago, fox said:

  

I don't know enough about electricity, shorts or flux in general to say. I know my flux was shorting the leads on my second ram upgrade. It was apparently only conductive enough to scramble the signals, not destroy anything, but maybe more conductive fluxes exist. Maybe yours?

I use pretty much top of the line flux, so if it does, then they all do, most likely.

 

[Marty]

28 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

 It's more about having proper tools for the job.

 

You should see the gear I use to do my electronic repairs and mods. You'd faint from horror and/or laughter.

As far as the infrared station goes, If you want one....buy one, I guess. It's not "wrong" using one...only you know how much money you want to spend and what approach you want to take.

[Bowlsnapper]

I just want to make sure that if I solder a ram chip onto the motherboard and there are no bridges or anything wrong... it works. lol. Doing it with a soldering iron seems to be a crapshoot no matter how well its done for whatever reason. And yes, I need a get an infrared reflower if I plan on doing CPU mods anyway.

[fox]

1 hour ago, Marty said:

You should see the gear I use to do my electronic repairs and mods. You'd faint from horror and/or laughter.

same

[Bowlsnapper]

25 minutes ago, fox said:

same

I mean if you have to do it then that's impressive obviously. But I'll be able to afford an infrared reflower very easily in the next couple weeks. So since I can afford the right tools now I want to make sure I get the ones that I need to do the jobs I want. But at the same time to be smart and not spend more than I need to.

And if I have an infrared reflower and I can use it to do ram installs then I would like to do that since it would eliminate a lot of the error and possibility for it. At the factory they were able to install ram chips and other ICs and BGA components to the board without having to worry about whether or not it was going to work. I would like to get as close to that as possible. It's not unreasonable. It may be impractical to take it too far however and in that case, I would have to become adept at working with the tools that I can afford. I won't be able to afford a 20,000 dollar machine or anything, but still.

[Bowlsnapper]

On a random note, half-life X is badass. This is the first time I've ever played half-life 1, and I'm doing it as home brew on the Xbox. Lovin the 128 megs. It's a solid smooth frame rate, and it runs in widescreen. Very cool.

[fox]

53 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

It's not unreasonable.

no, it's not

of course there's an argument to be made for "proper" tools, in any area, not just electronics -- they cut a lot of crap out of the process, they usually don't come with as high a learning curve and can save you time (very important when one gets a little older and starts seeing how short life really is), not to mention the quality of work is usually better, and certain jobs are practically impossible without them

but I wouldn't call using simpler tools a "crapshoot," ultimately it's your choice if you don't wanna deal with them

I wish I had expensive tools, my stuff is primitive as hell, couple months ago I made a large leather sheath that anyone with a shop could crank out in a day but it took 2 weeks, the dagger in it took a month, there were other things I wanted to do with that time

[sweetdarkdestiny]

5 hours ago, Bowlsnapper said:

I'm not sure if I really read this post very well the first time. Maybe when my upgrades "fail" it's really just that they're not scrubbed well enough. Can not cleaning enough and running power kill the board permanently and you were lucky, or is it only ever temporary when flux causes a short? Because the solder bridges kill boards, correct?

I wanted to know, guys, can you use an infrared reflower to solder the Ram to the board? It's what they do at the factory is use infrared heat, isn't it? Also, should I settle on an ACHI 6500, or is there something better that I should spend my money on?

Flux didn't causes shorts. I mean it could but dont. I have done boards full recap + ram upgrade and cleaned it after the last test. board "full" of flux. Work on your soldering skills, and do not splash solder anyware. And ofc if you bridge (for example) 2 wrong pins on a ram chip it kills the chip. 

IR soldering ram? Do you realy want an answer to that qustion? I mean what? Why? Gaining skill is to hard? You have the tools on hand, learn how to use them. And with IR soldering you fuck up even more since you have to learn how to use it as well (Check RIP Felix Channel for some funny entertainment about it (Cudos to him though!). 

And here, watch, lörn, practice and watch, lörn and practice again to become better: 

IR soldering ram - löl. 

[Bowlsnapper]

44 minutes ago, sweetdarkdestiny said:

Flux didn't causes shorts. I mean it could but dont. I have done boards full recap + ram upgrade and cleaned it after the last test. board "full" of flux. Work on your soldering skills, and do not splash solder anyware. And ofc if you bridge (for example) 2 wrong pins on a ram chip it kills the chip. 

IR soldering ram? Do you realy want an answer to that qustion? I mean what? Why? Gaining skill is to hard? You have the tools on hand, learn how to use them. And with IR soldering you fuck up even more since you have to learn how to use it as well (Check RIP Felix Channel for some funny entertainment about it (Cudos to him though!). 

And here, watch, lörn, practice and watch, lörn and practice again to become better: 

IR soldering ram - löl. 

I mean, hey, if it can be done, why not!?  The thing is, when my boards die after doing my first chip (I always start at the video encoder one) I don't know why they're dying. I'm being very careful when I do them and absolutely no different from when I did my current functioning 128 console. Maybe I'm using bad ram chips that were killed with the heat used to remove them? I did buy them salvaged from a forum member. They're not new. I can't really test them either so I don't even know if the ones I'm installing are good. But I never know why they're dead. The reason for wanting to use a reflower is just to eliminate the chances that I could be doing something to kill them. I never have any visible bridges... Maybe they're bridging behind the pins? I have no way to know!

I want to gain skills, absolutely, but man is it disheartening and expensive when a board dies. I afraid to salvage my RAM from boards because I'm afraid I'll kill it with heat and it just wont work on the next console...

[sweetdarkdestiny]

14 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

I mean, hey, if it can be done, why not!?

If you know how, you can also super glue em.  

I would like to say It's basicly pretty hard to kill a ram chip when desoldering but I know that ppl have killed em by cooking them to dead (#IR soldering? LÖL). I personaly never killed one, not by removing them with hor air, soldering with the iron or even through esd by touching them and not beeing grounded. And killing a board by soldering a "dead" ram chip is highly unlikely. Even if you solder the chip the wrong way it would just kill the chip, not the board (proven by someone I bought some chips of). So if you kill your entire board by soldering 1 ram chip well, don't be mad at me but, I would say you doing something very wrong. 

And reflowing with hot air or IR is not bad but not good either. Point here is you apply a lot of heat just because of bad soldering in the first place. I have a video on my YT channel where I remove ram. Since you have the same HA station you could just copy and past and be sure the ram will still work. After removing the first chip don't let the board cool down, flip it remove the next and so on (And heat the board, not the chip).

Brigdes behint the pins is possible sure but also highly unlikely at least in my opinion.  Guess you will win a lottiery before you end up with bridged pads behind the legs not seeing it. 

And ofc you have had a chance to see it but (yeah start to hate me) you prefered to buy TV's before a scope. Was a good trade of? I would say this (and others here may too) 1: Get your tools 2: Learn 3: Rapair 4: Sell 5: Buy shit you like.

And belive it or not, seeing how others do it helps a lot. It's still different when you do it your self the first time but it helps to understand and see how it should be done. And rushing things (Yeah, seems you rushing things a lot and didn't pay to much attention on things (# Your TSOP Topic for example))  DO NOT HELP - AT ALL! (You're free to hate me even more yet). And ofc we all (maybe with the exception of @SS_Dave who I belive has alsready soldered in his moms belly before he was born ) has fucked up things one or two times. And some times you do it right and it still didn't work. You start over and then it works and you has not  done anything different. Thats live. 

Finaly gaining skills. Grab a dead board,desolder parts, solder em back, repeat. And it also dosnt matter how you solder as long as it works for you and didn't kill parts. You are (by your own words) still afraid of causing bridges when drag soldering. Fuck that, bridges are the least thing you should be afraid of cause they are the simplest thing to remove. And if even you don't like dragsoldering at all, it also does not matter if you solder pin by pin as long as it works. The only real difference is you need more time by doing so nothing else. More skill will come over time so you may should give your self some time to learn no matter how long it takes. I presume that you will lought hard at your self in a year compairing your work you did these days with the work you will do then.  A short anecdote. When I startet Dave said something like soldering the ram chip no. 4 (the one in front of the GPU) is a pain in the ass to do (Guess he ment that from a beginners point of view). Today I think it's just a walk in the park to solder that chip. Didn't take longer or is more complicatet as the others but that came over time (Important point!) like many other things. 

[Bowlsnapper]

On 9/9/2023 at 8:59 PM, sweetdarkdestiny said:

Flux didn't causes shorts. I mean it could but dont. I have done boards full recap + ram upgrade and cleaned it after the last test. board "full" of flux. Work on your soldering skills, and do not splash solder anyware. And ofc if you bridge (for example) 2 wrong pins on a ram chip it kills the chip. 

IR soldering ram? Do you realy want an answer to that qustion? I mean what? Why? Gaining skill is to hard? You have the tools on hand, learn how to use them. And with IR soldering you fuck up even more since you have to learn how to use it as well (Check RIP Felix Channel for some funny entertainment about it (Cudos to him though!). 

And here, watch, lörn, practice and watch, lörn and practice again to become better: 

IR soldering ram - löl. 

Dude, I was entranced by this video. Thank you for posting this. It was fun to watch!