Adventures with a 128mb ram upgrade

[Fringle]

Holy shit.  This was quite the process and really tested my patients.  First off I installed all 4 chips at once since I didn't think Xblast could be flashed to the tsop or that it wasn't a good idea.  I know better for next time.  Took me about 2 hours to get all the chips installed and I thought my soldering looked really good.  No bridges, but all this xbox would do is frag.  After fucking with it for about 4 hours I decided I had enough and put it away thinking the box was dead.  This morning I decided to have another go at it, went back over my soldering and once again thought it looked really good but the damn machine still wouldn't boot.  Now, I'm really frustrated.  I take out the solder braid and start wicking off the solder in attempt to remove the chips.  I notice that a couple of pins are slightly bent and might be touching other pads.  I proceed to straighten them out, partially lifting a pad in the process.  Once I get all of that done, I'm thinking there is no way this thing is going to start now.  Well it surprised the shit out of me, it booted and all 4 ram chips passed.  Maybe today is the day I should go buy a lottery ticket cause I feel pretty damn lucky this actually worked.

If I do it again I'll be putting xblast on the tsop.

[bolofski]

well done mate, ive got ram, ive got a board waiting, just need to pluck up the courage and find some spare time!

[Fringle]

12 minutes ago, bolofski said:

well done mate, ive got ram, ive got a board waiting, just need to pluck up the courage and find some spare time!

Thank ya.  It seems that the battle isn't over yet though.  Went to put a sata hdd in this one and flash cerbios udma mode 4 with xblast and it corrupted the tsop.  I am able to boot still by bridging A19-A18-3.3v and letting it boot off bank 4 but having a heck of a time flashing it back to a working state.  It's a Sharp tsop so wasn't an easy flash to begin with but damn this one is a pain in my ass.  Keeps telling me it's write protected even when using the original method I used.  Might just have to run this one off of bank 4 from now on or until I can figure it out and hope it lasts.

[Bowlsnapper]

4 hours ago, Fringle said:

Holy shit.  This was quite the process and really tested my patients.  First off I installed all 4 chips at once since I didn't think Xblast could be flashed to the tsop or that it wasn't a good idea.  I know better for next time.  Took me about 2 hours to get all the chips installed and I thought my soldering looked really good.  No bridges, but all this xbox would do is frag.  After fucking with it for about 4 hours I decided I had enough and put it away thinking the box was dead.  This morning I decided to have another go at it, went back over my soldering and once again thought it looked really good but the damn machine still wouldn't boot.  Now, I'm really frustrated.  I take out the solder braid and start wicking off the solder in attempt to remove the chips.  I notice that a couple of pins are slightly bent and might be touching other pads.  I proceed to straighten them out, partially lifting a pad in the process.  Once I get all of that done, I'm thinking there is no way this thing is going to start now.  Well it surprised the shit out of me, it booted and all 4 ram chips passed.  Maybe today is the day I should go buy a lottery ticket cause I feel pretty damn lucky this actually worked.

If I do it again I'll be putting xblast on the tsop.

That's almost how mine went, except it initially passed and then legs got loose when it got really hot and overheated... which shouldn't be possible since it's not even hot enough, but it happened. When I would check my legs, some just gave a bit, but some actually bent the fuck over and I would go, "ah Jesus!", And have to straighten it again with my tweezers. Pain in the ass. Felt like I won the lottery too, when it booted and all 4 chips passed.

I used a chip instead of doing a TSOP version of XBlast. I also like to give motherboards pin headers just in case. That way I just took the chip off, and it booted to a TSOP Cerbios.

[Bowlsnapper]

2 minutes ago, Fringle said:

Thank ya.  It seems that the battle isn't over yet though.  Went to put a sata hdd in this one and flash cerbios udma mode 4 with xblast and it corrupted the tsop.  I am able to boot still by bridging A19-A18-3.3v and letting it boot off bank 4 but having a heck of a time flashing it back to a working state.  It's a Sharp tsop so wasn't an easy flash to begin with but damn this one is a pain in my ass.  Keeps telling me it's write protected even when using the original method I used.  Might just have to run this one off of bank 4 from now on or until I can figure it out and hope it lasts.

Ah Christ. I've yet to run into a sharp TSOP. I rue the day that I will... just bit the bullet and use a chip. Fuck the sharp. It is your first 128 console after all... Get it a nice modchip.

[Fringle]

1 minute ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Ah Christ. I've yet to run into a sharp TSOP. I rue the day that I will... just bit the bullet and use a chip. Fuck the sharp. It is your first 128 console after all... Get it a nice modchip.

I was thinking about doing another one.  This one is the second box I attempted it on.  I thought the first one I did was dead until about an hour ago.  Long story short on that one is I put one ram chip on, noticed the seating wasn't right so pulled it off with hot air.  Knocked a cap and resistor off due to the air flow but put them back on, the system still wouldn't boot.  I was going to pull the tsop off that one and put it on this one but decided to look at the ram spot again and noticed a solder bridge on one of the resistors close to where I reattached a capacitor.  Removed the bridge and that one came back to life so decided to spare it and will attempt to upgrade that one again at some point.  I do have another board here but it also has a fucking Sharp.  Just my luck that the two 1.1 boards I was given were Sharp tsops and the 1.0's were Hynix.  Once I'm back to working I'll look into getting a good modchip. 

Going to be finishing my 4th class Marine Engineering exams next week so will hopefully be back to work soon.

[Fringle]

Finally it flashed properly with Gentoox and boots without wires.

Edited September 17, 2023 by Fringle

[Bowlsnapper]

1 hour ago, Fringle said:

Finally it flashed properly with Gentoox and boots without wires.

Hell yeah! I'm going to start cordoning off the area with kapton tape for an extra layer of protection. I've gotten solder into nearby vias before and it's killed boards.

[Fringle]

27 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Hell yeah! I'm going to start cordoning off the area with kapton tape for an extra layer of protection. I've gotten solder into nearby vias before and it's killed boards.

Going to do the 1.0 I have now.  Just flashed xblast to the tsop so can hopefully makes the process a little easier.  Got 4 ram chips left so this will be the last one I do for a while.

[Bowlsnapper]

3 minutes ago, Fringle said:

Going to do the 1.0 I have now.  Just flashed xblast to the tsop so can hopefully makes the process a little easier.  Got 4 ram chips left so this will be the last one I do for a while.

Dude I have so much RAM... The only problem is having the courage to try to solder them into the Xboxes that I have. I definitely am not wanting for supply. I have at least 20 chips. Lol

[Fringle]

26 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Dude I have so much RAM... The only problem is having the courage to try to solder them into the Xboxes that I have. I definitely am not wanting for supply. I have at least 20 chips. Lol

Damn.  That's a lot of ram.  I'm not bothered by failure, it's only a mistake if I don't learn from it.  Hahaha

[Bowlsnapper]

9 minutes ago, Fringle said:

Damn.  That's a lot of ram.  I'm not bothered by failure, it's only a mistake if I don't learn from it.  Hahaha

Yes, I agree however, The only problem is I would solder a chip in without any bridges or solder splashes and would clean the shit out of it with alcohol, and it STILL wouldn't work! I would frag! And there would be no reason visually to help explain it, which would prevent me from learning from it. That pisses me off man! Lol.

[Fringle]

22 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Yes, I agree however, The only problem is I would solder a chip in without any bridges or solder splashes and would clean the shit out of it with alcohol, and it STILL wouldn't work! I would frag! And there would be no reason visually to help explain it, which would prevent me from learning from it. That pisses me off man! Lol.

Ah gotcha.  I was going to say the second install went quite smoothly for me.  Almost too smooth.  All chips passed in the 1.0 but I'm paranoid to flash cerbios back now in case it frags..  Maybe you had some bad chips in there.  I ordered all mine from aliexpress and they all appear to have been good.

Edit:  It worked!!

Edited September 17, 2023 by Fringle

[Bowlsnapper]

23 minutes ago, Fringle said:

Ah gotcha.  I was going to say the second install went quite smoothly for me.  Almost too smooth.  All chips passed in the 1.0 but I'm paranoid to flash cerbios back now in case it frags..  Maybe you had some bad chips in there.  I ordered all mine from aliexpress and they all appear to have been good.

Edit:  It worked!!

That's what I would like to do is buy new chips that are know haven't been damaged with heat for the removal. That way I know that I'm not only putting time into installing a good chip, but that if my console frags after the install, then I know I fucked up and that it isn't the chip.

But wow those sets are expensive, man.

[Fringle]

27 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

That's what I would like to do is buy new chips that are know haven't been damaged with heat for the removal. That way I know that I'm not only putting time into installing a good chip, but that if my console frags after the install, then I know I fucked up and that it isn't the chip.

But wow those sets are expensive, man.

Yeah, I think I paid like 25 CAD bucks for 10 chips.  Still better than buying a set of 4 from some sites that want that same amount or slightly more.  I was able to upgrade two Xboxes for that price which is still cheaper than buying dead ones to salvage from.

These are the ones I bought.  Went with the K4D263238F-UC50 since they were a bit cheaper and appear to be genuine samsung.  They all worked anyway so none were DOA.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002121771120.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.4.3d711802Fn2hQn

Edited September 17, 2023 by Fringle

[Bowlsnapper]

38 minutes ago, Fringle said:

Yeah, I think I paid like 25 CAD bucks for 10 chips.  Still better than buying a set of 4 from some sites that want that same amount or slightly more.  I was able to upgrade two Xboxes for that price which is still cheaper than buying dead ones to salvage from.

These are the ones I bought.  Went with the K4D263238F-UC50 since they were a bit cheaper and appear to be genuine samsung.  They all worked anyway so none were DOA.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002121771120.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.4.3d711802Fn2hQn

Congrats on the second successful install, btw.

I didn't know that you could buy them on Ali and that they were so cheap... The printing on the looks super sketchy though. lol. I should just buy 100.

[Fringle]

36 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Congrats on the second successful install, btw.

I didn't know that you could buy them on Ali and that they were so cheap... The printing on the looks super sketchy though. lol. I should just buy 100.

Thanks, it seemed to go a lot smoother and quicker.  I mean the first install took me altogether about 6 hours with troubleshooting.  Doing one chip at a time and testing with Xblast was a much better option and cut the total time down to like 45 min. haha  Would enjoy attempting a cpu upgrade at some point but won't be able to afford a proper infrared rework station for quite some time.

[Bowlsnapper]

30 minutes ago, Fringle said:

Thanks, it seemed to go a lot smoother and quicker.  I mean the first install took me altogether about 6 hours with troubleshooting.  Doing one chip at a time and testing with Xblast was a much better option and cut the total time down to like 45 min. haha  Would enjoy attempting a cpu upgrade at some point but won't be able to afford a proper infrared rework station for quite some time.

I'm going for the infrared station, but I have a lot of hurdles to overcome with the upgrade even still. I'm very worried. I would like to have some successes here instead of perpetual failures. lol. Makes me worried about spending on the reflow station. Although I know it can be used for other things as well.

[Fringle]

36 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

I'm going for the infrared station, but I have a lot of hurdles to overcome with the upgrade even still. I'm very worried. I would like to have some successes here instead of perpetual failures. lol. Makes me worried about spending on the reflow station. Although I know it can be used for other things as well.

I'm sure you will get some good use out of it.  If I had one 10-15 years ago I would have used one quite a bit to reball the many ps3's and Xbox 360's I had shit the bed on me.  The one time I did remove a gpu from a 360 I ended up cooking it to death.  It was a good time. 

[Bowlsnapper]

32 minutes ago, Fringle said:

I'm sure you will get some good use out of it.  If I had one 10-15 years ago I would have used one quite a bit to reball the many ps3's and Xbox 360's I had shit the bed on me.  The one time I did remove a gpu from a 360 I ended up cooking it to death.  It was a good time. 

I have a 360 i wouldn't mind fixing. Old fatty. I could do a bunch of those, as long as it's worth it to resell them, but I don't know if it is, unless it's been RGH or JTAG hacked. Not sure how that works.

[Fringle]

2 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

I have a 360 i wouldn't mind fixing. Old fatty. I could do a bunch of those, as long as it's worth it to resell them, but I don't know if it is, unless it's been RGH or JTAG hacked. Not sure how that works.

I recently did an RGH3 on my old 360.  It's pretty easy but not 100% reliable on the fat consoles due to boot time variations.  Just need a switching diode, 10-22k resistor, a pico and a pc.  Been modding and tinkering with all of my older consoles recently.  It's more of a hobby for me though, than a money making adventure.

[Bowlsnapper]

I'm about to have a LOT more RAM. and some Aladdins to practice making XBlasts with. Just need to find the 1MB flash chips.

[Fringle]

8 hours ago, Bowlsnapper said:

I'm about to have a LOT more RAM. and some Aladdins to practice making XBlasts with. Just need to find the 1MB flash chips.

Nice.  I tried the upgrade again on my last console but this time attempted using ram salvaged from a dead board.  I couldn't even get the first chip to pass so abandon it.  Ended up lifting up one of the pads removing it but luckily enough the Xbox still works.  I may attempt it again in the future on this one and attach to the via if I end up getting some more ram.  Still have yet to find any games that I play other than emulators that benefit from the extra ram though.

[Bowlsnapper]

2 hours ago, Fringle said:

Nice.  I tried the upgrade again on my last console but this time attempted using ram salvaged from a dead board.  I couldn't even get the first chip to pass so abandon it.  Ended up lifting up one of the pads removing it but luckily enough the Xbox still works.  I may attempt it again in the future on this one and attach to the via if I end up getting some more ram.  Still have yet to find any games that I play other than emulators that benefit from the extra ram though.

Half Life X is pretty cool.

that actually happened to me. I soldered the first ram chip (I always start with the one by the encoder) and it immediately died. I removed it with hot air and the console booted, thank god. Then I used another RAM chip and it worked! Then I did the other 3, and it was my first Install.

 

[Fringle]

1 hour ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Half Life X is pretty cool.

that actually happened to me. I soldered the first ram chip (I always start with the one by the encoder) and it immediately died. I removed it with hot air and the console booted, thank god. Then I used another RAM chip and it worked! Then I did the other 3, and it was my first Install.

 

This one was strange.  It would still boot but wouldn't pass the ram test.  I did use a ram chip with a missing leg but after checking the schematic it was an nc leg so figured I could get away with using it.  Turns out I was wrong but may have also been dead from removing it with hot air.  Ah well, lesson learned and won't bother attempting to use ram from another console again.

I may have to give Half Life X a try.  Played the original quite a bit on PC when it was released back in 98 on my old Pentium 166 with an original 3dfx voodoo.  The loading screens were abundant but didn't stop me from playing the shit out of it.