Adventures with a 128mb ram upgrade

[Bowlsnapper]

On 9/20/2023 at 11:18 AM, Fringle said:

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.

It MUST have been a bad chip. That's why I just went ahead and bought 75 chips last night. I was like dude, I don't wanna worry about dead chips. If they don't work, I wanna make sure that something is done improperly and that that's the cause.

The sensitivity is high and I find myself having a few problems with targeting the headcrabs. That shit pisses me off because they can jump far and fast. Loading screens are just as fuckin' ruthless in the Xbox version. The framerate RARELY drops below 30FPS, even with a stock processor. I wanna overclock it, but Cerbios doesn't overclock anymore except on ONE of my consoles and I don't even know why. Plus I'm afraid of breaking my only 128 console.

[ChaoticAnarchyX]

What did you do to flash the xblast to your TSOP?? I've got a 1.0 and 1.1  that use the hyanix that I want to upgrade. I looked around the OGxbox installer 2021 1.5.3 version and I couldn't find or at least locate the way to flash it. I have the time and chips to do this but I hesitate over not having Xblast on the TSOP like everyone says to. 

Edited September 22, 2023 by ChaoticAnarchyX

[Fringle]

37 minutes ago, ChaoticAnarchyX said:

What did you do to flash the xblast to your TSOP?? I've got a 1.0 and 1.1  that use the hyanix that I want to upgrade. I looked around the OGxbox installer 2021 1.5.3 version and I couldn't find or at least locate the way to flash it. I have the time and chips to do this but I hesitate over not having Xblast on the TSOP like everyone says to. 

Download the XblastOS 0.56 pack.  Rename crcwell.bin to bios.bin and put in the bios folder on the c drive.  If you have a hynix tsop flash it with Evox or the xbe version of xblast os.  You'll want to copy the evox folder or xblast folder to your hdd to do the flashing without a disc.  You'll not want to leave xblast flashed to your tsop though once you're done and you can flash it back to what ever bios you're now using xblast via hdd or network if you are unable to transfer the bios to the hdd after flashing xblast.

https://bitbucket.org/psyko_chewbacca/lpcmod_os/downloads/XBlast_OS_v0.56.zip

[Fringle]

On 9/20/2023 at 4:08 PM, Bowlsnapper said:

It MUST have been a bad chip. That's why I just went ahead and bought 75 chips last night. I was like dude, I don't wanna worry about dead chips. If they don't work, I wanna make something is done improperly and that that's the cause. The sensitivity is high and I find myself having a few problems with targeting the headcrabs. That shit pisses me off because they can jump far and fast. Loading screens are just as fuckin' ruthless in the Xbox version. The framerate RARELY drops below 30FPS, even with a stock processor. I wanna overclock it, but Cerbios doesn't overclock anymore except on ONE of my consoles and I don't even know why. Plus I'm afraid of breaking my only 128 console.

That's a lot of Ram.  I'm sure it will be put to good use though.  I'm also assuming it was a bad chip but since the console still works it's not a big deal.  Can always leave this one at 64mb.  I'm sure it's better than the PS2 version.  Gonna wait till I get get a couple more Wii2hdmi's to install in these since I like the versatility of being able to use either component or hdmi. I really don't find their quality that bad and they're cheap.  Recently used one to make an hdmi adapter for my 360 since the hana is dead and felt that it was a strong possibility I'd kill the console if I tried to replace it, the quality is just as good as the internal hdmi.

[sweetdarkdestiny]

1 hour ago, ChaoticAnarchyX said:

I looked around the OGxbox installer 2021 1.5.3 version and I couldn't find or at least locate the way to flash it.

You didn't searched hard enough.  There is the option to flash it with an evox flasher oven to flash it with xblast. 

[fox]

On 9/20/2023 at 11:08 AM, Bowlsnapper said:

75 chips

well holy crap, how much did that cost?

[Bowlsnapper]

15 hours ago, fox said:

well holy crap, how much did that cost?

I think about 160.

[Bowlsnapper]

16 hours ago, Fringle said:

That's a lot of Ram.  I'm sure it will be put to good use though.  I'm also assuming it was a bad chip but since the console still works it's not a big deal.  Can always leave this one at 64mb.  I'm sure it's better than the PS2 version.  Gonna wait till I get get a couple more Wii2hdmi's to install in these since I like the versatility of being able to use either component or hdmi. I really don't find their quality that bad and they're cheap.  Recently used one to make an hdmi adapter for my 360 since the hana is dead and felt that it was a strong possibility I'd kill the console if I tried to replace it, the quality is just as good as the internal hdmi.

I may actually do the wii2hdmi just for soldering practice and to say I did it. Sounds like a good idea to have the best of both worlds. Have these been reversed engineered yet? I would like to build one one day also.

[ChaoticAnarchyX]

I found it and flashed it to my x2 lite..... I failed. I tried starting with the open spot next to the CPU\GPU. I made sure that there was no bridging between the pins (went over the spots a couple times with the solder wick to make sure.) The chip i was trying to put on wouldn't register with Xblast so I took it back off. I had 1 of the tiny little tan resistors somehow managed to stand itself up on one side of its pads I put that back on checked the remaining ones in the vicinity of the spot i was working on. Everything seemed tight, nothing looked burnt or anything, put it all back together fired it up and it was working. Go to fire it up about 30 minutes ago and it is unstable fragg city. I'm getting start up and shut down twice and then red/orange flashing. then I can use my dip switch to kick it back to the TSOP with Cerbios and it will hang. Then if I shutdown and startup it might do the start up and shut down routine flash of lights or get the same show Cerbios dog and hang.  I compared the board to my donor board which is also a 1.0 and it did have some transistors on it that I didn't have populated on the board I tried the upgrade with which I thought was odd because I remember only two spots to the left of that open spot had transistors. But the donor board had a few more on it. I think I'm gonna set this aside and try buying new chips as opposed to using ones I got off the donor. Im wondering if I possibly damaged the chips when I took them off. I have 1 more OG that I might try it on next pending new RAM chips.

[Marty]

15 minutes ago, ChaoticAnarchyX said:

 Im wondering if I possibly damaged the chips when I took them off.

Pics?

[Bowlsnapper]

29 minutes ago, ChaoticAnarchyX said:

I found it and flashed it to my x2 lite..... I failed. I tried starting with the open spot next to the CPU\GPU. I made sure that there was no bridging between the pins (went over the spots a couple times with the solder wick to make sure.) The chip i was trying to put on wouldn't register with Xblast so I took it back off. I had 1 of the tiny little tan resistors somehow managed to stand itself up on one side of its pads I put that back on checked the remaining ones in the vicinity of the spot i was working on. Everything seemed tight, nothing looked burnt or anything, put it all back together fired it up and it was working. Go to fire it up about 30 minutes ago and it is unstable fragg city. I'm getting start up and shut down twice and then red/orange flashing. then I can use my dip switch to kick it back to the TSOP with Cerbios and it will hang. Then if I shutdown and startup it might do the start up and shut down routine flash of lights or get the same show Cerbios dog and hang.  I compared the board to my donor board which is also a 1.0 and it did have some transistors on it that I didn't have populated on the board I tried the upgrade with which I thought was odd because I remember only two spots to the left of that open spot had transistors. But the donor board had a few more on it. I think I'm gonna set this aside and try buying new chips as opposed to using ones I got off the donor. Im wondering if I possibly damaged the chips when I took them off. I have 1 more OG that I might try it on next pending new RAM chips.

I almost never reuse a chip if I remove it. Usually it goes in the trash because I don't want to take the risk of working with a heat damaged ship. I don't trust myself, even though I know that heat is used to assemble these boards so my fear is probably irrational. lol.

[Fringle]

On 9/23/2023 at 5:04 AM, Bowlsnapper said:

I may actually do the wii2hdmi just for soldering practice and to say I did it. Sounds like a good idea to have the best of both worlds. Have these been reversed engineered yet? I would like to build one one day also.

I don't think they have been reversed but I could also be wrong on that.  Might not be that hard but since they are really cheap I'm not sure if there would be a reason to other than to redesign the layout for other applications. 

On 9/23/2023 at 12:14 PM, ChaoticAnarchyX said:

I found it and flashed it to my x2 lite..... I failed. I tried starting with the open spot next to the CPU\GPU. I made sure that there was no bridging between the pins (went over the spots a couple times with the solder wick to make sure.) The chip i was trying to put on wouldn't register with Xblast so I took it back off. I had 1 of the tiny little tan resistors somehow managed to stand itself up on one side of its pads I put that back on checked the remaining ones in the vicinity of the spot i was working on. Everything seemed tight, nothing looked burnt or anything, put it all back together fired it up and it was working. Go to fire it up about 30 minutes ago and it is unstable fragg city. I'm getting start up and shut down twice and then red/orange flashing. then I can use my dip switch to kick it back to the TSOP with Cerbios and it will hang. Then if I shutdown and startup it might do the start up and shut down routine flash of lights or get the same show Cerbios dog and hang.  I compared the board to my donor board which is also a 1.0 and it did have some transistors on it that I didn't have populated on the board I tried the upgrade with which I thought was odd because I remember only two spots to the left of that open spot had transistors. But the donor board had a few more on it. I think I'm gonna set this aside and try buying new chips as opposed to using ones I got off the donor. Im wondering if I possibly damaged the chips when I took them off. I have 1 more OG that I might try it on next pending new RAM chips.

It's possible your eeprom got corrupted.  I've read somewhere on here that a red/orange frag can be a corrupted eeprom but could also be other problems as well.  If you have a backup you could attempt to restore it with a programmer to see if it works. 

[Bowlsnapper]

3 hours ago, Fringle said:

I don't think they have been reversed but I could also be wrong on that.  Might not be that hard but since they are really cheap I'm not sure if there would be a reason to other than to redesign the layout for other applications. 

It's possible your eeprom got corrupted.  I've read somewhere on here that a red/orange frag can be a corrupted eeprom but could also be other problems as well.  If you have a backup you could attempt to restore it with a programmer to see if it works. 

I think it can also be the the original 64mb of RAM can't all be seen... which wouldn't make sense if he didnt touch it.

[Fringle]

25 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

I think it can also be the the original 64mb of RAM can't all be seen... which wouldn't make sense if he didnt touch it.

Ah, you maybe right but I would think if that was the case the system wouldn't display the cerbios logo before it freezes and frags.  I think it would just go straight to a frag upon pressing the power button.  At least that's what the system I removed the ram from does.  Before I removed the ram it would boot but since it had bulging caps I didn't want to fix I decided to use it for the ram upgrade practice and as a donor board for other parts if needed.

[Bowlsnapper]

2 hours ago, Fringle said:

Ah, you maybe right but I would think if that was the case the system wouldn't display the cerbios logo before it freezes and frags.  I think it would just go straight to a frag upon pressing the power button.  At least that's what the system I removed the ram from does.  Before I removed the ram it would boot but since it had bulging caps I didn't want to fix I decided to use it for the ram upgrade practice and as a donor board for other parts if needed.

That's true, and is a very odd scenario. I don't think I've ever heard of a machine booting and THEN fragging. That's odd as hell.

[ChaoticAnarchyX]

On 9/24/2023 at 4:02 PM, Bowlsnapper said:

I think it can also be the the original 64mb of RAM can't all be seen... which wouldn't make sense if he didnt touch it.

Funny you say that, I was wondering if I might have damaged the RAM chip underneath with too much heat (had it cranked to 600F with a Temu heatgun.) I want to see what I damaged to it to reverse what I did and get it back to working order (she's my 1st, you know how that is) and still try an upgrade it not on this Xbox one of my other 2.

[Marty]

1 hour ago, ChaoticAnarchyX said:

(had it cranked to 600F with a Temu heatgun.)

You should probably reconsider the way you approach these modifications if you're going to attempt another one.

[Bowlsnapper]

Are you sure that's Fahrenheit? I use 350C and use a narrow tip to only direct air on the legs of the RAM chip, running in a consistent circle, or back and forth in a semicircle. I always use plenty of flux to make sure that it comes up when it's ready to, and also to allow the legs to come up to temperature more easily. By using a narrow tip, I ensure that I am not heating components outside the perimeter and heating the actual chip any more than I have to. Kapton tape doesn't hurt either around the perimeter. Keeps things outside cool and keeps components and shit from blowing away. Also, when you do these installs, be VERY careful not to drag solder into adjacent vias! I have done this, can NOT remove the solder from the vias no matter what method I use and it kills the box every time I do it. EVERY TIME. Shit like this is why I am going to start taping off the RAM chips, ensuring that everything nearby cannot be damaged by heat or errant solder. But very importantly, I'll be able to keep the vias from accidentally filling with solder, which kills the board every fucking time.

[Fringle]

6 hours ago, ChaoticAnarchyX said:

Funny you say that, I was wondering if I might have damaged the RAM chip underneath with too much heat (had it cranked to 600F with a Temu heatgun.) I want to see what I damaged to it to reverse what I did and get it back to working order (she's my 1st, you know how that is) and still try an upgrade it not on this Xbox one of my other 2.

Using a heat gun like that may have knocked some components out of their positions on either side of the motherboard especially if there is no air flow/speed control.  600F isn't a bad temp as it's 315C but if there is no air flow control and a large nozzle it is very likely to dislodge some adjacent resistors and/or capacitors.  Some of the smaller ones are really hard to notice they are missing or out of place.  I managed to do this with a small tip and a rework station when I was removing a chip from a failed upgrade but was able to put them back in place and have the xbox still work.  Also check for bridging on any of the surrounding resistors as when the xbox wouldn't boot after replacing the components that I knocked off, it turned out to be a bridge on one of the resistors close to the ram chips location.