1.6 boots to dash but dvd drive eject button flashes green

[FrostyMaGee]

Greetings all! First time posting anything but have gathered a lot of great tips and fixes from this forum for a few years now.  This problem has me stumped though. Here’s the situation:

The xbox boots fine to the ms dash. I can access the hdd, copy saves to memory unit (or usb via adapter), browse settings, etc. The eject button on the dvd player just flashes green. There’s no disc in the drive, it doesn’t make any horrible noises, it won’t open, and there’s nothing impeding it from opening. I took it apart, removed a lot of dust et al, cleaned the laser, checked to see that the manual eject via the release button worked, double checked the tray side rails, etc. Everything looked normal. Reassembled and had the same problem listed above. 
 

I put in a known good drive and that remedied the non stop green light flashing so I thought I’d figured out the issue. I go to test a disc and the known good drive starts to not eject or close intermittently. Additionally it won’t do anything with the disc. If I put a few known good and un scratched games it the drive just flashes green forever. It never gives a dirty disc type error or anything and again this is a drive I know works (tested it right before I pulled it out and put it for test in the current Xbox). 
 

I’m stumped. I thought about changing out power and ide just to see. Swapped out two known good AV cables just for grins. No effect. Nothing on the MB looks bulging and I can’t see and trace rot,etc on the top at least. Any ideas? 

Thank you,

MaGee

[KaosEngineer]

Have you tried swapping the DVD drive control/power cable (the 12 pin all yellow-insulated wire cable - brown insulation on some Xboxs) from a different console?

[FrostyMaGee]

Funny enough I just finished doing that exact thing. I swapped out a known working dvd power cable. Same issue with the original drive and the known good drive from another console. Just to try it I swapped out the ide cable for a known working from another console. Same issue with both drives. I tried a few working games, a few dvds, and a few cds but to no avail. Same issue persists. The original just never stops blinking green. The replacement drive acts like it reads the disc and stops blinking but does nothing after that. Bizarre. I will say this they both opened and closed this time without issue after I swapped out the dvd power cable. 
 

At this point I have to be looking at something with the motherboard right? I guess I can always take out the MB and look much more closely at traces and solder points. Worse comes to worse I can always make it a parts system. Lol

 

Thank you for the reply @KaosEngineer. I have read and referred to many of your posts on this forum over the years. Wish I’d made an account before now. Not sure why I put it off so long. Lol. 
 

I feel like I’m overlooking something to check though. I just can’t put my finger on it. I’ve run in to a good bit of problems with different og Xboxes over the years but have always been able to repair them. I’ve never run in to this particular scenario though. Puzzling. 

[Bowlsnapper]

26 minutes ago, FrostyMaGee said:

Funny enough I just finished doing that exact thing. I swapped out a known working dvd power cable. Same issue with the original drive and the known good drive from another console. Just to try it I swapped out the ide cable for a known working from another console. Same issue with both drives. I tried a few working games, a few dvds, and a few cds but to no avail. Same issue persists. The original just never stops blinking green. The replacement drive acts like it reads the disc and stops blinking but does nothing after that. Bizarre. I will say this they both opened and closed this time without issue after I swapped out the dvd power cable. 
 

At this point I have to be looking at something with the motherboard right? I guess I can always take out the MB and look much more closely at traces and solder points. Worse comes to worse I can always make it a parts system. Lol

 

Thank you for the reply @KaosEngineer. I have read and referred to many of your posts on this forum over the years. Wish I’d made an account before now. Not sure why I put it off so long. Lol. 
 

I feel like I’m overlooking something to check though. I just can’t put my finger on it. I’ve run in to a good bit of problems with different og Xboxes over the years but have always been able to repair them. I’ve never run in to this particular scenario though. Puzzling. 

I'm noticing that things are going bad on the IDE bus with these consoles and are starting to cause problems in other places down the line. DVD drives seem to be getting affected a bit by issues with the IDE bus. This is beginning to worry me greatly...

It sounds like something either attached to the IDE bus or controlling the IDE bus is having an issue and it's killing the drives that you're trying to attach to the bus... If I were to take a guess. I wouldn't risk any more DVD drives and would just do an elimination kit. Use fatxplorer or ftp for file transfers with that console, unless you want to just replace the motherboard. Who knows... maybe those blinking light drives will work with a new mobo

 

[FrostyMaGee]

14 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

I'm noticing that things are going bad on the IDE bus with these consoles and are starting to cause problems in other places down the line. DVD drives seem to be getting affected a bit by issues with the IDE bus. This is beginning to worry me greatly...

It sounds like something either attached to the IDE bus or controlling the IDE bus is having an issue and it's killing the drives that you're trying to attach to the bus... If I were to take a guess. I wouldn't risk any more DVD drives and would just do an elimination kit. Use fatxplorer or ftp for file transfers with that console, unless you want to just replace the motherboard. Who knows... maybe those blinking light drives will work with a new mobo

 

Thank you for the reply! That is a concerning trend. Following that line of thinking I might pull out the MB and just follow the traces from the ide connector just to see if there is a break or corrosion somewhere in its pathway. Another good test would be to see if the previously working drive from the other console still works in its original console. Fingers crossed it didn’t hose that drive. If that works test number two would be to see if the problem console blinker works in the other console, as you mentioned, with a new MB in play. Yeah using fatxplorer and moving files to partitions will most likely be my only recourse for the problem Xbox. Once I have that the dvd drive will be fairly irrelevant insofar as games are concerned. I’ve been running everything on 2Tb hdds for a good while on my own and that’s what they want on this one. 
 

Whether I can repair this one or not I kinda want to see if I can figure out what’s up with this Xbox. It’s just bugging me now. Lol. 
 

Thank you for the advice and ideas. It appears I have some more investigating to do with it. Time to tear out the MB and break out the magnification! Lol. If I run across anything of note or stumble on to a fix I will be sure to update it here. Thanks again!

[Bowlsnapper]

44 minutes ago, FrostyMaGee said:

Thank you for the reply! That is a concerning trend. Following that line of thinking I might pull out the MB and just follow the traces from the ide connector just to see if there is a break or corrosion somewhere in its pathway. Another good test would be to see if the previously working drive from the other console still works in its original console. Fingers crossed it didn’t hose that drive. If that works test number two would be to see if the problem console blinker works in the other console, as you mentioned, with a new MB in play. Yeah using fatxplorer and moving files to partitions will most likely be my only recourse for the problem Xbox. Once I have that the dvd drive will be fairly irrelevant insofar as games are concerned. I’ve been running everything on 2Tb hdds for a good while on my own and that’s what they want on this one. 
 

Whether I can repair this one or not I kinda want to see if I can figure out what’s up with this Xbox. It’s just bugging me now. Lol. 
 

Thank you for the advice and ideas. It appears I have some more investigating to do with it. Time to tear out the MB and break out the magnification! Lol. If I run across anything of note or stumble on to a fix I will be sure to update it here. Thanks again!

I would say that your thinking is logical and sound. Definitely put those drives in other consoles and see how they behave. I'm interested in that alone.  If you can fix the mobo issue I will be honestly very impressed. There's something sweet about fixing something rather than throwing it in the parts pile and replacing it.

[FrostyMaGee]

14 hours ago, Bowlsnapper said:

I would say that your thinking is logical and sound. Definitely put those drives in other consoles and see how they behave. I'm interested in that alone.  If you can fix the mobo issue I will be honestly very impressed. There's something sweet about fixing something rather than throwing it in the parts pile and replacing it.

So I tried the blinking drive in another console. Same blinking issue. Not really shocked. Here is the interesting part. The previously working drive that I used to test in the problem 1.6 Xbox now doesn’t work in its original working  console. It does the blinking like it’s reading then stops and does nothing just like it started to do in the problem 1.6 Xbox. 
 

Is it possible there’s a power short coming from the problem Xbox MB that’s frying something in the logic board of these drives or something else corrupting? This one is just straight up weird. By the way, I did pull out the MB and ran the ide traces. Other than being dusty everything looked fine under magnification. I gave the rest of the board another once over with magnification but nothing stood out. I was kind of hoping I’d at least find a culprit on the MB for this issue even if I couldn’t repair it. Lol. At least I’d know what the hell was going on. Lol

I took a pic of the MB top in case anyone is interested. Maybe I missed something. The mystery continues.

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by FrostyMaGee
Had to re-up a new pic as I noticed a bad glare on the board.

[FrostyMaGee]

So I still haven’t figured out what the hell is wrong with this one. Now I’ve run in to another except it’s a 1.0. Same deal as the 1.6. Eject button flashes green non stop even after it boots. Changed ide and power with no change. None of the caps appear to be bad (though I know they need to be replaced). No trace rot that jumps out at me. I am reticent to throw another dvd drive in to test since the last time I did that with the 1.6 with the same problem seemed to screw up the working test dvd drive. There has to be some commonality between these causing this issue but I haven’t found it yet. 
 

If anyone has any ideas let me know. It was strange enough to have one doing this but now two is really weird. At least I have something to compare it to I guess. Lol

[FrostyMaGee]

I’m kinda wondering if the bios is failing on these or there is some corruption. They both still boot to the original Xbox dashboard. I wonder if a hard mod would resolve this issue or if there’s something else on the mobo that’s causing the issue. Just sitting here looking at both of them and pondering the issue. Hoping to have a eureka! moment. Lol

[MilkMan2004]

Sorry if I missed it are you using stock ide hard drive or a sata drive with adapter?

If adapter what type?

Sometimes  the cheap adapters act weird if the jumpers on the drive/adapters aren't right or if the ide cable isn't 80 wire..

This is a strange one if there is no trace rot...

Can corrupt eeprom cause sothing like this?

Edited October 13, 2023 by MilkMan2004

[FrostyMaGee]

6 minutes ago, MilkMan2004 said:

Sorry if I missed it are you using stock ide drive or a sata drive with adapter?

If adapter what type?

Sometimes  the cheap adapters act weird if the jumpers on the drive/adapters aren't right or if the ide cable isn't 80 wire..

This is a strange one if there is no trace rot...

Can corrupt eeprom cause sothing like this?

I’m not sure I actually said if it was stock or not. Lol. Both the 1.6 and the 1.0 are all stock parts and the cables I swapped out to test on both were known good stock parts from other Xboxes I have. It’s a really strange problem that I’ve only recently run in to and I’ve worked on and repaired these for years. My initial thought after swapping parts and drives didn’t work was trace rot but I’ll be damned if I can find it even under magnification (though I still need to take a very close up look at the 1.0 like I did with the 1.6). 
 

I’m not sure if eeprom corruption could cause it or not. I was just throwing it out there since I’m at a loss on these two weird ass consoles. Lol. I swear it still feels like trace rot somewhere though. You know?

[MilkMan2004]

I've had this 3 times that I can recall , one was rot, one was ide sata adapter (not applicable here) and the other time the drive was not fully closing(again not applicable here)

If no noticeable damage to wires going to front panel or  rot any where I'm not sure where to go...

maybe time to bust out the multimeter and see what you are getting on the DVD  drive wires...

 

Edited October 13, 2023 by MilkMan2004

[FrostyMaGee]

7 minutes ago, MilkMan2004 said:

I've had this 3 times that I can recall , one was rot, one was ide sata adapter (not applicable here) and the other time the drive was not fully closing(again not applicable here)

If no noticeable damage to wires going to front panel or  rot any where I'm not sure where to go...

maybe time to bust out the multimeter and see what you are getting on the DVD  drive wires...

 

Good call. I was just thinking about breaking out the Fluke and start testing things.  Maybe something will show up weird and that’ll give me a direction towards to root issue. Plus I have another with the same problem I can compare it to and see if it’s replicated there. We shall see. 
 

[MilkMan2004]

Good luck man, interested to see how this turns out..