Is my Xbox FUBAR?

[matttintoshplus]

About a year ago I tried to install an Aladdin into my (working, at the time) 1.6 Xbox. Lo and behold, post installation, it doesn't work. I don't remember if it would just power on without the chip or if it wouldn't power on at all. I decided to take it out and now when I power it on it tries to boot 3x then I get red and green flashing 50/50 (it stays on and just keeps flashing). I took pics of the board post-modchip removal so you guys could see if the board is a goner. I must acknowledge my soldering skills were not quite up to par at the time.

Here's the diagram I followed:

Here's a full shot of the LPC rebuild:

Close-up of the red trace:

I'll post the rest in a reply because I'm out of space here.

Edited December 31, 2023 by matttintoshplus

[matttintoshplus]

Here's a closeup of the blue trace in the diagram (this one looks the worst to me):

Close-up of the yellow trace:

 

[matttintoshplus]

Looks like I may have used a slightly different LPC rebuild diagram. One of my wires went to the pad at the bottom of this diagram (below R7R5). This appears to be the only difference thought. This pic is from MrMario2011's video.

Here's that connection on my board. This one doesn't look pretty but I don't see how it could damage hurt anything because it's just a pad that's not connected to anything.

This picture shows where the pink and blue wires (on the first diagram) went. These ones look a little rough to me and seem like they could be a problem. Not sure what I could do to fix them if they are.

This last pic shows the green connection from the first diagram. Same possible issue with this one as the last one. Looks like it could be bad, but I'm not sure what the issue would be or how to fix it.

 

I also tried swapping out IDE cables and power supplies and neither made the Christmas lights go away.

I tried to keep everything as organized as possible. If you want any more pictures or anything just let me know. I'd really love to get this one up and running because this has hours of JSRF and Battlefront 2 stored on it hahaha. I have a couple donor machines I could use, too.

Anyways, thanks for looking this all over. I appreciate any and all advice.

[Marty]

Some of those vias look pretty maimed....I suspect a cut trace around one of them.

Reflow you joints, wire up the LPC and let's see another pic.

BTW, you solder joints look cold. What iron and temp are you using?

[Bowlsnapper]

Did you use flux at ALL on this one? It looks like it was very dry... also... a pin is missing in the back of the header. Howcome?

[matttintoshplus]

4 minutes ago, Marty said:

Some of those vias look pretty maimed....I suspect a cut trace around one of them.

Reflow you joints, wire up the LPC and let's see another pic.

BTW, you solder joints look cold. What iron and temp are you using?

1. That's definitely possible. I could just test around with a multimeter for connectivity at each joint, if you think that would help. Or if you have a better idea, feel free to let me know.

2. The modchip is removed, so is wiring up the LPC necessary? I figured I could just remove the modchip and wiring and everything would go back to normal. The pins on the header don't connect to anything, so I assumed reflowing it wasn't necessary.

3. The soldering iron is an Aoyue 469. I usually keep the temp pretty high (between 5 and 7 on the dial I believe).

8 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Did you use flux at ALL on this one? It looks like it was very dry... also... a pin is missing in the back of the header. Howcome?

1. No I did not, my roll of solder says it has 2% flux in it so I figured it wasn't necessary. Should I invest in some anyways?

2. Regarding the missing pin, I believe it wasn't connected to the modchip so I just removed it from the header.

The top left connection and the two towards the bottom don't go anywhere so I just removed them from the header.

[Bowlsnapper]

4 minutes ago, matttintoshplus said:

1. That's definitely possible. I could just test around with a multimeter for connectivity at each joint, if you think that would help. Or if you have a better idea, feel free to let me know.

2. The modchip is removed, so is wiring up the LPC necessary? I figured I could just remove the modchip and wiring and everything would go back to normal. The pins on the header don't connect to anything, so I assumed reflowing it wasn't necessary.

3. The soldering iron is an Aoyue 469. I usually keep the temp pretty high (between 5 and 7 on the dial I believe).

1. No I did not, my roll of solder says it has 2% flux in it so I figured it wasn't necessary. Should I invest in some anyways?

2. Regarding the missing pin, I believe it wasn't connected to the modchip so I just removed it from the header.

The top left connection and the two towards the bottom don't go anywhere so I just removed them from the header.

YES. Buy good flux and pour it all over that pin header, then reflow the joints applying heat for like 2-3 seconds a point. Watch the solder reflow itself and you'll go, "oooooh. I see!"

I've fuxored the LPC before and needed to reflow things to bring the mobo back to life, although, if your D0 is still grounded, you will get a frag because D0 tells the console to boot from the LPC and there is nothing on the LPC right now.

What did you have the D0/Lframe doing when the aladdin was connected? did you have it grounded or to the chip? was lframe cut, btw?

[Marty]

Always use flux, even with rosin-core solder.

?

Edited December 31, 2023 by Marty

[Raidernick]

1 minute ago, Marty said:

Always use flux, even with rosin-core solder.

?

absolutely yes.....

[Marty]

What tip are you using on your iron?

It appears to not be dumping enough heat into the PCB. Is it a small pencil tip?

[FrostyMaGee]

29 minutes ago, Marty said:

Always use flux, even with rosin-core solder.

?

Can’t agree more on the flux!

 

I would also be interested in what tip he was using (as you mentioned). If it was a conical tip I’d move to the small chisel at least for the lpc port. 

[FrostyMaGee]

Also, I can’t tell for sure in the pictures if it’s dust/grime or what but there looks to be some solder splash around some of those areas. Probably also be worth going over the whole thing closely to make sure everything is clean and there are no bridges.I’d hit the whole thing with a soft bristle brush and some 99% isopropyl alcohol (or 91% if you don’t have that) just for good measure. 

[fox]

1 hour ago, Bowlsnapper said:

applying heat for like 2-3 seconds a point.

that's frankly a little too long

[Bowlsnapper]

1 hour ago, fox said:

that's frankly a little too long

I should say max. BUt I just do it until I see that the joint is uniform and everything is heated sufficiently. 3 seconds may be a bit too long, but 2 is fine with flux.

[Marty]

1 hour ago, fox said:

that's frankly a little too long

Don't tell that to Voultar.

[FrostyMaGee]

2 hours ago, fox said:

that's frankly a little too long

I’d agree with 3 sec max depending on the temp. TBH if you’re using a quality iron that holds it’s listed temp, use flux, and throw a little solder on the iron first it really shouldn't even take 3 secs. Especially not to solder. Desoldering i could see three seconds easy on some stuff to get going as long as you were using copious amounts of flux and a little solder to get started. 

[matttintoshplus]

On 12/31/2023 at 1:00 PM, Bowlsnapper said:

YES. Buy good flux and pour it all over that pin header, then reflow the joints applying heat for like 2-3 seconds a point. Watch the solder reflow itself and you'll go, "oooooh. I see!"

I've fuxored the LPC before and needed to reflow things to bring the mobo back to life, although, if your D0 is still grounded, you will get a frag because D0 tells the console to boot from the LPC and there is nothing on the LPC right now.

What did you have the D0/Lframe doing when the aladdin was connected? did you have it grounded or to the chip? was lframe cut, btw?

I believe I connected my D0 to the rf shield. I'm not 100% positive, but I believe I remember having to solder a wire onto the aladdin and then connect it to the rf shield.

As for the lframe, I never touched that. Would this cause the system to not boot into the modchip while it was still attached? Initially, when I installed the chip, it would still just boot into the regular dash.

 

On 12/31/2023 at 1:28 PM, Marty said:

Always use flux, even with rosin-core solder.

?

Ordered some on Amazon. I'll make another when it comes in and I'm able to reflow. Might be a week.

 

On 12/31/2023 at 2:02 PM, FrostyMaGee said:

Can’t agree more on the flux!

 

I would also be interested in what tip he was using (as you mentioned). If it was a conical tip I’d move to the small chisel at least for the lpc port. 

I believe I used an average sized conical tip. Might have been a small one. I'll give the conical one a go when I reflow it.

 

On 12/31/2023 at 2:11 PM, FrostyMaGee said:

Also, I can’t tell for sure in the pictures if it’s dust/grime or what but there looks to be some solder splash around some of those areas. Probably also be worth going over the whole thing closely to make sure everything is clean and there are no bridges.I’d hit the whole thing with a soft bristle brush and some 99% isopropyl alcohol (or 91% if you don’t have that) just for good measure. 

I'll add this to my list of tasks when I reflow everything.

 

I'll post an update when I get in the flux and reflow everything. I also found something on the board that might possibly look like a damaged trace, but I'm not sure so I'm gonna inspect it a bit before doing anything to it. Thanks again for all the help so far, I thought this project was done for but now I've got a glimmer of hope.

[Raidernick]

52 minutes ago, matttintoshplus said:

As for the lframe, I never touched that. Would this cause the system to not boot into the modchip while it was still attached? Initially, when I installed the chip, it would still just boot into the regular dash.

You should never cut the lframe, it is totally unnecessary and will prevent the console from booting without the modchip ever again unless you fix the trace, which at your current skill level may not be possible(it is an extremely small trace surrounded by several others). Also, you should not be grounding D0 ever either. This will damage the console over time. This is why the aladdin(and other modchips) have a D0 pad on them. You solder the D0 on the mobo to this and it grounds it for a few seconds allowing the console to boot, then releases it so it's not constantly grounded. However, as you have a 1.6 you should not be doing anything with the D0 pad anyway. You should be attaching the L1 pad on the aladdin to the lframe on the motherboard. You will need to scrape back some solder mask on the lframe trace and solder a wire from that to the L1 pad on the modchip. This is more difficult than just soldering to the D0 point on the mobo.

[lopenator]

I severed lframe on my 1.6 and reconnected it with a little switch that I can flip with a pen through the side vent holes. I'll literally never, ever boot retail but whatever. I made the switch because I was bored one night lol. I don't need lframe connected.

Edited January 2 by lopenator

[Bowlsnapper]

6 hours ago, Raidernick said:

You should never cut the lframe, it is totally unnecessary and will prevent the console from booting without the modchip ever again unless you fix the trace, which at your current skill level may not be possible(it is an extremely small trace surrounded by several others). Also, you should not be grounding D0 ever either. This will damage the console over time. This is why the aladdin(and other modchips) have a D0 pad on them. You solder the D0 on the mobo to this and it grounds it for a few seconds allowing the console to boot, then releases it so it's not constantly grounded. However, as you have a 1.6 you should not be doing anything with the D0 pad anyway. You should be attaching the L1 pad on the aladdin to the lframe on the motherboard. You will need to scrape back some solder mask on the lframe trace and solder a wire from that to the L1 pad on the modchip. This is more difficult than just soldering to the D0 point on the mobo.

From what I know, Lframe is a pretty high amount of current that can cause damage over time, much more than a regular D0 amount. The aladdin D0 pads typically do not work at all and D0 needs to be grounded with those chips, since there is no other way to get the console to boot from the LPC. @KaosEngineer, is that accurate?

[Raidernick]

11 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

From what I know, Lframe is a pretty high amount of current that can cause damage over time, much more than a regular D0 amount. The aladdin D0 pads typically do not work at all and D0 needs to be grounded with those chips, since there is no other way to get the console to boot from the LPC. @KaosEngineer, is that accurate?

hence why i said to attach it to the L1 pad and NOT the D0 pad....on aladdin chips these 2 pads go to different pins on the cpld and L1 is designed specifically for the lframe.

[Bowlsnapper]

5 minutes ago, Raidernick said:

hence why i said to attach it to the L1 pad and NOT the D0 pad....on aladdin chips these 2 pads go to different pins on the cpld and L1 is designed specifically for the lframe.

... right, but I mentioned grounding because no aladdin I've ever had has had a working D0. As far as L1 goes, I have honestly never tried it, so it may be worth a shot, but if D0 doesn't work on Aladdins (for whatever reason) I would assume that the lframe pad doesn't either. I could be wrong though.

[ChriZz]

L1 is intended to control the front LED.

[Bowlsnapper]

21 minutes ago, ChriZz said:

L1 is intended to control the front LED.

I was wondering why I had never heard of that being used

[Raidernick]

2 hours ago, ChriZz said:

L1 is intended to control the front LED.

On the original "real" aladdin chip yes, but none of the clones, lite versions, xblasts, jafars or anything else made these days is that true. In fact, on any "modern" aladdin, including the newer variants you are seeing now on aliexpress with the transistor on them actually have the D0 and L1 traces connected together coming right out of the CPLD. This was not the case on the original versions. So with any of these newer chips you can simply use the D0 pad(some only have this pad available now anyway and did away with all the extra pads).

 

EDIT: It's actually really hard to get a hold of the original "clone" aladdin's these days as websites like ebay/amazon/aliexpress all show pictures of the original ones with the original cloned CPLD code on them, but then when you buy them you end up with that new version with the transistor that you can't reprogram the CPLD of. I believe there are actually posts about that on this forum.

For the OP the best bet would just be to buy one of the jafars from ebay/gameroomcustoms or modzvilleusa genie. These have a much higher standard of production and assembly and aren't finicky like all the clone aladdins are now.

Edited January 2 by Raidernick