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Daver80
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Into quite a bit of a mystery here. Sold a fellow a modded Xbox and he traded in an old busted Xbox to save a few bucks so now I'm trying to fix it. When turned on the Xbox turns off pretty quickly but then restarts immediately, then the same again, turns off and then back on a third time and then stays on and shows flashing orange and red lights (the odd time it will flash red and green just to deepen the mystery). Googling the problem results in many ppl saying it's an 'av pack' issue if the av cable is not the problem but the restarting thing tells me it's more likely a PSU issue or a bios/mod-gone-wrong problem. Pulled everything apart completely, thought I found the problem with a burnt contact point near the plugin. Re-flowed all 4 points just to be sure and no difference at all. Kept googling and found a few encouraging leads including this url https://www.xbox-hq.com/html/xbox-tutorials-163.html#xboxerrorcodes1 and tried jumping that wire from the lpc pin 5. No f*ckin' joy. Also just a side note - the lpc vias are all plugged with solder (see pic) indicating that a modchip was removed at some point. Also I checked the solder points for the Xbox 1.0 TSOP and it looks like they've been done also - but the guy said he never modded that one. Thing is, the further into this I get the more convinced I am that this unit is fixable. Most people will just say eff it and chuck it or whatever but I really like to save old things if at all possible. I have included a pic of the wire I jumped (yellow wire) from the lpc pin 5 as the url tutorial suggested. The same pic also shows a mysterious blue wire that was here before I opened it. Asked the dude about the blue wire and he said no idea, never modded that one. In some of my Googling I found a post saying something about a D0 wire or DO wire described as a 'modchip enable wire', maybe this could be it? Any ideas about how to move forward or what the blue wire is for would be great, my thanks go out to anyone who has any ideas that might help,

20180917_180339.jpg

Edited by Daver80
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Red/Orange flashing RAM error. Not exactly sure about adding the wire to restore LRESET#. Was there any damage to traces around the LPC Debug Port?

Xbox v1.0's LPC debug port header feed-thrus were all filled with solder no modchip had to be installed before for this to be.  It's the norm for 1.0 motherboards.

The blue wire looks like an address line connection to divide the TSOP into smaller banks.  I'll have to track down the image that shows the location of address lines on the motherboard. The end of the capacitor where it attaches to at 0V (ground). The other end is probably A19. So, this connection forces that particular address line to a logic 0.

Update: Here's the image 

image002.jpg.6217c4739b4f8ae825d58ca47bf16350.jpg

and link to the Wayback Machine's capture of the Xbox-scene's 4-way TSOP Split tutorial. (And, a eurasia.nu post on why to not do this mod.) 

With A19 forced low, only the lower 512KB of the 1MB TSOP can be accessed.

Since the TSOP points are soldered, the previous modder must have botched the flash of the upper 512KB, only a 512KB dot bin file was flashed but was not resized by the flashing software to fit the entire 1MB chip, and by forcing A19 low the first 512KB is accessed to boot the console which fixed their problem.

Edited by KaosEngineer
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Whew, that was some knowledge! Got to admit, a good bit of that was beyond me. Let's go one thing at a time, no there wasn't any obvious damage around the lpc debug that I could see. Next, thanks for the facts about the vias being solid on the 1.0 boards, I never looked closely at my two 1.0 boards there, only a 1.6 and those vias were empty. As to the blue wire/split TSOP thing, I think I'm out of my depth there. I have no idea why that would be necessary, the tutorial talks about switches and there are no switches. I even dropped an aladdin modchip in because I can't even get the splashscreen let alone to the Hexen disc to mess with the bios, did not change anything though. Any ideas on the simplest direction for me to rescue this unit? Can I remove that weird TSOP split thing or am I sort of out of luck here?

Edited by Daver80
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BLUE WIRE

You could see what happens when removed.  However, I think it has to be there as the upper 512KB of the TSOP was messed up when the TSOP was flashed.

YELLOW WIRE

I'd remove the Yellow wire too as it didn't fix the problem xbox-hq.com's info was attempting to fix.

Where to go from here

Install a pin header to install a modchip. Don't use the Quicksolder method.  It is so hard to remove the modchip when installing that way.

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I actually did just that, installed an aladdin modchip (mentioned in an earlier edit) with a pin header, didn't change anything:( Is there a way to force it to use the modchip bios? I guess I could remove the blue and yellow wires and try again... looks like hope is slowly fading...

Edited by Daver80
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When the modchip was installed, did you have it set for always ON mode?  BT wired to ground and a wire soldered between the D0 connection on the modchip to the D0 point on the motherboard.

Aladdin XT plus 2's available come with Evox M8+ preflashed.  You should see the purple Evo-X shield in the upper left-hand corner of the screen during the flubber animation.

However, you never see the flubber animation...

so...hmm 

Make sure there are no random solder bits anywhere on the motherboard especially between pins of the 4 RAM chips - 2 on top and 2 on bottom side.

Edited by KaosEngineer
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Just realized I never replied to this yet, I did definitely have it set to always on, as to BT wired to ground I believe I did but I'll have to double check to be sure. As for the D0 wire, I actually don't think I did have a wire running from the modchip to the mobo... That could be the issue, I saw somewhere that it needs that Maybe I can give it another try (removed the chip already) with a mind to what you've mentioned, and also look for solder bits near the ramchips. Can you recommend a tutorial or reference page for the D0 wire thing? I don't remember having do do that when I chipped my 1.6 at all... also what is Quicksolder? I only know the one way to solder lol, I sure hope it's the right one:)

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I have had this problem you described with doing the on/off thing then staying on the third time.  For me it was always a bad EEprom flash (Not TSOP) I was using a homebrew programming cable and pony prog and something went wrong.  And thats what it started doing after I mess it up.  I was able to fix it by trying over and over hitting "Write EEprom" in PonyProg at just the right moment during the power cycling. Once the EEProm took a good flash it powered up normally.

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4 hours ago, Daver80 said:

Just realized I never replied to this yet, I did definitely have it set to always on, as to BT wired to ground I believe I did but I'll have to double check to be sure. As for the D0 wire, I actually don't think I did have a wire running from the modchip to the mobo... That could be the issue, I saw somewhere that it needs that Maybe I can give it another try (removed the chip already) with a mind to what you've mentioned, and also look for solder bits near the ramchips. Can you recommend a tutorial or reference page for the D0 wire thing? I don't remember having do do that when I chipped my 1.6 at all... also what is Quicksolder? I only know the one way to solder lol, I sure hope it's the right one:)

BT to GND is always-on mode.  Good!

For the quicksolder install method, you solder the modchip directly to the motherboard using the half-moon castellations in the slot across the end of the modchip, not a pin header to connect the modchip to the LPC debug port.

The D0 point must be connected to boot a v1.0 using the modchip's BIOS.  A v1.6 Xbox does not require this connection as it's always booting the BIOS from an LPC connected memory chip - from the Xcyclops chip or a modchip.

Here are a couple of pictures showing installation of the Aladdin XT plus 2 (a clone of the Xenochip AXT4032 modchip). There's a D0 point on top of the motherboard and an alternate location on the bottom side of the printed circuit board.aladdin_xt_4032_diagram_1_0.thumb.jpg.5641de357e6b105ceda9608058242cc9.jpg

5ba7651f84686_v1.0-1.1D0BottomSidePointLocation.JPG.4b3e3bebac5758ced2b93ffa79ac4a12.JPG

 

Edited by KaosEngineer
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  • 2 weeks later...

Okay so I'm back into this nightmare. Reinstalled the Aladdin xt plus2 (set to always on) and wired the D0 point on the chip to the point on the bottom of the mobo. I actually didn't think this would do anything as I remembered I'd followed alternate instructions for the D0 point but worth a try. Strangely, although it still reboots the same (still no video either) it now beeps on both reboots. Its weird too as I don't really know where that beeping comes from. Also that pic KaosEngineer posted shows blue wires running to the L1 and BT points, I think I already have the bt point set to always on (with a tiny wire on the modchip), but do I need to run the L1 wire at all? Also the pic mentions 'bridge x point with D0 point if chip doesn't turn on'... wtf?? The L1 point is in between the x point and the D0 point so how would you bridge them? Any thoughts or suggestions would be great, thanks:)

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  • 2 years later...

I have a 1.0 Mobo from a halo edition, I bridged the two points together, and turned the xbox back on to flash the tsop, and got the orange red blinking light, so I removed the bridges and still have the orange red blinking anyway. Currently the console is soft modded, but even if I try to boot with no dvd or hdd i get that same blinking. Any chance a mod chip would help in this situation? i have an old Chameleon chip laying around.

Edited by Slaminger
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I never figured this problem out, I still have that unit lying around for parts. I did have a similar situation much later if I recall correctly and I solved it by cutting the L frame trace. This shouldn't be strictly necessary as it is done only as a precaution to preserve the longevity of the machine, but in my one case that lights pattern was only fixed by cutting that trace. I always meant to go back and try that fix on that parts unit I could never rescue, never found the time though.

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2 hours ago, Slaminger said:

I have a 1.0 Mobo from a halo edition, I bridged the two points together, and turned the xbox back on to flash the tsop, and got the orange red blinking light, so I removed the bridges and still have the orange red blinking anyway. Currently the console is soft modded, but even if I try to boot with no dvd or hdd i get that same blinking. Any chance a mod chip would help in this situation? i have an old Chameleon chip laying around.

A orange led flashing is possibly a solder splash/blob on the motherboard.

I would have a good look over the board and especially look at the IC pins.

Also if you take a high quality pic and post a link others can have a look as well..

 

 

Cheers

SS Dave


Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

 

 

 

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  • 2 years later...
On 9/23/2018 at 3:05 AM, KaosEngineer said:

BT to GND is always-on mode.  Good!

For the quicksolder install method, you solder the modchip directly to the motherboard using the half-moon castellations in the slot across the end of the modchip, not a pin header to connect the modchip to the LPC debug port.

The D0 point must be connected to boot a v1.0 using the modchip's BIOS.  A v1.6 Xbox does not require this connection as it's always booting the BIOS from an LPC connected memory chip - from the Xcyclops chip or a modchip.

Here are a couple of pictures showing installation of the Aladdin XT plus 2 (a clone of the Xenochip AXT4032 modchip). There's a D0 point on top of the motherboard and an alternate location on the bottom side of the printed circuit board.aladdin_xt_4032_diagram_1_0.thumb.jpg.5641de357e6b105ceda9608058242cc9.jpg

5ba7651f84686_v1.0-1.1D0BottomSidePointLocation.JPG.4b3e3bebac5758ced2b93ffa79ac4a12.JPG

 

The Xcyclops runs through the LPC? If this is how the 1.6 works, I wonder WTF LFRAME is and how IT works...

On 11/23/2020 at 9:21 AM, Slaminger said:

I have a 1.0 Mobo from a halo edition, I bridged the two points together, and turned the xbox back on to flash the tsop, and got the orange red blinking light, so I removed the bridges and still have the orange red blinking anyway. Currently the console is soft modded, but even if I try to boot with no dvd or hdd i get that same blinking. Any chance a mod chip would help in this situation? i have an old Chameleon chip laying around.

I wasn't aware that 1.0 boards were around when the Halo edition was being produced...

On 7/31/2023 at 5:25 PM, MadMartigan said:

In the future, please start a new thread instead of reviving one from 3 years ago. 

I didn't even SEE that.

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