Random Video Drop Outs While Gaming.

[budyll]

Hi everyone,

I recently dug out my barely ever used original Xbox. I've bought it brand new in 2002 and used it for about few weeks. Anyways, I was able to successfully softmod it (using Krayzie softmod via Hexen disc). Everything works great! It plays copies of my games from HDD etc. but I have one huge issue, namely the video cuts out randomly for about a second and comes back.

I've tried multiple cables, 2 component cables, regular AV cable which I've had for it as well as just bought Xbox HDMI link cable. All of them do that.

Basically, no matter which game do I play, the screen randomly flickers black for about a second and comes back. I live in the UK so I used PAL to NTSC switcher to be able to play games in 480p as PAL is 480i only in pretty much 95% of the titles.

In the beginning I thought that maybe it is the issue with the PAL to NTSC switcher, but even when I revert it (games are then playing in 480i) it still happens.

I'm seriously lost and don't have a clue why is this happening. I can live with it, but you can imagine how annoying it is at the end.
Is there anyone who experienced a similar issue and knows how to resolve it?
PS. Funny thing is, that while I wasn't able to find a similar issue on that matter about the original XBOX while googling it, I noticed that people have had similar problems with X360 and Xbox One.

Thank you in advance for help people. 

[KaosEngineer]

What TV are you using -  a newer LCD/LED HDTV or old CRT-based one?

[budyll]

I've got a 2yrs old Sony Bravia.

Edited January 16, 2019 by budyll

[samspin]

I have had this issue on one of my Xboxes but other ones I have work absolutely fine. After glancing over the motherboard I can see that some of the capacitors are bulging on this particular Xbox (where they don't on the others I have), leading me to suspect that is the cause. I have yet to try replacing them but if I ever do and find that solves the issue, I will post here again.

[budyll]

20 minutes ago, samspin said:

I have had this issue on one of my Xboxes but other ones I have work absolutely fine. After glancing over the motherboard I can see that some of the capacitors are bulging on this particular Xbox (where they don't on the others I have), leading me to suspect that is the cause. I have yet to try replacing them but if I ever do and find that solves the issue, I will post here again.

Thanks. Like I've mentioned, I haven't used this XBOX since 2003 and it was being very carefully kept so it's pretty much in mint condition. I just finished upgrading Krayzie softmod with the newest one available (Rocky5 one). Maybe this will fix the issue. 

I've had something like that happening with my PS2 in the past and it turned out to be a bad mod install. I know that is a different console with a different firmware etc. but I thought I would mention it anyway.

 

Hopefully I'll be able to resolve this issue. Sometimes it happens just once in let's say 2 hours, just to start doing it every 15 seconds or so for the next 20 minutes. Also, weird thing is that it doesn't happen in the dashboard, any other menus or emulators, just while playing games .

[budyll]

I was able to fix the issue ! I disabled the Enigmah (turned NTSC back to PAL), went into the nkpatcher video options and enabled "force progressive scan". 

Summarizing, my XBOX region is in my native PAL now, 480p works (looks very, very good on my TV; it runs NTSC games without any issues as well) and I've played for over an hour without a single video drop, when normally I would have a good 15 or so of them already.

Ultimately, the culprit was the Enigmah and region change. 

Thanks for trying to help people, I really appreciate it! Hopefully if anybody else will ever experience such issue on their PAL XBOX, they will be able to resolve it by doing what I described above. If only I'd known about such fix before I wasted 3 days trying to Google it ...

Edited January 17, 2019 by budyll