Power supplies - looking for resources, documentation, schematics. mod ideas etc

me_man · Jan 23, 2023

I'm going through a power supply (150W) and would like to be able to compare the models, I've found a schematic for a 175W model, but have been unable to find one for my 150W or for the 203W model. It would be nice to see what they work with as I consider possible upgrade to filter capacitors in this area.
It also interests me that there exists what seems to be a pretty rare 213W model, I'm not so interesten in the extra 10W, especially as it's on the 5V rail, but what caught my eye is that it's grounded, which may help with electrical noise.

FAST6191 · Jan 23, 2023

A grounded one?
Missed that being a thing. Normally when we were teaching people about flashing drives on the things then if they used the 360 to power the drive (was SATA but with custom power connector, if you did not buy the standalone tool you could have used it) we had to get them to join the cases together lest floating voltage be a problem.

Anyway I don't know what people will have here. With the earliest models being the high power supply ones, bans and RRoD the world was so awash in supplies (which only tended to be lost to physical loss and misuse, though plenty were sold without supplies/cables/controllers) that were at least forwards compatible until the slims and lites that very little has ever been pondered here. At most the slims were noted occasionally as being prone to dust buildup inside the PSUs so clean that out. It was also largely after the capacitor plague that we don't even have that as a concern. Beyond that even most would probably go the other way today and adapt a PC power supply for the task.

As far as replacing components to make for a better output rating (and also having to deal with the mechanical blockages, which were not traditionally much of a problem as nobody wanted RRoD prone, noisy and annoying to flash models) that prevent insertion of lower rated devices) then I am not sure what would have been cheaped out on, or if you can get away with affixing a strip of heatsink to something that they decided not to go for originally, or indeed if they built it to work in tropics but you are in somewhere cold that the baseline suffices, or indeed if they went all the fun with sense resistors on lines to shut down if it got pushed too hard.

me_man · Jan 23, 2023

Yes, rare, but a grounded 213W power supply was a small run thing, for some kind of dev kit or something like that I read. It has the same 16.5A rating on the 12V rail as the 203W supply has, but 3x the rating for the 5V rail at 3A instead of 1A. Made to power quite a bit more 5v something or another, some ttl stuff perhaps? You could use it for usb power I guess.
Heres a listing for one https://www.ebay.com/itm/225365240523
Label pic - https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/nBMAAOSwqjVjypWI/s-l1600.jpg

I'd like to see how they did it. Maybe just a few caps to ground to dump the noise? With a class 2 supply, with no earth ground, there's still noise to be dealt with. WIth an unpolarized supply, there is a 50/50 chance to be significant "touch current" (low current, considerable potential) when parts of the power supply designed to deal with that fail. (and a little bit in working order). Converting it to a grounded class 1 supply is something I'm considering, though not anywhere near set on doing.

I wouldn't doubt if the 203w original supply was more stout. I have seen a schematic and a video of the 175w supply, and just at a glance, it's quite a bit different than my 150W brick.. (1 big mains filter cap compared to my 2 small ones, the most obvious thing.) Probably all I will change is to increase the voltage ratings and increase the probably the capacitance at the output. I'd be really nice to see schematics of all of them though.

I had thought about using a power supply from a computer. That would probably be the best option for the cleanest, most long term reliable power source. It would be nothing to use the 360's power on signal to fire a transistor on the power on input to an atx supply.

I did manage to flash my lite-on drive without any special equipment, I found a video called "the hillbilly way" to flash....

I don't know if it's part of the "capacitor plague" but the green sanyo filter caps that I had a few bad confirmed visually on my board, which I'm replacing, I've found more than one other post about those caps being bad specifically. Them first or the ones in the power supply? I don't know, but they work on the same rail, so they help each other out, or stress each other more when one fails.

FAST6191 · Jan 23, 2023

Were the dev kits in question the ones with a "side car"? I could see that doing better from a boost to 5V levels.

If you find out more I would be interested. For the powers involved then they were probably still on the bubble between old school iron core transformers and switch mode at the time, plus them probably not wanting power supply issues following the original xbox ones that saw various cable reissues and them shipping out a bunch of AFDDs (including to Europe where such things were not a common means of doing stuff*).

Dead caps on them is interesting to note. Them being passively cooled for the earlier gens and fairly enclosed means it is not entirely unexpected but it is something that is not part of the usual list of things to check here.

*video, somewhat unrelated but oh well

me_man · Jan 23, 2023

I think I do remember reading about a "side car" when first reading about the 213W supplies. Can't say anything else about it other than that I'd assume it consumes up to 10W @ 5VDC.

I 'd be surprised to see a linear voltage regulator on a device with that much power so recent. It is an option I considered to make, for a noise free rock solid power supply, but the transformer and regulator wouldn't come too cheap.

I just briefly looked up the "AFDD".... Microsoft: "WHOOPS!"
I guess it's a little more tricky to think of something that will work in so many different countries. Here in the US, most outlets have been grounded for a long time, and polarized even a little bit longer. In other countries, maybe not, in a lot of countries the two wires both have balanced potential to ground etc. not to mention the 100v-250v 47Hz-63Hz inputs these supplies have to cope with.
But that might be a point towards thinking about a plan to ground it.

I had a few visibly bad caps on the motherboard, that filter the 12V rail all basically in parallel. I would not have felt right without looking at the output of the power supply.
So far, I saw about 40mV of high frequency noise with a 9ohm load as is. I want to make up close to a 1 ohm resistor to check noise and ripple as is before changing anything.

One other thing that video make me think of is connections. I don't suspect anything but checking everything over is more than worth it. An intermittent connection could cause all sorts of chaos.

UnpredictableEnigma · Jan 26, 2023

well xbox 360 psus are just modified atx power supplies same as a pc, in fact you can just hook a pc atx power supply to a 360 simply using a few discrete components and a spare 360 power cord or connector, or use the 360 psu as a atx power supply although you need to add your own power filtering and i think 360 power bricks only produce a 5v 1amp only for standby voltage iirc so you also need to regulate your own 5v output

Post automatically merged: Jan 26, 2023

also the 213w and higher models are for powerbricks for 360 devkits iirc as they can facilitate hardware expansions for development purposes and have slightly higher hardware spec than a retail unit, like 64mb+ nands, and devkits are the only 360 that have 1-2GB of ram if you have the right one, retails only usually have a 16mb nand, except for big block jaspers, and 512MB of total ram, and no expansion capability, every 360 game will always run and look better on a devkit than its retail counterpart

me_man · Jan 27, 2023

Every computer power supply I've ever looked at besides laptops use class 1 grounded power supplies, whether atx or the older at standards. I wouldn't use a 360's brick for a computer. Using a computer supply for a 360 on the other hand seems like a good idea for clean reliable power.

The 213W supply may be a class 1 supply, as it's cord connector does have a ground prong. I haven't seen any schematics, or pictures, or read any reports of anyone who's opened one up and shared the details of them though.

Power supplies - looking for resources, documentation, schematics. mod ideas etc

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