A story of failure

[eyeliner]

Hello, friends!

Here I am, telling you the story of an initial success that then became abject failure.
I hope this becomes a story worthy of appreciation by some of you, and I hope it motivates someone out there to not give up, despite me utterly destroying my XBOX 360, despite me having a strong suspiction that the console was already prepared to die one day. I received it, unhacked but it had bits of corrosion on the DVD drive, the RF shield, and the Wifi Module had stains in the connector.

And the console reeked.

But couldn't find anything other than that.

I identified it as a Corona, 16Mb (didn't know that it was a good thing beforehand) and had all the necessary hardware to make RGH3 a success. And happily, confidently I started the process.

Opening the console up is a bit of a challenge, but nothing to ground-breaking. Hacking away, I got the console down to the motherboard and lo and behold, the X-clamp is retardedly easy to remove with a pointed plier like this:

I was ready to start proper!

Easy to connect the RPi and I have NEVER had a reading failure that was not provoked by me, either by not having the console properly powered, the output folder with old NAND dumps or whatever. 22 AWG wire, with length over 20CM. Never once failed. I can't believe so many people fail in here. Regardless, I got my nand dumps, matched. Everything was perfect.

Here the disaster starts brewing.

I connect both wires. Good length, solid solder points. Got XEll installed, booted, got my CPU key. Felt amazing. Carried on, with confidence. Hacked the nand proper, flashed it, changed the thermal paste. Last test, booted the console to the dashboard, tested the eject boot. I felt the top hacker.

All looking good, I seated the motherboard in the RF shield and then tried to boot it, as this would be the last time the motherboard would be easily accessible. It did not boot. Unplug all devices, replug all devices and tried to boot. No go. Expelatives came out from my mouth. This is not supposed to happen. This could not happen.

But it did. Might be a point being grounded by the RF shield? I removed the motherboard, turned it upside down. Analise with a magnifying glass. Only 3 major solder points, and they were as I hoped they would be.

But still, yours truly decided (wrongly, I believe now) to Review the Soldering Job™. Everything disconnected, original NAND flashed, console boots. Redo the steps, and XEll doesn't! Let's review the soldering try it again. No XEll again. From here on, I have been redoing the work over and over, basically destroying the solder points.

Until after so many tries, the console doesn't boot anymore. I can't read the NAND either, it's dead and I this it has been caused by some static energy that possibly fried the NAND chip, if that is even posible. Or my soldering iron (or other device touched some component of the motherboard with the power on or power supply connected.

My very first modding failure.

I ended up getting another hacked XBOX (unfortunately, it's a 4GB one) and been setting it up. But I'll try again one day. I hope you will too. The motherboard is still near to me, myself hoping to bring it back to life, but possibly it's too far gone.

Don't give up even if you fail once or twice. Learning is a process met with an amount of failures.

 

[eyeliner]

Great news to my log book!

I've bridged both fuses pads with a bit of solder and was able to bring the console to a state where it can turn on.

I've promptly rewrote the original NAND. It boots to a red light. I assume it identifies the fuses not being there and to prevent overcurrent, it doesn't boot.

This the state I've left the poor thing after reviewing the solder points.

I can hardly believe I managed to mangle the area as it is, even being decent at soldering.

I have hope, now.

Post automatically merged: Jan 17, 2024

IT LIVES!!!!!

A lot of work ahead, still.
I feel amazing, this has been a labor of maximum difficulty for me. You can see the wires there standing in for some vias and other that I had no faith in. Ugly like a son of a bitch.

But the console boots. And that is what matters.

 

[eyeliner]

And it's done!

It is alive! For some reason, a couple of things happened: it comes on and off randomly, and can't boot XeLL.

No mater what I do, I can't get the coveted blue screen again. I know that the soldering is solid, but either the cables don't have enough width, or there is something somewhere that actively is preventing XeLL to boot.

I guess I know what my last step will be. Thicker wire. There's nothing more I can do, so, the last resort is the only viable option.

The second issue is something that I believe will be more prevalent as time goes on. By hearing a ding you know the power button was pressed, yes? Well, the console now does it by itself, and I managed to identify the problem. It is the flat cable that was probably moved around too much and became unstable. I tested the console without the flat cable being connected and turning it on with the gamepad. No ding, no auto shutdown or turn on.

Really strange, but I guess I can look for a replacement.

 

[BigOnYa]

Good for you to not give up. Sometimes you must fail before you win. And failing is the best way to learn, not to fail again. Trust me I have burnt up a few consoles in my day modding them, a couple of those 360 boards also. I used to buy RROD phat boxes and reball/ reflow them, and got good at my winning percentages, but got tired of doing them. The slims are much better units, esp with RGH3 nowdays, so I strickly only look for them anymore. I think you are now ready to get another unit and try again. Good luck and cheers.

 

[eyeliner]

Thing is, I don't think I need a replacement. I got one hacked and one unhacked (this one).

I have no idea why it doesn't boot Xell anymore, as it has booted it ONCE.

It might have something to do with the dashboard version?

Either way I got really good at soldering small components and looking at schematics and finding the alternative points.

Looking back, it's a definite win.

If I end up giving up on hacking the console, the used games for it are reasonably cheap.

I'll do a couple more tries and then call it quits.

The poor console has suffered enough.

 

[BigOnYa]

That's cool. It is always fun to tinker. I just put a clear case on one my RGH slims yesterday. I like it.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/things-you-have-fixed-modded-recently.366250/post-10337959

 

[SylverReZ]

Great news to my log book!

I've bridged both fuses pads with a bit of solder and was able to bring the console to a state where it can turn on.

I've promptly rewrote the original NAND. It boots to a red light. I assume it identifies the fuses not being there and to prevent overcurrent, it doesn't boot. View attachment 414295

This the state I've left the poor thing after reviewing the solder points.

I can hardly believe I managed to mangle the area as it is, even being decent at soldering.

The resistors below could go with touching up a bit. What bridging these pads do on-top is that it disables the e-fuses, meaning that you can downgrade to an older dashboard like blades.

 

[eyeliner]

The resistors below could go with touching up a bit. What bridging these pads do on-top is that it disables the e-fuses, meaning that you can downgrade to an older dashboard like blades.

Interesting... Might that be a reason as to why Xell messes up?
Edit: what resistors do you mean, exactly?

 

[SylverReZ]

Interesting... Might that be a reason as to why Xell messes up?

https://consolemods.org/wiki/Xbox_360:Disabling_the_eFuse_Burning_Circuit

 

[console]

I heard similar many problems to fuses and capacitors blow up from many Xbox 360 motherboards are going to failures on wide internet after many people compliant on them! Microsoft company did terrible design made worst Xbox 360 hardware around the world. Very surprise to me and us about Xbox 360 hardware issues. Wow!

 

[eyeliner]

I heard similar many problems to fuses and capacitors blow up from many Xbox 360 motherboards are going to failures on wide internet after many people compliant on them! Microsoft company did terrible design made worst Xbox 360 hardware around the world. Very surprise to me and us about Xbox 360 hardware issues. Wow!

From what I can gather, at least from my limited sample, is that when consoles boot or shutdown by themselves with that recognizable "ding" being present, is that the flat cable must be on its way out.

Remember the PS2 gamepads with random inputs? Same cause, same resolution: replace the flat cable.

I can't even make a guess at how many devices were thrown away for such a small problem.

 

[TheStonedModder]

From what I can gather, at least from my limited sample, is that when consoles boot or shutdown by themselves with that recognizable "ding" being present, is that the flat cable must be on its way out.

Remember the PS2 gamepads with random inputs? Same cause, same resolution: replace the flat cable.

I can't even make a guess at how many devices were thrown away for such a small problem.

It’s definitely the ribbon cable behind the faceplate. They are super easy to scratch causing random dings and are also hella susceptible to static

My 360 slim used to turn itself on and off whenever it was thunder storming

 

[eyeliner]

Well, one more entry regarding this beast. Finally, I was able to recover my gamertag and re-download some games!

Bad thing is, it's really hard to re-download quickly whatever I had all those years ago. Damn it's difficult, and I can't seem to be able to do it through the site, as it points me to the xbox app, and I can't find my download history there...

Oh well...