Killed another XBox360 yesterday...
 

I now have 5 of them and only 2 work. The good news is the XBox720 will be here soon and people will be dumping the 360s (so I can pick up cheap replacements).


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all i need in life

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Wasn't there some sort of "stacked quarters" fix for these things or something?

Tons of fixes. All my broken ones have been "fixed" more than once. Sometimes you burn them up trying to fix them and sometimes you crack traces or joints on the motherboard (that is how I killed the one yesterday). They finally have a hack for the 360 similar to the XBox1 where you can run homebrew code, etc. I might go that route for an upcoming project instead of trying to fix another broken box.

I didn't get an Xbox until the "slim" came out. I don't appreciate consumer electronics that don't last.

I use two quarters to fix them
Take the mainboard, pop some heatsink compound down on the chips, pop on two quarters.
use a mini torch and heat up enough till the quarter becomes discolored. one discolored I heat it for another 5-10 seconds and then let it cool down.

Case wish drill out the holes, get rid of the orginal x clamps, new screws and nylon washers

Personally I would like a older one to run linux on it.

What are you doing to fix them? I haven't had any problems with burning them up or killing traces.

I've modded the cooling systems (removing plastic/metal behind the fan for better flow, building walls between the two fans so one cools the cpu and the other cools the gpu, covering the top of the cpu/gpu heat sinks so the air pulls through the fins instead of around them, lots of electrical tape to seal air leaks around the fan shrouds), deleted the xclamps and replaced them with screws/washers, replaced the thermal compound, reflowed solder with a heat gun as well as removing the fan from the gpu and letting it cook for 30 minutes or so.

I've killed three of them so far. On the first one I got fed up with fixing it so I pretty much just wrapped it in a towel and let it burn itself up. The second one failed after 10+ attempts with all normal fixes (would work for a while and then die again). The third was killed yesterday when I forgot to add the washers between the gpu heat sink and the motherboard. Tightened the screws to the point that I could hear the MB start cracking. I've been on night shift for a while so I was zombied out from "jet lag" and just wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. Stupid!

I wouldn't use a hot air gun, heat isn't direct enough
if anything grab a mini solder\torch from home depot\lowes\radio shack etc
some quarters

more direct, no need to let the xbox overheat or to use the dumb towel idea.
Ever time I can power it back on to life just fine and I still run the stock fans\ fan cover without any modifying with no issues

same tekinque I use with various electronics, laptops gpus that happen to have same problem as xbox 360 and recover them just fine.

do you happen to have like a 20GB hdd for sale from one the dead boxes and their dvd drives?

Not trying to argue, but my system was five 360s in a lan configuration. If you are running one system you only have 20% the chance for failure that I had. Couple that with the fact that all systems were purchased as broken pieces of shit and you can understand what I have been dealing with. I most definitely did not have $1500 (or whatever five new systems cost) when I started this journey. The heat gun served me well and got the systems up and running many times. If I can get my wife to agree (or at least leave the house for a while) I'll throw the one I screwed up yesterday in the oven and let it cook for a while. As stated, the towel was used to purposely burn up the XBox. I would have never done something that stupid if I was trying to fix it. I'll look around and see if I can find my micro torch and try your quarter method. Can't hurt (unless I heat it up too much).


FWIW, I just brought system #2 back to life using my "overheat" method. It has been out of service for quite a while and I cannot remember which hack I had done on it. Hopefully I can play a few system link games tonight.

my roommate brought his xbox360, I brought my SNES. guess which gets more play?

This:

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lol silly boy, we have our own weiners, no need for a dildo

Well, I'm giving up. After two days of work I took 3 broken 360's and got one working. Not too bad considering I had given up on the one I got working AND it had the correct hack on it to play newer games. I tried the Techsalvager quarter trick but it didn't work for me (I think it made it worse but who knows - started throwing a different code). I built a little solder reflow station out of a heat gun, aluminum foil and a shop light but that didn't help. I might revisit these two boxes sometime and try heating them up in the oven (lots of shielding over the caps and plastic bits of course).

FWIW, one good thing (maybe) did come out of all of this. When the box died a few days ago it killed my wife's profile. I learned how to remove the drive, restore a hosed profile, and get the goodies (game saves, etc) off it. I even modified her Borderlands character so she could keep up with me. I say "maybe" because as soon as you start cheating in games they aren't fun any longer. Hopefully I didn't mess up.

what code?

0011
0002
Some others. I forgot to add that I just clipped the trace for the thermal signal so hopefully it wouldn't immediately shut down on me (would only run for 2 seconds as a time). Didn't help.

I've seen MB / DVD board combos selling for $40 so it isn't worth my time messing with it again right now. Everything is being stuffed into a bag and stored for a future time when I have nothing to do. Maybe I'll dip it in acid or use it for target practice.

I popped my first E74 code on a 5yr old machine about a month ago. Paid a local guy $40 to fix it. Been working fine for about 3 weeks now.

IIRC, it's been on 3 different aircraft carriers. For about 2 months, it was directly beneath the flight deck under the 2-wire on Vinson sitting on a shelf hard-mounted to the bulkhead. It never flinched... even when our AC trunk got shut off and it was 90* in the room for week.

I hate when electronics fail as well, but I'll be damned if I'm going to buy another one new. If this one ever fails again, I'll get a used (but fixed) one from this guy who fixed mine. I know guys who've bought half-a-dozen 360's over the years... Microsoft wins again.

I bought all of mine used so MS didn't get any "new" money from me. I'm into System Link gaming (which is all but dead since MS wants you to use Live) so it is really expensive to buy multiple systems unless you buy them used.

I've decided I will get one of the older systems so I can do the JTAG hack on it. It sucks that I have one sitting here but the MB is so crapped up that I cannot use it. These things are getting a little rare. Was thinking about going to the local pawnshop and seeing if they would let me boot up each of their 360s for $1 a piece to see if there were any good machines there. Has to be at least one in the store - I would think...

I heard that Microsoft looses money on xbox 360's and makes money on games.