Since I’m still experimenting with these posts format I decided to do a little live commenting. I probably won’t do it again, because quality of this post is low, even for my standards. Without further ado:
Today my bench is visited by an Arcade machine… Xbox 360 Arcade. Nothing unusual, as it’s a late 2008 Falcon – revised, high-TG 80nm Rhea GPU, 65nm CPU, not JTAG-able dashboard. However, it has a few things I’d like to change in it. Since I’ve got a full bundle I’ll look into refurbrishing the controller. Right of the bat the LB button is not clicky, so likely the button is damaged. Due to sheer age of these contollers analog potentiometers likely will need to be changed or at least cleaned, as well of general cleaning of ‘gamer juices’ all over the controller. Let’s start with interesting stuff though, shall we?
Console
Before I start, I’m going to roughly say what I intend to do. First of all, console is generally very clean, but wiping the shell with 99% IPA and dedusting the insides won’t hurt it. After that I’m going to repair the faceplate USB cover. Following that I’ll jailbrake this console and disk drive. Succeeding that I’ll repaste, throw it back into one box and stress test it. Sounds easy enough? Let’s see how many things won’t go according to my plan.
Just turning the console around and I already sigh. “IKSBOX SERVICE”, sign of somebody being in there. Quite likely it was sent only for a repaste or DVD firmware change, but as any other technician, I don’t really like working on things that were worked on previously. At least the console works, so the magical question “Why wasn’t it fixed and sold as ‘not tested’?” kind of doesn’t make sense here.
Just taking off the faceplate confirms my suspicions – disk drive likely has been flashed.
Repairing the faceplate obviously brings first trouble, as the plastic holding the USB cover broke off. Oh well, nothing a bit of plastic stolen from a bottle cap couldn’t fix.
Further dissasembly reveals that bottom cover is split in half – there is no fix for that – I just sent it flying straight to the garbage can.
Going even further shows something written with a marker – “wiatrak 05.01.15”, meaning ‘fan 05.01.2015’. That’s fine, but my question is why are there so many screws missing?
Oh, right. Obviously.
The second worst mod for Xbox 360 – 12V fan mod. Yeah, the fan assembly goes straight to the garbage can. Why… Just why? Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should. SMC will control fans just fine, I understand that there were misconceptions with Xenons, but late Falcons? At least it works…
Taking the heatsinks off reveals… THAT IT WASN’T EVEN REPASTED? AND IT HAD 12V MOD?
Come on IKSBOX SERVICE guy, you’re better than this.
You know what? Whatever, I’m just going to do my part, and stop worrying about the condition.
Since my JR-P2 wires didn’t come while I was doing this console I had to use Matrix flasher, it’s not bad at all, it’s just slow. I read NAND, wrote XELL, did the wiring for RGH3, rebuilt the NAND and cleaned it. Fortunately it boots instantly.
But there is a problem. Fan doesn’t spin at all. Without it voltage is fine, but with it connected voltage tanks to about 1.6V. OK, time for a schematic. Q3M2 seems fine, D3A1 is fine, resistors test fine. Last thing I checked was Q3M1 and… seems fine. No shorts, outside of the circuit tests OK, only beta(hfe) is higher, but what else could it be? Resistors test fine, input signal is fine, at least compared to other Falcons, so it has to be that. Sure enough, after changing that PNP transistor fans fired up.
With that in mind do I know why there was 12V mod?
Yes.
Do I regret what I said?
Yes and no.
12V mod is still stupid, but this fix was tricky and kind of hard to figure out without a schematic. Good thinking from the technician though – he replaced D3A1, though (obviously looking at the schematic) I have no idea why – if it was shorted fans would be always at 100% and if it was open… well, nothing would change, as it’s a protection diode against back voltage from fans. There obviously were some other solutions, such as microcontroller + NTC, but let’s be honest – 12V mod did the job and was extremely cheap.
That’s about it for the motherboard side, disk drive though… was really easy to refurbrish. Just dedust, spread some PTFE onto gears, flash it and that’s it.
AS IF.
Laser was so dead that it didn’t even read DVD movies. I decided to flash it though, because I had a bricked drive with a known good laser. After swapping boards it reads everything like new. Just like I like it.
With that done it was time to wrap it up and encase the system. I grabbed a few screws to replace the missing ones and brought it back to factory-like state.
Time for the most enjoyable time – testing.
HDD
In case of HDD things are very easy – buy a WD Blue 2,5″ drive, flash it and replace. Nothing interesing. What could go wrong?
Gee, I don’t know, maybe EVEN GETTING THE DRIVE I ORDERED?
I wanted a WD drive, since it’s flashable to be usable by all consoles, not only the RGH ones. Instead I got a mediocre (in terms of S.M.A.R.T.) drive. Whatever, it will work fine with this console.
Let’s just swap it and forget about it.
Controller
Controller came with a notice that LB button is mushy. And it really is, I can still press it in the middle of the plastic cover, but to the side? Forget about it. And since I’m going in, I’ll change the analogs, because they are having a tough time getting back to the center.
Soon enough I knew why it felt mushy – liquid damage, fortunately, nothing spilled on the mainboard.
I personally like to switch both buttons so as not to have uneven force and sound on either one.
Last thing that popped up during testing – left analog drift. This could be easily corrected with a “drift fix PCB”, but I didn’t have one, so I just found out what resistor to solder and that was it.
Controller is done.
Thanks for reading!
Link: https://xenonlibrary.com/wiki/Rhea