I’ve not done a console in a while, so I decided to search for one. I found a perfect candidate – Xbox 360, Xenon, but with a 2009 “Service date”.
What’s unusual is its appearance. You can see that it’s almost spotless.
…and it likely has an Elpis GPU. For those unaware, Elpis is essentially Rhea, but with a pinout suitable for Xenons. The most reliable and least power hungry GPU in AV-only consoles.
That’s what I like – never been opened*.
Optical drive has been replaced with the more reliable Lite-On model. It’s also never been opened before.
Capacitors look fine. Though in my experience these newer and refurbrished consoles get bad capacitors way less frequently than early Xenons, Zephyrs and even Falcons.
Infineon VRAM = able to do RGH with EXT_CLK. For those that don’t know only Samsung branded chips are unable to glitch. While it’s theoretically possible to swap these ICs, the whole procedure is completely not worth it. There is a decent amount of SMD and BGA rework to do when You can, for example, save it for a JTAG-able CPU swap.
Look at the date code – 0538. Early console, probably launch model, that had a failed Y1 (GPU_57).
Right, refurbrished console, “never opened” with a scratched GPU heatsink. I wonder if the extended warranty was accepted despite console being opened before or they just didn’t care and used something metal to scrape the old thermal pad from a different heatsink.
Considering that VRAMs have 2005 manufacture date and the fact that early Xenons had a heatpipe-less heatsink I bet that was done at the factory.
Okay, so the scrathes weren’t a problem for the original pad, but for thermal paste it’s a bit of a hindrance. Likely the difference isn’t even measureable, but it’s there, as the thinner thermal paste layer is the better thermals are.
YES! GPU Elpis. In fact it’s the earliest I have – 2009, week 8.
The glitch chips I have. Neither of them is officially compatible with EXT_CLK, but I feel like using the CR3.
Reading and writing the NAND went fine. No problems here.
I’ve actually never used a CR3 Lite, so I had to do some digging on how to disable the integrated oscillator. It turns out that shorting LK1 does exactly that.
The results of this experiment are… not good. CR3 Lite doesn’t glitch the console at all.
I had to dig out a Matrix V1, my usual go-to glitcher. Fortunately it works just fine, so my wiring wasn’t the problem here.
XeBuild created and written.
So far so good. Time for the disc drive.
Typical issue, present here, is a stretched rubber band that connects DVD tray to the motor.
As You can see the old one was quite a bit larger than the new one.
OK, time to flash LT firmware.
Again, no problems here. I feel like things go too good.
And obviously they did.
After putting everything together laser was completely dead. It wouldn’t even read movie DVDs. No amout of pot tweaking can fix that, time for a laser swap.
I found one spare part in my bin, but marked with a question mark. Thankfully it worked flawlessly. Both games, movies and music was read correctly.
To be honest I don’t even remember where did this laser come from, but I’m glad I saved it.
For those wondering what that weird switch few pictures earlier was it’s my DIY CK3. I probably should get an original one, since it’s almost automatic and I flash quite a bit of these drives. Then again, this one cost almost nothing and it works just fine.
Thanks for reading!