Dev Kit 360 Repair

I wanted to put this in the marketplace however there is a no WTB rule, and I don't know if requesting repairs can be seen as a WTB rule so to respect that rule I will post this in this general section.

Well I'll just throw this out there I trust this place the most, and I trust paypal even more since it backs you from being ripped off so heres the deal. I live in the US and I have bought a defective kit
for $800.00 which I think is completly bull crap. The seller sent me a Dev kit within a week the gpu began to overheat and have blocks apear on the screen and freeze the console.

I spent large amounts of money trying to fix it and in the end it crapped out again within a week. So I sent it in, where I was then sent a replacement kit. Right out of the box this thing was trash,
it had little black marks on the case as if it had been scrapped up against black rubber and it was missing 3/4th the screws and the dvd case was windowed and there was crappy low speed
transparant fans in the back completly raping the originality and quality of the product. When I started it up green blocks instantly apeared on the screen, however not affecting the consoles functionality
no freezing this time.

I went and xclamped it and heat guned it. I then started it and like the last one worked for a week then went back to crapping out. No doubt the GPU is the problem. I contacted the seller and asked him
for a full refund as both consoles he sold me and I spent large sums of money on was defective and despite for totalling out to $1,100 add with shipping and repairs, I asked him for $800.00 I payed him after
I said I would ship it out.

he declined and basically told me that I was well aware of what I was getting, no where in the transaction was I told I was getting a used beat up defective product. Despite me mentioning this he quickly
avoided that subject and just told me that he doesn't give refunds or warrantys for his shitty products. So Now its just sitting here $1,100 about as useful as a toaster.

My request is if anyone here thinks they can repair it for me or help in another way I will be greatful.
I have $60 I know its not much but its all I have left after being financially raped. Please get back to me.

 

Ouch, yeah thats pretty rough. I'm not sure how similar the retail and dev kits are, you might find someone that does 360 repairs. Although if new parts are required then you might run into trouble.

Whenever talk of 360 dev kits turn up I usually warn people off buying them. I know a 360 developer who looks after his kit and still they die. You can't call microsoft as often the kits legal status is grey.

Most devkits get scratched, written on, beaten up. This is generally part of the "charm". My guess is that developers do it so they don't get stolen to do demos.

Not many people offer a warranty on devkits either. Getting one replacement is actually good.

 

No offense, but if someone bought something from me and I replaced it, then the buyer decided to go into the unit and piss around, solder here and there, or even just take the lid off and poke about then frankly you'd be on your own!

It's a tough call, these early build units are in a word 'shit' and Microsoft were obliged to recall all defective retail units, which worked out well for the vast majority of legit owners unless they'd taken the law unto their own hands and peeled the seal! On a dev kit you are running the risk of it going down the pan. I've had 2 units, both running perfectly. Sold both and they still run without a glitch! I count myself really lucky and both buyers thus far have been really happy with them.

What you really want with such items is to not jump at the first one that comes along. Find a reputable seller who, prior to purchase agrees to give you assistance if the unit turns up faulty. Even the best seller in the World would walk away if you had attempted to modify the unit.

I wish you luck with it though. That was a lot of cash to fork out and be without a working unit.

 

You could always try a big electronics repair company like Retronix - if you've shelled out that much on the machine, you might be best having the motherboard repaired professionally. But that's not gonna stop it going again tbh..

 

I dont understand why you accepted the second one when it was clearly been messed around with. You should of taken action then and asked for a refund. I dont even understand why you messed around with the first one.

 

His refund was denied and most they would give him back is a replacement, which was in worse condition.

 

First off this is just how I view an item when I buy it. With my disclaimer said...When buying these type of items I have never been so lucky to have a warrenty on a electronic piece. The best That is hoped for is it works when I first get it. You nor the seller have any idea on how long any electronic piece of equipment will work and in this area especially. If your buying this type of equipment and expect a warrenty it is better not to buy in this area. For me sometimes I have been lucky and it works other times I have used what I bought and pieced together parts to make a complete unit. For me in this situation it worked when I received it and if I took it upon myself to fix it a week later I would not expect anything in return and as for scratched or written on ... we are lucky to find anything in this area is the attitude I take. Maybe I am just strange but that is how I see it.

 

Well you guys got a pretty backwards opinion about it. I guess I had worded it wrong. The first kit I recieved I never tampered with I spoke to the middle man that sold me the kit and he agreed that I should attempt to fix it on my own and if it didn't work to get back to him, I never modified the console I opened it up and heatguned the gpu AFTER it had broken down. I just want to point out I never expected the seller to take responsibility for something out of his control. I had payed money to buy a working kit. The seller never mentioned they were recyvled or refirbished, thats strike one. One replacement is kind enough, depends on how you see it as I had to pay him just to look at it and say, oh well and send me a broken one right out of the box. Paypal secures these payments. You may be looking at it from a you get what you get since, but when it comes to reality if you bought a demo kit and someone sent you one that was smashed to peices and told you oh well can't help you, you would take action. Because my friend was involved in the transaction and he was only relaying the devkit I did not take action using paypal because the person I payed was a innocent middle man. Point is in the buisness world you sell working products and the seller neglected to mention the condition of the product and told me to deal with my 800 dollar theft, because thats what it is no matter how you see it, I didn't get what I payed for and was being drained of money more and more for something that was the sellers responsibility, I even found out from a member on this site that the specific second devkit I got were bought for no more then 100 dollars a peice and all needed repairs, those who bought them repaired them with a simple xclamp and sold them to suckers like me. I mean its nice to see you guys have opinions about things but if we can actually focus on a solution that would be even more splendid.

 

Oh god, that sure sucks dude.

My biggest apologies.

 

The only place that sells them new is microsoft & you need deep pockets. If you buy them from somewhere else then you have to hope they were bought up in bankrupt stock, as the only other way they turn up is if they are stolen.

I'd claim on the insurance. If you're spending that amount of money then I'd want to know that if it went missing or was damaged in transit then I wouldn't be out of pocket. If it turned out that it was sent that way then I'd do my best to reverse the payment, I'm quite paranoid though so I'd only pay a way where that was an option.

At which point using paypal is pointless, you might as well have just stuffed some money into an envelope.

He's obviously in it to make money, pretty much what all business revolves around is buying something cheap and then selling it at a higher price to people that don't want the hassle of doing something themselves.

I'm not sure I'd even take a 100 dollar punt on a 360 dev kit.

I don't personally think there is going to be an easy solution pop up here. I'm not aware of anyone with the skills necessary just hanging around.

I realise thats no help to you. Hopefully someone will read this thread before doing what you did.

FWIW I have bought stuff that was supposed to work and didn't, sometimes I've fixed it and other times it's waiting in my todo box. I've been trying to talk a friend into doing some surface mounted repairs for a while. He wants some software written, but I haven't had the time to do it.

 

I cant actually be bothered reading everything you wrote as you cant be bothered to space it out properly.

 

Its cool guys I mean crap happens, I'm over it now I just need a way to fix it. I mean what I'm really aiming at is. Does anyone here have knowlege on how to repair an xbox 360 with a gpu problem? Anyone reball? Does anyone know someone who can and if not have any recommendations or modifications I can do?

 

Don't think this post will help you much mate, since I guess you have read up on the subject, but I'll share what I have just in case. Don't take it as facts, only my understanding of information made available at various sites - mostly based on notes I made while reading up on the subject over at XBH a while back.

As you know a lot of the early 360's have been having issues. The issues have not only been related to the GPU, as learned by experience and indicated by the various 3RL secondary error codes, they can also be related to the Xenon, RAM chips and south bridge. Although there seem to be consensus that most of the issues are due to damaged solder joints resulting in connection problems between key components and motherboard, there is still a lot of speculation about the underlying causes. Based on the published research so far, it seems to be a combination of:

(A) poor soldering in the production lines resulting in "cold" solder joints
(B) pressure on motherboard causing the motherboard to flex, especially when hot, due to the X-clamps which has no support from the chassis.
(C) not enought heat transfer resulting in overheating, especially with regard to the conditions above.

Issues B and C can be addressed by giving the motherboard some support from the chassis and installing enhanced cooling solutions. This may postpone problems, but without solving issue A a RROD at some point should be no surprice. There is however no simple DIY solution for fixing issue A.

Options that could be tried to fix issue A include:


1. Reflowing critical components without removing them from the motherboard.

There is pro equipment available for this job. Below is a xbox 360 specific brochure from one supplier, which also provides some pretty good insight on issue A:
http://www.martin-smt.de/pdfs/div/xbox_manncorpr.pdf
By contacting suppliers like this, maybe they can put you in touch with repair shops with professional equipment, that can help you.


2. Removing the components (especially the GPU), clean and fix them up, and finally reinstall them.

Since the GPU, CPU and SB all are BGA (Ball Grid Array) components, this involves reballing. Team MODFREAKz has published a lot of information on this over at XBH, including these nice photos:
Clean desoldered GPU
http://www.freepler.de/userdaten/38928917/bilder/xbox360/STP61789.JPG
GPU with a steel stencil filled with BGA solder balls, ready to be reballed
http://www.freepler.de/userdaten/38928917/bilder/xbox360/STP62243.JPG
Reballed GPU
http://www.freepler.de/userdaten/38928917/bilder/xbox360/STP62248.JPG

TMF has also published informaton on the stencils and solder balls used, and where to order them.
http://www.freepler.de/userdaten/38928917/html/stencil.doc
as well as the temperature profile needed when reinstalling the BGAs
http://www.lrr.in.tum.de/~acher/bga/tmprof.jpg

Can be pretty useful, if you get in touch with a company that does reballing, you can make it easy for them to help you.


3. Same as 2, but replacing the components.

Remember that the NAND flash is linked to CPU (pairing data and the keyvault). If you swap the CPU you need to also replace/reflash the NAND with a NAND flash set up with the corresponding CPU key.

I do think it should be possible to install the CPU and NAND from a devkit onto a retail motherboard. The NAND pinouts are the same, but since the dev flash is bigger than the retail flash (64MB vs 16MB), I believe a resistor needs to be removed/installed to change the addressing scheme. Study the motherboards and the NAND datasheets if you want to find out.


CF

 

Get a stock 360, and replace the CPU, GPU, RAM, etc using the retail mobo, and install a good cooling system, watercooled or the such.

 

The GPU isn't linked to the CPU or such right? Meaning you could grab a retail GPU, put it on, reball your shit and it should work?

 

Then you would have go to for option 3 - replacing the components.

A devkit Xenon can however not be replaced with a retail Xenon - even if the CPU key is known. Fuseset line #1 is different on devkit CPUs and makes it "impossible" to convert a retail CPU into a devkit CPU.

You can swap GPUs between two retails motherboards (TMF has done it), so it should work to install a retail GPU in a devkit. It is not linked to the CPU. The SB have been swapped too without any problems.

 

Thanks for the interest and concern and all the help you've supplied! However the things listed above is what I have been looking at for a while, the people I contacted locally on craigslist offering repair services actually took their ads down after I contacted them seeing as I requested reballing and heatsync replacement jobs and many only thought a 360 fix required a xclamp being removed, they took their ads down to learn more before doing fixes. In other words nobody near me has equipment capable of reballing or replacing chips and I don't know anyone online who does, which is why I requested a recommendation, so if anyone knows a guy who will do it please let me know. You've all been a huge help so far helping pinpoint my options, now I just need to find a service to put it into practice.

PS: andoba, wouldn't that make it a retail box with watercooling? XD

 

I mean, desolder the GPU and solder it in place of the old GPU in the devkit.