Summary: Functioning 1.3 xbox with xecuter 2.6. Sits on a CRT TV, in factory case w/ metal shielding. No visibly damaged traces, pads or solder splash. After two months of light usage with chip on, starts randomly fragging on power-up. Now, last week after merely pressing the power button mid-boot (chip off), the MS bios, too, starts fragging with a blank screen. Permanently it seems. Considering the bizarre circumstance of the MS bios, the professionalism of my soldering, and the fact that the chip will still load from its banks, however unreliably (playing Fable atm), I think user-inflicted hardware damage can be ruled out. Question of the day: wtf? Anyone ever heard of this?
Do you know who made the drive? If its a Seagate, they are known for causing problems. It shouldn't happen with Western Digital drives.
It's a WD I bought NIB. But this isn't a hard drive issue. Even if you strip out everything but the motherboard and psu, an OG xbox will still load its bios. Yeah you'll hit an error screen, but it *will* load. Likewise, the xecuter bios should display the "config loading" screen and hang there. I googled it to death -- the problem isn't unique, just unsolved. And I'm only here after exhausting the process of elimination, including a multimeter and a magnifying glass. So how it can sometimes load a bios and sometimes not is beyond me.
Operating enviroments? I seriously don't know. Never seen anything like it until now. And I thought my issue was strange: using an unmodded 1.4 Xbox with a WD HDD and a Philips DVD drive. With the cover on it can't load the disc at all. With it off, it reads flawlessly. Now I could keep the drive cover off and use the spindle hub but the Philips drive's hub is guarded by a oddly mounted cover. Sooner or later I need to get a Samsung if I can find one...
If I understand you.... Yeah. The disc drive covers are very sensitive to pressure. Just pinching one will flex the metal inward enough to knock it out of order. The repair is simple enough, but the process is annoying.
Ah its locking up on the disc drive check huh? Never had one have a failure that serious before, good to know you figured out the problem
The laser in the original Xbox my cousin gave me wasn't working right (that's why he gave it to me) so I opened it and cleaned it but it still didn't work. I saw a video online that said to mess with the pot on the laser should fix it. I tried it and it got Halo 2 to load but the game stopped working after it loaded the title screen. I messed with the pot some more and accidently blew the diode in the laser. I guess now I need a new laser or a whole new drive.
I really wish I knew that before I killed the laser. Is there any way I can repair it or do I have to get a new one?
I mean it does focus lock on the disc and I can see the laser touching the disc but I have no idea what happened. There aren't any bad caps at all on the drive :/ The drive has now been completely dismantled and is now for research purposes.
You've burnt it out. You'll need another laser. Good luck, you'll need it. Weird there isn't any place you get replacements from, but you can get pickups for Mega CD and so on which are older..
