I have a original xbox (it's a v1.2 afaik) which I added an extra 64MB of RAM to. It was working before the modification, but I hadn't tested it for about half a year or so, which is where it gets interesting. So I happily added the RAM which I purchased new from eBay (matching numbers, etc) and checked it for shorts and connectivity, all is well. (I've performed about 10 RAM upgrades in the past, all successful). The problem is that when I try to boot up the Xbox, the Xbox LED goes green for a second and the fan spins, the LED on my DuoX2 flashes red in that time too, then it power cycles, and the process repeats one more time before going into a "on" state where the Xbox LED is going from Green->Red every 1/2 a second or so. During this "on" state, nothing is on screen, and the LED on the DuoX2 is flashing Red every few seconds. Sounds like a hardware fault is being found and the Xbox doesn't like it. Things I've tried that all result in the same behaviour: Remove modchip Use a Aladdin XT Use a different Power Supply Don't connect the HDD/DVD So I carefully scanned the board for issues visually and noticed that the capacitor used to store a charge for the battery had leaked and had eaten a trace (which I removed and repaired the trace). Does anyone know what else lies near that area that could be causing the Xbox to not boot? (It mostly looks like circuitry related to the BIOS "battery" and I would've figured it should still boot?). Or, is my RAM just incompatible (this is the first time I've bought from this seller)?
Assuming there aren't any shorts on the RAM, how does incompatible RAM installed make the Xbox behave? (I've heard if you take RAM from a v1.6 and install it as extra RAM in another Xbox, it doesn't like it, does anyone know how that behaves?)
Had something like that occur to me yesterday when tsoping this 1.0 Xbox, was odd.. Usually use the top 2 points always without fail but yesterday one of the points next to the tsop up on the top of the board would produce no video yet no fragging if it was bridged... Was a WTF moment, so went on and bridged all 3 points including the one on the bottom, viola it worked once I undid the one right next to the tsop for the "write" enable bridging process. Not sure if that'll help your case since your working with a mod chip. Maybe the chip is not connected perfectly. Better yet just take it off and tsop flash it. Tho still not sure why it did that and gave no video. Fragged a bit when I had all 3 points bridged tho. So maybe something isn't supposed to be connected or just isn't connected / soldered in solid. Seems like this box is particular about solder splashes.. If it's somewhere it's not supposed to be then it doesn't boot it frags like a bit&h But yes also consider the ram is bad? That is exactly what occurs whenever I have a bad stick of ram inside any of the computers around here = NO VIDEO... So that may be the issue? Test it out?
FRAGing when doing a RAM upgrade is a good sign of a short or the chips aren't soldered in good. Pull them off and start over. Do them one at a time and check each time for shorts.
I've checked each chip leg for continuity from the top of the leg to the nearest via or the bottom of the pad, then I've also checked for a short between the neighboring leg. There are short(s) but those are for GND/etc and have been checked against a working board and match. I'll do it again from scratch but I'm leaning towards bad RAM.
Sounds like the problem I just had on a 1.4 board - I pulled the RAM from another board and installed it and the unit FRAGed - but the same RAM worked fine when put back on the board it was originally removed from. I tried this twice, with the same result both times. I'm going to get some new RAM chips and try that.
