Unstable Xbox (Crashing/freezing on flubber animation)

I have a v1.1 Xbox that I'm in the process of fitting an Xecuter 2.6 CE in. The Xbox was already TSOP flashed with an older Xecuter firmware and has been solid and reliable for more than a year or so. Last week I got the chip installed, but am waiting on a controller in the mail since FlashBIOS is incompatible with 3rd party controllers (I need an MS one).

Today while playing a game (this is while the chip is wired in but disabled, booting instead to the onboard TSOP) it froze and the IGR command wasn't responding either. I then turned the box off and upon booting it the flubber animation froze half way though. I turned it off again and was able to get back to the UnleashX dash, but it eventually froze in there as well.

This is confusing, because for the last two days I was able to play the Xbox fine with the Xecuter disabled (but plugged in). The only thing I can think caused any issues was that I switched on the LED toggle on the control panel while playing the game that froze. I'm guessing that wasn't what caused it though, because when the chip is disabled, the other LEDs won't function even if everything is wired up.

I've tried booting the Xbox without the DVD drive or harddrive AND with the Xecuter chip completely removed (only part left is a dangling wire for D0 and the two LED status lines) and It can usually complete the flubber animation, but still freezes at random intervals. A few times I couldn't even get any video output at all.

I'm not sure what else could be causing these stability issues. I made sure to de-solder the write-enabled pads that were previously bridged to flash the TSOP incase that would cause problems. I also removed the leaking clock capacitor, but didn't replace it because I hear it's unnecessary.

Another thing worth mentioning is that my Xbox required the LPC port pads to be desoldered to install the header for the modchip, and a few of the pads were EXTREMELY hard to desolder. I have a midrange Hakko soldering iron and did most of the work at 700-750degF. Some of the points showed no signs of melting even after holding the iron down for several seconds. Ultimately, I had to use blunt force, pushing the iron directly into the pad for around 10 seconds for it to even budge a little bit. So maybe I was a little rough, but the chip seemed to function as it should once I had the header soldered in.

What's left to check? I'm out of ideas

 

OK, I think I managed to fix it. My D0 wire is a little long and it looks like it was touching another via. By slightly pivoting the wire, it no longer touches any other vias. It's been running for a good 10 minutes now without freezing or rebooting. The chip is currently unplugged, but I'm 90% sure it was the d0 wire, as that was the only thing I hadn't touched before writing my previous post. This all makes sense now, because I had my Xbox on it's side over night, so the wire may have moved? Idk, i'm just happy I don't have to get another Xbox.

 

Makes sense since D0 is the wire responsible for enabling and disabling the TSOP chip. Disabling the TSOP while running could cause it to freeze. At least it did for me while messing with my IND-BIOS TSOP and Xecuter 2.6CE.

And UnleashX dash forever. I don't like XBMC. XDSL is cool. I may run it on my 1.6 box and use it for a file server. I know of a tutorial on how to do this with twin 2TB drives to give plenty of storage. Now I need an Aladdin 256K chip for it to load a good BIOS for the Linux OS on it...

 

EH ? You know WHY D0 is used to disable the modchip ?

On power on the southbridge (MCP-x chip) checks if the flash is blank by pooling the state of D0 line while reading a certain spot of the flash memory. If it deems the flash is empty it tries to boot from LCP BUS (the header where you solder the Xecuter board to).

Edit:
Point being: That data line is used for more than just reading the flash.

 

Ugh, it appears that moving around the d0 wire wasn't the problem for what I can tell. It's back to erratically booting, and it freezes at random points during the flubbed animation. On one of the freezing occasions, it dumped a blue-hued pattern of garbage to the screen! It seems like it becomes more and more unstable the longer its on. For example the first boot might last until I get into a game., then the second time it will crash at the end of the flubbed animation, then half way though, then to the point of not even enabling the video encoder, etc. if I unplug the power for a few minutes, the stability seems to improve

im more suspicious of the clock-capacitor removal I did potentially being the culprit here, but I have no way of confirming this. Do I need to replace the capacitor that I removed? I read that isn't necessary, but I have my doubts. I literally just twisted and yanked it, maybe that wasn't a good plan.

 

Your hdd could be the culprit.

If you can throw in another hdd and see if the same problem occurs.

 

Try putting some fresh thermal grease on the CPU and GPU. That could be a potential problem. The P3 that the Xbox used was known as "the hot house" because they ran extremely warm. Warm enough that it could heat up enough in that short of time to cause heat related crashing.

 

In UnleashX, it was showing the CPU at under 40C most of the time iirc, not sure about the GPU. Also, this happens even if the DVD drive and HDD are removed.

 

Cleaned off the old thermal paste (err, thermal GLUE I should say, for the GPU at least) on the GPU and CPU and applied some Arctic MX-4 compound... Booted with CPU at 30C and MB at 25C. But a few seconds after seeing those values... FREEZE! Rebooted and it just kept freezing as before.

 

Try touching up all the the solder point's...also change the wire for the do point all together....are you using the bottom do point? It's easier to solder too...also try a different harddrive if you havent already and do a fresh install with AIDS or Slayer's. Also try installing a different dash like XBMC or evox..see if it still freeze's..clean your cache too...old game save's etc...

Also removing the clock capacitor the way you did like you said probably wasn't a good idea...but don't know if that's really your problem.

 

I'll double check my sodlering when I get a chance and I'll probabbly post a picture of how it looks. I'm using the top d0 point (the one on the CPU side, to the right of the LPC header port). I might try another HDD, but this happens at the same degree regardless of if I have a HDD or DVD drive plugged in.

 

Yeah try using the bottom do point instead. See if that help's...and set the fan speed to 100% in unleash x..Also try installing a different dashboard too and see if it still freeze's..

 

Same exact problem as thread starter. My 1.0 xecuter 2.6ce xbox started freezing and hanging through flubber and dash. I swapped my hdd with a stock one and its been fine since. I had a feeling it was going out on me lol.

 

Btw. I use xbmc as a dash. So I doubt unleashx is at fault.

 

No matter the harddrive, or without a harddrive at all, I now can't get any video output 100% of the time. I desoldered the D0 wire, LAN access wire, and HDD access wires as well. I've shelved the Xbox for now because I have a feeling it's a bad motherboard and I don't have the time to troublshoot it further.

I noticed that the motherboard is slightly bowed around where the CPU heat sync is, could that be causing a problem?

 

Bowed board? That could be an issue. The CPU is BGA soldered on the Xbox and bowing the board enough can cause some of the joints to break or be loose. Could be the problem.

 

lol. My xbox is back at it WITH a new hard drive. I'm not ready to shelve it yet especially since it worked so flawlessly before...

blows my mind really. Mint condition xbox with a brand new chip (thanks turfster)

~~~Xecuter 2.6ce v1.0 xbox wire install

 

I also wanted to note that it seems multiple people have this issue with their 1.0 ~ 1.1 xbox motherboards.... I will try to disassemble it and completely re-install the chip but such efforts might be pointless

 

Ive seen this a lot. It had to do with bad dvd drives or solder due to either solder splashing and shorting some traces or just obvious bad soldering job.

Maybe useless info just my two cents

 

yep, I doubt it's solder splashing... my xbox doesn't frag. I also read a lot of the same info.

I'm definitely narrowing in on a solution though. I'll post if anything gives.