I recently aquired a v1.4 PAL Xbox console, stock HDD, had been opened by previous owner, and it was bought faulty. Not sure if previous owner has TSOP'd it (can you do that on a 1.4?). It boots with no audio/video/hdd activity other than a spinup (tried multiple cables) and a solid green front LED. There doesn't seem to be any heat on the larger heatsink based on touch, but the smaller one heads up to what feels like a normal working range. The smaller MCPX nVidia chip heats up quite a bit though, is that normal? The A/V port and mainboard appear fine, no caps appear to have leaked (even the big one for clock), the only thing I noticed was that there was a loose screw in the case (under the mainboard) when I got it. No obvious signs of damage though. Are there any fuses/etc I could check on the mainboard? Any help is very much appreciated!
So it doesn't reboot 3 times? If not and you're simply getting no video, possibly the GPU is gone? Hard to say...
I'd suspect a dead CPU, and a GPU on it's way out. It could have been caused by a power surge or a faulty power supply. It's probably not fixable.
pretty sure the GPU has cooked itself, heats up to around 80C and looks like it would've kept going, what a shame!
Actually sounds like IO rather than gpu, plug in a controller or usb drive and see if it loads, pop a led and resitor on the hdd ide port and see if it's loading.. Try cold booting a game..
Funny you should say that, it came with a controller with a mangled wire... I'll try a controller/USB drive and also perhaps I'll put a activity LED on the IDE port. It responds to Eject and even to not having a video cable plugged in.
It booted! (once...) I was messing with the DVD Drive, holding it over the edge of the console without the casing on it and the BA chip gets really hot (pretty sure it's dead). While I was doing that, I noticed the console boot into the original bios, no issues at all. I shut it down and powered it back on, back to no video Another thing to note is that the solid green LED will begin to flash if I move the yellow DVD drive connector cable (without a drive present, just the cable). I thought a DVD drive wasn't required to boot?
You're incorrect. The DVD-ROM Drive is required the boot, otherwise it will boot straight to an error.
If I install a modded bios via hardmod on the LPC port, will that remove the need for a DVD drive? I'm assuming just the original BIOS cares if there's a drive attached... Edit: After reading further, I believe the issue is somewhere in either the southbridge itself or something flooding the southbridge with heavy I/O (hence why it was heating up). I'll try a mod just in case if it's the flashrom that has died.
Added a Aladdin X2 PLUS2 and it's booting but fragging before the BIOS. Guess it's time to change RAM perhaps.
OK, got a bit futher, added the DVD drive (without the BA motor controller IC) and it boots to the original HDD just fine with the Aladdin XT PLUS2. Guess this 1.4 is super picky about having a working drive....
It seems very weird. I had a 1.4 with similar symptoms. They are really not worth the trouble anyhow.
