A friend of mine had his 360 die on him (3RROD) which at this moment in time is still broken.
Being out of warranty (this 360 has only ever been opened to be flashed, last known not banned) he decided to buy a new slim model.
Since he knows I'm always tinkering around, building portable consoles and stuff, he decided to give this to me for parts.
Unfortunately, I've had no use for this and it's just been sat here collecting dust ever since; but that's about to change.
One of the main reasons why I haven't attempted to do anything with this is because it's quite an old one. It's early 2006 and it has no HDMI.
I personally wouldn't want to burden someone with this unless I could get it working on a long term basis, and with a system this old, I highly doubt it would last long, even if I do manage to fix it.
Popping the clips and ripping this apart was fairly easy. I undid the long screws and ripped open the top.
The first thing that strikes me as odd is that this motherboard has the extended heat pipe. For an early 2006 console, that's just not right, is it?
It's at this point I notice I've lost my T-8 so I can't remove the RF panel. Given I only really need to take these 2 screws out, I don't deem it worth buying another and I can't be bothered to wait, so in true modder fashion, I make one.
At this moment in time, it's just too dark outside to do any heat gunning and I don't fancy doing it indoors for obvious reasons, so I call it a night.
I store my screws in a marked box so I know what they're from.
Post Merge: February 08, 2011, 10:03:09 AM
As you would expect, when I was given the Xbox 360, it came without controllers, so I decided to purchase 2 broken wired controllers off ebay. The controllers were sold with misc problems so I had no idea what to expect. Upon opening the box, I found 2 very different controllers.
Stripping them down, I found that the first controller had a broken R analogue stick. This somewhat complicates things as I now have to fix it or find a replacement part.
The second controller upon inspection seemed OK. After taking out the cross head screws, I soon found an easy to fix problem.
In case you can’t see, the red wire has ripped off.
The cases were pretty minging, covered in grease and stuff.
I hand clean the coloured buttons using baby wipes in fear that submerging them in water would cause water to get stuck between the coloured plastic and the white insert, and I stuck the rest of the parts in a hot water bath with a combination of bleach (to remove the built in yellowing), vanish clothes washing powder (lifts stains) and fairy liquid (cuts through grease).
They’re still in for a good soak. The water has gone cold but the results look good. I’ll empty the bucket and refill it with some hot water and let it continue soaking for a bit longer.
In other news, the first piece of material I will hopefully be using has arrived.
I’m still waiting for some white HIP to arrive in the post. Hopefully that will arrive Monday.
At this moment in time (including x-clamp kit, which at this point, I’m going to do tomorrow) my total spend on this project has been £27.00.
Xbox 360 - £0
X Clamp Kit - £2.89
Faulty official wired controllers x 2 (plus shipping) - £13.50
Perforated Aluminium Sheet (300 x 210 x 1mm) - £6.63
White High Impact Polystyrene x 3 (403 x 305 x 0.5mm) - £3.98
Of course, the success of this entire project will depend completely on my ability to resurrect the dead. You notice the theme?
Post Merge: February 08, 2011, 10:13:13 AM
I still haven't gotten around to doing x-clamp, but I did get around to finding and ordering a replacement analogue stick for my controller.
Whilst I'm waiting for that to arrive from HK, I decided to rip out the old analogue stick.
I also decided to discard the wire from the controller in favour of a 4 pin header.
The reason for this was purely so I could easily disconnect the controller from the wire whilst I'm working with it, and plug it back in easily for testing.
Of course, this meant I needed to make a USB cable to plug it in, so I sacrificed an old USB cable from my old, old phone.
I couldn't find any female header pins, although I'm positive I had some lying around, so instead I destroy a DIL socket, solder and shrink some tubing over the top and bend the pins to 90 degrees in the direction of the top so I know which way around it goes.
All in all, not bad. I tested both controllers and with the exception of the missing analogue stick on the one, both appear to be functioning pretty well.
Oh, and I gave the cases a quick rinse to remove any bleach. I think they came out pretty clean considering. Unfortunately, the thumb sticks are still green, but we won't have to worry about those for much longer anyway.
Post Merge: February 08, 2011, 02:20:07 PM
Just so you guys know, the updates posted earlier are dated back quite a few days. Below is today's REAL update.
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Today I received the HIPS in the post. I also managed to find my screwdriver, not that I really need it now.
My camera was on charge and I couldn't be bothered with the wait and to be honest, it was a good thing too. After several trial and error attempts, I've managed to get the Xbox working. I didn't fancy the whole "pose for photo of holding a heatgun at the motherboard" thing, especially since it didn't work first time. In the end, I removed the capacitors surrounding and heated it up some more. That seemed to do the trick.
As I said, my camera is on charge. I could take photos of the plastic and the working 360, but you guys can use your imagination. It pretty much just looks like every other 360 and the sheets of HIPS just look like slightly oversized A4.
Since I'm not sure what the status of online play is on this console, I'm going to look into JTAGGING possibility and may keep the Xbox offline. This will be my first JTAG so any links or info would be appreciated.
I've got one more surprise for you all though, and I'll be showing that tomorrow when my camera battery is fully charged.
