Rip Xbox 360 – 2nd Dec 05 to 24th Sept 09

[InsaneNutter]

Ok here is the story: Halo 3 ODST was installing to the 360, I thought I could smell burning but couldn’t work out where it was coming from, after looking around the room I notice a bit of smoke coming out the top of the heatsink on the 360 so i turned it off.

Where the smoke was coming from:

After examining the heatsink It didn’t feel hot so i was a bit puzzled how smoke could be coming out of it or where it could have come from. So I got a surge protector, plugged the 360 in to that and powered it back on, after a few seconds smoke starts coming out of the heat sink again, there’s an electrical flash and a quiet pop... the next thing i know the 360 has the infamous 3 red rings.

It now appears a little chip has literally burnt off the motherboard as seen in the pic below.

I’m guessing that’s pretty much the end of my launch console, its never had so much as a disc read error never mind an rrod before now.

I had just done the jtag hack on the console the other week too and was looking forward to seeing what homebrew on the 360 would bring. Although the main reason for doing the hack right now was to switch the consoles region to play games that will most likely never be released in Europe... Raiden Fighter Aces, Raiden 4, Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou and so on.

Random photo of the console running Linux / the JTAG hack

I guess it has a good run for its money, almost 3 years and 10 months without an RROD on a launch console must be a pretty good record. (it went back to Microsoft so it could get the new cooling system when it was still in warranty)

 

[AntiNaz]

*Tear* Rest in Peace, fellow 2005 console It actually really nice hearing how someone actually still has a console from 2005! Yes, you go my friend!

 

[Haloman]

(orders a 20 gun salute from all the 360's FPS characters)

Rest in peace dear 360. Let virtual angels sing thee to thy rest.

I am preparing the black armbands now. I agree with antinaz. it was nice knowing that there was a launch console that was working and had never broken down. Though when you look at it like that you must have known you were playing on borrowed time.

So what are you gonna do now. It must be out of its warentee?

 

[InsaneNutter]

Oh yes, I didn’t expect it to live forever. The extended 3 year rrod warranty expired almost a year ago so either way it would have cost me almost the same as a new console to get it fixed... I think its £60 every time for an out of warranty repair.

Last year I got an arcade console and sold all the extras that came with it, so the total cost of the arcade was about £80 with a new 3 year warranty and 5 arcade games as a nice extra.

That left me free to do whatever I wanted with my launch console knowing if it ever red ringed I still had a console I would never mod or take apart to play my 360 games on, the old console came in nice for system link games too.

I am annoyed its dead especially after all the effort when went in to doing the jtag hack... at the back of my mind I guess I always knew it would happen some day. I was beginning to think the console was indestructible though

 

[paardje]

Aaaawwwwwww...... Poor Little XBOX 360, Rest in peace, dude! (or dudette!)

I think you'll be buying a new one asap?

 

[Trebor]

Such a shame you probably won't be able to run homebrew now InsaneNutter. I know how much you were looking forward to it! Unless you can find another old 360 somehow. The fact it took a chip to blow on the motherboard shows how good your launch console was (I think) to last as long as it did. We all know MS track record....

 

[Titcher]

Any ideas for the parts? There used to be a pretty good market for the DVD drives when you couldn't flash the liteon drives. I imagine it is, but if it isn't an actual chip that's burned on your xbox, you could try a repair, you could try and bridge it if was a fuse and see if it works. I imagine the fans can easily be repurposed for PC use, especially as they look to be custom ones anyway. Maybe repurpose the case to hold something else?
I'm sure you'll find a cool use for it.

 

[InsaneNutter]

Not sure what I’m going to do with the parts yet, the DVD drive has always worked perfectly. Ive seen consoles go for £30 on ebay that just have a DVD drive that no longer works so I could easy buy one of them, spoof my drive and have a perfectly working console, would most likely be updated so it would mean no homebrew.

At the moment homebrew doesn’t bother me too much as there’s no homebrew out on the 360 that the Xbox 1 can’t do better at this moment in time, of course I expect that to change in the future. The main reason I did the hack was because you can change the consoles region to the USA or Japans and play games not out here.

Other parts like the fans I would carry over if I got another console, there pretty quiet compared to the stock fans and are only a few months old.

Nimrod also offered to sell me one of his consoles that hasn’t been updated with a 120gig hard drive, not sure what motherboard it has in but it should be able to run homebrew eventually even if it’s not an xeon motherboard. I don’t really want the hard drive so I’ll think about that for now.

 

[P.KID]

too bad you cant repair the damaged part of the system. it is a good idea if you sell it on ebay youll get more bang for buck compared to major retailers.