I spotted that as well, and remembered the reference in another video. Surprised that whatever website talked about the arrows didn't mention the + and - indentations on the legs.
Anyone else love this channel vs other repair channels because it feels like you’re actually hanging out with him? Other channels do too much production and it just feels like you’re watching them….vs one on one hangout. So relaxing.
FYI, the HeXEn disc is a tool for modded systems. HeXEn, in this case, stands for Heimdall's Xbox Engineering disc and it allows you to do a whole ton of stuff for modded systems, such as TSOP/modchip flashing, installing another dashboard, etc etc.
Is that seriously all it lasted, that's crazy. My brothers Pokemon Blue with original battery is still somehow holding enough charge, mind you, our Gold & Silvers died, only discovered that in 2021 how much power do those timing crystals consume. And no I'm not comparing batteries to Caps, I know they are night & day in terms of total energy, just thought it might've been a couple days.
The driver belts getting lose is a common problem on OG Xboxes. I had it on both of the consoles I worked on. I got a pack advertised as "Xbox360 driver belts" from China since I could not find any for the OG Xbox, but they worked great. The clock capacitor only keeps the time for around 6 hours. It will still ask you to set the time after that, that's why many people don't even bother to put a new one in. Don't think you need to put thermal paste around the CPU as well. That area doesn't seem to make contact with the heat sink.
Very common problem on 360s as well. Boiling them does help but I always have a pack of new ones on hand. And yeah they're interchangeable - they're all just 1" bands, if I've remembered the size right.
This is a 1.6 model which has a slightly different board layout and are MUCH less prone to the leaking clock capacitor, I modded my crystal 1.6 last year with a re-pro aladdin XT and a 1TB HDD. If anyone else wants to do this you need an 80 pin IDE for the IDE to SATA converter to work properly. I thought this was a pretty fun project and actually led me onto RGHing some xbox 360's that I rescued off of facebook marketplace.
One thing to note… I have seen in some of your other videos as well, when you test capacitors, you do not let them test long enough. When testing capacitance on a multimeter, you have to give it some time to charge up. This goes the same for that component tester. Cheers!
Seeing you take apart an Xbox makes me feel more confident in getting into mine. I've been meaning to take care of the SUPER clock capacitor on mine before it can go BOOM!
The hint for the capacitor are the big + and - signs on the terminal welds. Also, never put thermal paste around the die, it'll just trap the heat in the thermal compound with nowhere for it to transfer.
There is something wildly satisfying about watching you clean and solder. I know little to nothing about working with circuit boards but find your videos to be informative and so relaxing! Thank you!!
That was a 1.6 console (the extra ram pads were removed), so the clock cap didn't need replacing (and it won't run without it). All you needed was to boil the band as those (as you saw) can settle into position. Great buy for 10 pounds! Next up you need to either chip it, softmod it (recommend 007 Agent Under Fire), or TSOP flash it (a little more difficult on 1.6 boxes).
You can't TSOP flash a 1.6 - on these machines the boot ROM is combined with the PIC that controls power sequencing in a custom chip called "Xyclops"- if you want custom boot code you need to add a modchip on the LPC bus, but you need to fix the traces for the LPC data lines that MS removed first.
Reacted to that too. As far as I remember, the clock lasts around 5-10 minutes max. It was a cheap way Microsoft did it. EDIT: Taking that back. According to the MS website: "up to about three hours after losing mains power"
@@AdBlock-User Even if Microsoft had used a rechargable battery for that you'd have to exchange it by now, because those batteries would be mostly dead.
as a fellow commenter said it dose feel like hanging out but also feels like a 90s tech show, just the calm voice and suttle giggle :) and the going in blind and being a little stumped here there is brilliant, feels like learning together :) you sir have a new subscriber! (Y)
Awesome job! I remember my first OG Xbox that I had softmodded, to run games and what not. (I Transferred movies / games to it via FTP...lol) The good old days.
Great video would still replace the belt though they are super cheap. As long as the drive opens it can be charged with a tweezer thats how i charged mine.
Was expecting a wrong answer, but genuinely nearly choked as sipping a can of Pepsi Max when answered 27 to 3 x 2!!! Stupid times table!!! Best and most entertaining retro repair channel around by far, deserves all the success and more. Can't wait for next vid.
Just love the video and how you present them, glad to see your improved since your first video, been catching up on your back catalogue. Thanks a bunch for the light relief, stupid or not well worth the watch.
If you look at the capacitor, it has a metal cut out + on one side and a - cut out in the metal on the other side, which I guess is how it has been labelled up in metal.
Heatsink paste application, you should have used a Hitchcock movie scream clip. The CPU just needs about half a grain of rice worth on the die (small square raised silicon at the centre) - too much or some around the side is risky in that it can ooze out and can be conductive or capacitive. The GPU - the X method is probably best and you don't need much at all. Draw the X from a few mm in from corner to corner.
Hi Steve,I work on a lot of gaming consoles & the best method I found for removing hardened Microsoft thermal paste is to use a couple of sprays of THE WORKS Geocel Multi Use Cleaner.softens the paste up much better than alcohol & you can get it in 500ml aerosol form.
The fact that it was asking you to set the time doesn't mean the capacitor was bad - it only stores a charge for about 3 hours, so that's normal. Also you have a v1.6 motherboard there, which used caps thaf are less prone to failure. But of course replacing it with a newer, better one is never a bad thing!
And the rev 1.6 boards REQUIRE the capacitor to function. That would indicate to me that the cap was at least somewhat functional. Replacing it, as you said, is never a Bad Thing.
You maybe already know this now, but the replacement cap that you used there has a "+" and a "-" stamped in the legs where they are spot welded to the cap itself. Love your vids, keep up the great work!
This I think was prob my fav console, the amazing modding scene adding bigger HD, lights ect made this an amazing console . Still got my original clear xbox now , got 1tb sata drive in it full of emulators and xbox games
I love the look of clear/translucent cases on electronics, I had the purple gameboy colour and I thought it looked awesome with the components on show.
I bought a new one of these in 2002, upgraded the HD and software, then swapped all to a crystal case with crystal controllers when I could get hold of a crystal case . Still works great even in 2024.
Definite value for money. Advise against connecting / disconnecting powered mains cables (although the crackle is amusing, eventually leads to pin degradation and arcing). 1 + 2 x 3 is?
Maybe I'm just extra clever, but I'm thinking the side of the capacitor that has a huge + on it is positive, and the other side with a - is negative. 🙂
Excellent video. I love my original Xbox. If I ever go to England, I will endeavor to find one of these original clear models just for the case. Great job Steve. You covered everything... dusting, capacitor, drive cleaning and lubing and thermal paste. Now you just need to mod it. 😎
I love the xbox classic. I have been in the modding scene of the x360 and the ogxbox for quite some time now and absolutely love the nostalgia this console gives me. Very nice one you got there. Enough written, now I have to watch the video. :D Greetings from germany.
Great Vid, Fantastic Find and repair. The only thing I would of done any differently is change the Clock Battery. (You may have done it off camera) But as you had it open I would of changed it anyway especially with the clock fault. Thumbs Up, will look out for more of your vid's as it was very entertaining and fitted in with my humour. Thank You.
The crackle when power is plugged in is a bad solder joint on the plug. That is very common issue with the OG Xbox. Take out power board and reflow connection , if not it is a fire hazard.
what a steal, good find!! i still love this console, loads of modding potential as well. thanks for the upload :) i enjoyed it. many will say just leave the cap out, i have 6 xboxes and i also replaced the cap in all of them as well.
Just a quick FYI, when it comes to boiling belts - i've found the putting the belt in pre-boiled water on the hob and then full blast for 10 mins works better than just plopping it in boiled water.
I’ve been watching for a long time now which gave me confidence und fixing stuff so I ordered my broken Xbox a week ago and am now just waiting on parts to fix. The only problem I have is the case which is completely busted lol
Looks like a 1.6 clock cap is better quality and doesn't need changing, it only asked for time because its been unplugged. Clock cap holds power for about 6 hours if console unplugged. Edit also that hexen 2018 is for flashing mods and stuff, won't read it because you need either a top flash or modchip.
@MyRegardsToTheDodo that's correct, also the cpu caps but looking at stez's the caps look pretty good its probably the cleanest I have seen. I have a v1.4 crystal with aladin chip just waiting on a 4tb ssd to arrive for it, flash it then with cerbios and I'm good to go and have also painted it and added some leds to controller ports, 80 pin ide and ide to sata adapter.
Also you need to pull the power supply and re-solder the AC connector! This was a fire hazard on all Xbox machines. The solder was thin and it would break and cause arcing and start fires.
I could hear the drive try to open at the start, you could have fixed the disc drive without even opening the console... The pinhole in the front of the console (left of the power button) is a tell-tale relic of optical disc drives. It manually forces the mechanism to open. It was probably just a bit stuck (which was common, and the reason for the addition to the mechanism since it's inception), and doing that would have freed it.
By far one of the best consoles for design in my opinion I need to get one again for the original games, I remember getting it one Christmas and playing forza
Couple of years ago i got a crystal Xbox from Sore Thumb Games in York with the exact same issue. My unit had the same amount of dirt on the dis tray rails as yours had. Cleaned that out and its been working fine ever since, still with same rubber bands too. Really surprised thats all it was for mine
Reparing the OG Xbox is cool, you have a high chance of bringing it back to life! There are about 5 different major revisions to the motherboard and only 1 of them requires a clockcap installed, othervise it won't even start. The older boards can run without a clockcap, don't bother replacing it. If you see a dull spot around the clockcap, the juice has been released and you really need to remove it and clean up the mess. Sometimes the big caps around the GPU or CPU can get bulgy (resulting digital screen issues, flickering and such), replace them you should. Sometimes the clockcap is eating away thin traces alond the edge of the motherboard, the sympthom is that the power and eject button act weird, you need to jump the broken trace and you're good to go. Check the PSU terminals where you plug in the wall plug, sometimes they can crack if it's the type where the metal prongs are directly soldered to the PCB (later they used wires that ran from the plug to the PCB to remove the plugging-in action's stress from the PCB soldere joints). The last but most important issue with the OG Xbox is that the hard drives can die and you need to replace it. You need to read the hardware key with a serial reader thingy (easy to make), then you need to initialize a HDD and lock it with the proper hardware key for it to work. This is the most complicated part of a repair and you need a PC for it with the right programs but if you are more a software person, it's not that hard, there are plenty of help online. Ohh, and a +1 issue is with the optical drive, if they fail, I don't know what to do, because they are custom made for the machine, maybe you can source a laser, I don't know... But you need a drive because on the boot sequence the OS is looking for a drive, without a drive your machine won't boot. Your best bet is to put a softmod on the HDD and run games from it :/ When the drive can't open, it's usually because the belt is slipping and it needs a little more force to break the magnet's force that's keeping the disk in position (there's a puck-like thingy in the middle that's snapping to the center of the spindle when the tray is closed and the mechanism rises, there's a magnet that has the force that the belt needs to overcome). Clean the rotating parts where the belt goes around and maybe you can replace the belt itself if needed.
Nice bargain, this looks so clean. I recently got a v1.4 console sold as working. When I opened it up, the clock cap had leaked all over it. It was so corroded that one of the legs came clean out of the cap when I was removing it. The amount of dust inside the console was unbelievable, you would almost think it was a dust bag from a hoover before I cleaned it.
I've had so many of these over the years I use to buy them DIRT cheap at carboots, the lowest was a fiver back in the day but it had a hard drive issue so wouldn't boot....Scoured the internet and found an absolute GEM and managed to backup the eeprom to write to a new bigger drive.
most others have already commented the same stuff: dont replace the clock cap on any 1.6 xbox's, unless you see visible leakage. The infamous leaky clock cap of these OG xboxes only affected revisions 1.0-1.5. All crystals for the most part will be 1.6. Another way you can tell is the "Xcalibur" video encoder chip above the GPU, that has a big discernable X on it. That Hexen disc is a tool for modded xboxes only. Without a soft or hard mod, the disc will not play.
This is a 1.6 revision xbox, unlike previous revisions the clock cap isn't as much of a issue but can still leak, they moved it in this revision and its required unlike other revisions unless you do some modding. The heatsincs are connected with thermal adhesive not thermal paste unless you have overheating issues its not necessary, in this case cpu needed repasting, gpu probably didn't. Hexen 2018 is a recovery disk for modded xboxes
I wish i hadnt of sold mine. Only had to replace the psu. Ran like a champ for years as mainly a dvd player.I replaced 40 pin cable with an 80 & reapplied paste as well.
OGX heatsinks are walled in by a frame, making a twist impossible. They also use a "sticky" paste, not quite true thermal epoxy, not quite thermal paste. You should only attempt removal of the heatsinks when they are hot, as once they are, the paste/epoxy becomes liquid and only a gentle tug is required to break contact. Seen people rip off the caps and dies of the OGX CPUs and GPUs going ham on them when they're cold.
@@UnCoolDad What's that black plastic the mounting clips attach to 8:54 ? That's what I'm talking about. The heatsinks are recessed in that frame and only allow very slight rotation before interfering. Good enough to give it a slight twist to see if the paste is liquid enough to pull on; but not enough to break contact.
@@spottedtango ah, I see what you mean now. I suppose if you can do a slight wiggle from side to side, it may help release too - with some heat. Will keep that in mind 👍🏻
OG Xbox is my favorite retro console (and has kinda been since the day it was released...it always felt like a hack project from the beginning). Apart from the finger slicing heat sinks.
Stupid Times Table
Yay, I forgot it was Wednesday
Don't give up. You'll get it!
The clock cap was probably fine but no harm in replacing it. Stez needs to check his for trace rot
We're with you, it was 27 for sure :P
If you see on capacitor the spot welding parts on side has a + and on other side a - sign
I suspect that the positive side would be the one that has the plus sign pressed into the leg, where the minus sign is on the negative side.
Yeah, that makes sense! Didn't see that 🫣
Glad you spotted that too! Thought I was imagining it 😂
I thought it was obvious too 😂 never mind ste, we all make mistakes
I spotted that as well, and remembered the reference in another video. Surprised that whatever website talked about the arrows didn't mention the + and - indentations on the legs.
Came here to say that. 😂
Anyone else love this channel vs other repair channels because it feels like you’re actually hanging out with him? Other channels do too much production and it just feels like you’re watching them….vs one on one hangout. So relaxing.
My Mate Vince
Ah its just class. He's a very likeable chap and very funny too.
Not repair, but Dawid does tech stuff has similar humor. great channel
Exactly this. You’ve nailed what makes these so watchable.
FYI, the HeXEn disc is a tool for modded systems. HeXEn, in this case, stands for Heimdall's Xbox Engineering disc and it allows you to do a whole ton of stuff for modded systems, such as TSOP/modchip flashing, installing another dashboard, etc etc.
thank you kagura
Steve, the clock cap is only rated for 6 hours of power. So what you had just meant it was unplugged for more than 6 hours.
I'm no expert and couldn't do most of shit but just admit I thought shouldn't you plug it in, set it and see?
Is that seriously all it lasted, that's crazy.
My brothers Pokemon Blue with original battery is still somehow holding enough charge, mind you, our Gold & Silvers died, only discovered that in 2021 how much power do those timing crystals consume.
And no I'm not comparing batteries to Caps, I know they are night & day in terms of total energy, just thought it might've been a couple days.
Absolutely right - my crystal green one is the same.
@@OldUKAdsabsolutely
it still should've been replaced because they're almost guaranteed to leak by now
I've watched this channel grow so fast in the last year... congrats Steve, you deserve it
13:29 the indentations on the welded legs are also in the shape of +/- signs. Neat!
😂
The driver belts getting lose is a common problem on OG Xboxes. I had it on both of the consoles I worked on. I got a pack advertised as "Xbox360 driver belts" from China since I could not find any for the OG Xbox, but they worked great.
The clock capacitor only keeps the time for around 6 hours. It will still ask you to set the time after that, that's why many people don't even bother to put a new one in.
Don't think you need to put thermal paste around the CPU as well. That area doesn't seem to make contact with the heat sink.
Very common problem on 360s as well. Boiling them does help but I always have a pack of new ones on hand. And yeah they're interchangeable - they're all just 1" bands, if I've remembered the size right.
This is a 1.6 model which has a slightly different board layout and are MUCH less prone to the leaking clock capacitor, I modded my crystal 1.6 last year with a re-pro aladdin XT and a 1TB HDD. If anyone else wants to do this you need an 80 pin IDE for the IDE to SATA converter to work properly. I thought this was a pretty fun project and actually led me onto RGHing some xbox 360's that I rescued off of facebook marketplace.
Appreciate the info! Didn't know that about the IDE cable.
The sound when adding the incorrect thermal paste, hilarious! I think TronicsFix will love it 😂
Lol Genius and had me in stitches also
One thing to note… I have seen in some of your other videos as well, when you test capacitors, you do not let them test long enough. When testing capacitance on a multimeter, you have to give it some time to charge up. This goes the same for that component tester. Cheers!
Seeing you take apart an Xbox makes me feel more confident in getting into mine. I've been meaning to take care of the SUPER clock capacitor on mine before it can go BOOM!
It's actually nice and easy to take apart. Definitely worth dealing with that SUPERCAPACITOR before it explodes! 😁
If you have a 1.6 revision MoBo, you are good... Only the earlier revisions had bad clock capacitors.
They dont usually go boom on 1.6 consoles
unfortunately they still do, ive seen many 1.6'es that have started leaking out the legs. worth it to replace on 1.6'es now @@electrohacker
@@DForce26 I doubt mine is a 1.6 board based on its manufacture date. So I should get it out my closet and pop it open sooner rather than later.
The hint for the capacitor are the big + and - signs on the terminal welds. Also, never put thermal paste around the die, it'll just trap the heat in the thermal compound with nowhere for it to transfer.
Yeah I hope he sees this.
If you look where the spot welds on the new clock capacitor are theres a plus and minus stamped into the metal
lol, that Super Cap had a plus + and a minus - constructed into the silver tab legs. For next time. luv your work. Daz xx
For the capacitor. The negative side has a rectangular recess in the middle and for the positive a cross-shaped recess 😃 Love ur vids!
There is something wildly satisfying about watching you clean and solder. I know little to nothing about working with circuit boards but find your videos to be informative and so relaxing! Thank you!!
That was a 1.6 console (the extra ram pads were removed), so the clock cap didn't need replacing (and it won't run without it). All you needed was to boil the band as those (as you saw) can settle into position.
Great buy for 10 pounds! Next up you need to either chip it, softmod it (recommend 007 Agent Under Fire), or TSOP flash it (a little more difficult on 1.6 boxes).
You can't TSOP flash a 1.6 - on these machines the boot ROM is combined with the PIC that controls power sequencing in a custom chip called "Xyclops"- if you want custom boot code you need to add a modchip on the LPC bus, but you need to fix the traces for the LPC data lines that MS removed first.
Depending on how long it was disconnected from the power it will still ask you to reset the time. It's a cap, not a battery.
Saves the time for something like 6 hours or so. :)
Reacted to that too. As far as I remember, the clock lasts around 5-10 minutes max. It was a cheap way Microsoft did it. EDIT: Taking that back. According to the MS website: "up to about three hours after losing mains power"
@@AdBlock-User Even if Microsoft had used a rechargable battery for that you'd have to exchange it by now, because those batteries would be mostly dead.
Because of the way the clock circuit is made a battery would have lasted 10-20 minutes
@@MyRegardsToTheDodo You don't need a rechargeable battery. The CR2032 battery in my NES game from 1993 still keeps the save file alive.
as a fellow commenter said it dose feel like hanging out but also feels like a 90s tech show, just the calm voice and suttle giggle :) and the going in blind and being a little stumped here there is brilliant, feels like learning together :) you sir have a new subscriber! (Y)
That is a great find for just 10 quid. Only a minor problem. Very clean and snazzy looking thing.
I love how you heated up the stickers first, and also that you tested the new battery thoroughly. Great job!
Hahaa, you was just trolling us putting the thermal paste all around the die - loved it.
Awesome job! I remember my first OG Xbox that I had softmodded, to run games and what not. (I Transferred movies / games to it via FTP...lol) The good old days.
Great video would still replace the belt though they are super cheap. As long as the drive opens it can be charged with a tweezer thats how i charged mine.
Was expecting a wrong answer, but genuinely nearly choked as sipping a can of Pepsi Max when answered 27 to 3 x 2!!! Stupid times table!!!
Best and most entertaining retro repair channel around by far, deserves all the success and more. Can't wait for next vid.
I find it very satisfying when Steve manages to fix items that seem beyond repair great channel Ste cheers
Just love the video and how you present them, glad to see your improved since your first video, been catching up on your back catalogue. Thanks a bunch for the light relief, stupid or not well worth the watch.
If you look at the capacitor, it has a metal cut out + on one side and a - cut out in the metal on the other side, which I guess is how it has been labelled up in metal.
Heatsink paste application, you should have used a Hitchcock movie scream clip. The CPU just needs about half a grain of rice worth on the die (small square raised silicon at the centre) - too much or some around the side is risky in that it can ooze out and can be conductive or capacitive.
The GPU - the X method is probably best and you don't need much at all. Draw the X from a few mm in from corner to corner.
Love the seagull noises 🎉
Morecambe resident here love lees games
Nice one you away make me laugh on here you put in a fun way on restoring things :-)
NGL, this beat slaps. That bassline!? Buttery!
Hi Steve,I work on a lot of gaming consoles & the best method I found for removing hardened Microsoft thermal paste is to use a couple of sprays of THE WORKS Geocel Multi Use Cleaner.softens the paste up much better than alcohol & you can get it in 500ml aerosol form.
The fact that it was asking you to set the time doesn't mean the capacitor was bad - it only stores a charge for about 3 hours, so that's normal. Also you have a v1.6 motherboard there, which used caps thaf are less prone to failure. But of course replacing it with a newer, better one is never a bad thing!
And the rev 1.6 boards REQUIRE the capacitor to function. That would indicate to me that the cap was at least somewhat functional. Replacing it, as you said, is never a Bad Thing.
You maybe already know this now, but the replacement cap that you used there has a "+" and a "-" stamped in the legs where they are spot welded to the cap itself. Love your vids, keep up the great work!
This I think was prob my fav console, the amazing modding scene adding bigger HD, lights ect made this an amazing console . Still got my original clear xbox now , got 1tb sata drive in it full of emulators and xbox games
Why SATA?
@Okurka. as ages ago I got the sata adapter kit and new cable , think sata drives faster at accessing too.
Great to see you back. Looking forward to following progress.
I love the look of clear/translucent cases on electronics, I had the purple gameboy colour and I thought it looked awesome with the components on show.
I bought a new one of these in 2002, upgraded the HD and software, then swapped all to a crystal case with crystal controllers when I could get hold of a crystal case . Still works great even in 2024.
Man, you crack me up. I only found your vids a couple of days ago, but I love watching them, you're so funny and cool (and you fix stuff).
The cap has a plus and minus right on the legs. It’s stamped into the leg and the spot weld are inside the pressed part.
@ 13:10 - the hint is the big "+" sign embossed on the connector tab on one side, and the "-" on the other 😊
Definite value for money. Advise against connecting / disconnecting powered mains cables (although the crackle is amusing, eventually leads to pin degradation and arcing). 1 + 2 x 3 is?
Maybe I'm just extra clever, but I'm thinking the side of the capacitor that has a huge + on it is positive, and the other side with a - is negative. 🙂
Excellent video. I love my original Xbox. If I ever go to England, I will endeavor to find one of these original clear models just for the case. Great job Steve. You covered everything... dusting, capacitor, drive cleaning and lubing and thermal paste. Now you just need to mod it. 😎
I just started getting into fixing these things and it's cool seeing you posting new videos about them.
I love the xbox classic. I have been in the modding scene of the x360 and the ogxbox for quite some time now and absolutely love the nostalgia this console gives me. Very nice one you got there. Enough written, now I have to watch the video. :D Greetings from germany.
If you look on the cap. where the pin is welded with 3 dots there's a minus on the negative and a plus on the positive.
I still got mine, with the Xecutor 3 mod installed, all fully working!
My disc tray did this on my console as a kid, a firm thump to the top when pressing the open button did the trick.
It looked like the super capacitor had a "+" and "-" designed into the metal connector on each side?
Very subtle, but it's definitely there.
Amazing. The Disc Drive reads Discs. I hope you know how rare that is nowadays, especially for a Crystal Xbox.
Great Vid, Fantastic Find and repair. The only thing I would of done any differently is change the Clock Battery. (You may have done it off camera) But as you had it open I would of changed it anyway especially with the clock fault. Thumbs Up, will look out for more of your vid's as it was very entertaining and fitted in with my humour. Thank You.
This makes me more confident to open up my own XBOX to fix the disc drive and replace the SUPERCAPACITOR!
The crackle when power is plugged in is a bad solder joint on the plug. That is very common issue with the OG Xbox. Take out power board and reflow connection , if not it is a fire hazard.
what a steal, good find!! i still love this console, loads of modding potential as well.
thanks for the upload :) i enjoyed it.
many will say just leave the cap out, i have 6 xboxes and i also replaced the cap in all of them as well.
Just a quick FYI, when it comes to boiling belts - i've found the putting the belt in pre-boiled water on the hob and then full blast for 10 mins works better than just plopping it in boiled water.
The Crystal Classic! That beat though when ya start cleaning the disk drive!!! ✌️
I’ve been watching for a long time now which gave me confidence und fixing stuff so I ordered my broken Xbox a week ago and am now just waiting on parts to fix. The only problem I have is the case which is completely busted lol
Looks like a 1.6 clock cap is better quality and doesn't need changing, it only asked for time because its been unplugged. Clock cap holds power for about 6 hours if console unplugged.
Edit also that hexen 2018 is for flashing mods and stuff, won't read it because you need either a top flash or modchip.
With the 1.6 boards it's more likely that the caps around the power supply go, the clock cap generally is fine.
@MyRegardsToTheDodo that's correct, also the cpu caps but looking at stez's the caps look pretty good its probably the cleanest I have seen. I have a v1.4 crystal with aladin chip just waiting on a 4tb ssd to arrive for it, flash it then with cerbios and I'm good to go and have also painted it and added some leds to controller ports, 80 pin ide and ide to sata adapter.
HeXEN also works on softmod Xboxes...
Love this channel. I watched a lot of videos over Christmas break!
Also you need to pull the power supply and re-solder the AC connector! This was a fire hazard on all Xbox machines. The solder was thin and it would break and cause arcing and start fires.
14:10 that track time attack well good 😮
Had to buy the track ❤
I could hear the drive try to open at the start, you could have fixed the disc drive without even opening the console... The pinhole in the front of the console (left of the power button) is a tell-tale relic of optical disc drives. It manually forces the mechanism to open. It was probably just a bit stuck (which was common, and the reason for the addition to the mechanism since it's inception), and doing that would have freed it.
Yet again another AWESOME video!! Thank you.
You sure do make this repair stuff look fun!!
You are one of the funniest tech repair or video game guys on TH-cam. First video I have watched and you got my Sub!
It’s beautiful! And you know the door tap trick! Lol!
The welding marks shows the polarity at this capacitor + and -.
You have a voice of an angel when spreading circuit heat paste 😇
I think Tronixfix should come visit the comment section :D
At the welding point of the legs on the capacitor there is a large positive and negative on it
Great find that, in such good condition too well done Steve great fix 😊
By far one of the best consoles for design in my opinion I need to get one again for the original games, I remember getting it one Christmas and playing forza
Couple of years ago i got a crystal Xbox from Sore Thumb Games in York with the exact same issue. My unit had the same amount of dirt on the dis tray rails as yours had. Cleaned that out and its been working fine ever since, still with same rubber bands too. Really surprised thats all it was for mine
This takes Me back. I remember the disc drive has to be specific to the board or u have to flash it.
Some of the best entertainment on YT, great job Stez!
Informative and entertaining, what more could one ask from a concole refurbishing video. Subbed.
Reparing the OG Xbox is cool, you have a high chance of bringing it back to life!
There are about 5 different major revisions to the motherboard and only 1 of them requires a clockcap installed, othervise it won't even start. The older boards can run without a clockcap, don't bother replacing it. If you see a dull spot around the clockcap, the juice has been released and you really need to remove it and clean up the mess.
Sometimes the big caps around the GPU or CPU can get bulgy (resulting digital screen issues, flickering and such), replace them you should.
Sometimes the clockcap is eating away thin traces alond the edge of the motherboard, the sympthom is that the power and eject button act weird, you need to jump the broken trace and you're good to go.
Check the PSU terminals where you plug in the wall plug, sometimes they can crack if it's the type where the metal prongs are directly soldered to the PCB (later they used wires that ran from the plug to the PCB to remove the plugging-in action's stress from the PCB soldere joints).
The last but most important issue with the OG Xbox is that the hard drives can die and you need to replace it. You need to read the hardware key with a serial reader thingy (easy to make), then you need to initialize a HDD and lock it with the proper hardware key for it to work. This is the most complicated part of a repair and you need a PC for it with the right programs but if you are more a software person, it's not that hard, there are plenty of help online.
Ohh, and a +1 issue is with the optical drive, if they fail, I don't know what to do, because they are custom made for the machine, maybe you can source a laser, I don't know... But you need a drive because on the boot sequence the OS is looking for a drive, without a drive your machine won't boot. Your best bet is to put a softmod on the HDD and run games from it :/
When the drive can't open, it's usually because the belt is slipping and it needs a little more force to break the magnet's force that's keeping the disk in position (there's a puck-like thingy in the middle that's snapping to the center of the spindle when the tray is closed and the mechanism rises, there's a magnet that has the force that the belt needs to overcome). Clean the rotating parts where the belt goes around and maybe you can replace the belt itself if needed.
Nice bargain, this looks so clean. I recently got a v1.4 console sold as working. When I opened it up, the clock cap had leaked all over it. It was so corroded that one of the legs came clean out of the cap when I was removing it. The amount of dust inside the console was unbelievable, you would almost think it was a dust bag from a hoover before I cleaned it.
It was a pleasure. Great, entertaining, education!
Funny, TronicsFix just uploaded an OG Xbox repair video yesterday. What a coincidence
I've had so many of these over the years I use to buy them DIRT cheap at carboots, the lowest was a fiver back in the day but it had a hard drive issue so wouldn't boot....Scoured the internet and found an absolute GEM and managed to backup the eeprom to write to a new bigger drive.
On that battery there was an indentation of a plus and negative on the frame bit that is welded on to the battery.
you can also see on the new capacitor that the metal tabs on each side also have a + and - stamped in the metal
I liked the stress that no one had been in it before as the label is intact, before using heat to remove the label so it stays intact.
most others have already commented the same stuff: dont replace the clock cap on any 1.6 xbox's, unless you see visible leakage. The infamous leaky clock cap of these OG xboxes only affected revisions 1.0-1.5. All crystals for the most part will be 1.6. Another way you can tell is the "Xcalibur" video encoder chip above the GPU, that has a big discernable X on it. That Hexen disc is a tool for modded xboxes only. Without a soft or hard mod, the disc will not play.
the crystal case looks nice
The thermal paste on the smaller chip made my OCD spike to unhealthy levels.
Waking up on sunday with a cup of coffee and a new video. Life is good. ☕️😊
Steve you never fail to put a smile on my face
I love your content man i want to see more console fixing videos greetings from Bulgaria 🇧🇬
I had a Crystal Xbox, was my best console, loved it.
This is a 1.6 revision xbox, unlike previous revisions the clock cap isn't as much of a issue but can still leak, they moved it in this revision and its required unlike other revisions unless you do some modding.
The heatsincs are connected with thermal adhesive not thermal paste unless you have overheating issues its not necessary, in this case cpu needed repasting, gpu probably didn't.
Hexen 2018 is a recovery disk for modded xboxes
Such a nice console. I would love the halo green, Halo orange, or this crystal one.
You spurred me on to get mine out of the attic and yes, it had leaked everywhere! 3 hours on and we're back in business 😁
I wish i hadnt of sold mine. Only had to replace the psu. Ran like a champ for years as mainly a dvd player.I replaced 40 pin cable with an 80 & reapplied paste as well.
Ah Lees Games! Got my white gamecube from there in 2013! Lovely part of the north west.
To remove stuck heat sink, a twist is better than a tug.
A wiggle even better.
OGX heatsinks are walled in by a frame, making a twist impossible. They also use a "sticky" paste, not quite true thermal epoxy, not quite thermal paste. You should only attempt removal of the heatsinks when they are hot, as once they are, the paste/epoxy becomes liquid and only a gentle tug is required to break contact.
Seen people rip off the caps and dies of the OGX CPUs and GPUs going ham on them when they're cold.
@@spottedtango looking at this video where the heat sinks are cleaned, they look perfectly smooth here. No frame.
@@UnCoolDad What's that black plastic the mounting clips attach to 8:54 ? That's what I'm talking about. The heatsinks are recessed in that frame and only allow very slight rotation before interfering. Good enough to give it a slight twist to see if the paste is liquid enough to pull on; but not enough to break contact.
@@spottedtango ah, I see what you mean now. I suppose if you can do a slight wiggle from side to side, it may help release too - with some heat. Will keep that in mind 👍🏻
OG Xbox is my favorite retro console (and has kinda been since the day it was released...it always felt like a hack project from the beginning). Apart from the finger slicing heat sinks.