You can just replace it with a more reliable supercap. It's not really designed to work with a battery. You'd probably have to design your own circuit to charge and interface the battery to the clock circuit if wanted to go that route.
I work at a retro game shop as a technician and have gotten my cap replace time down to 15 minutes. As for the belts, in my experience they're usually slipping on the wheels from dirt/dust. I take them out and give them a rinse with some dish soap. Works pretty well. The disc drives are by far the biggest pain because Microsoft used about 5 different brands that are all very different in terms of quality and parts. For instance many drives don't have the manual eject in the same place as the pin hole on the outside of the case, if they have them at all. I've also noticed that storing the systems stacked on top of each other can warp the plastic and ruin the drives. (Serviced 30+ OG Xboxes.)
Hi great video as always! Another common failure on this lovely old machines are the traces underneath the motherboard for the power button. They usually get corroded by the leaking clock capacitor and you lose the power button functionality. An easy fix if you know what you are looking for just two bodge wires to bypass the broken traces.
One minute and I'm in like the early 2000s. Glad to see keeping your old project pieces keeping other devices alive. And wow, that green cable makes perfect sense, why did they use black for that?
It isn’t Microsoft’s fault the clock capacitor was leaky, most of the 2000s saw “capacitor plague”, and many electronics suffered from capacitors that would leak years down the line.
The clock capacitor is actually more useless than you made it out to seem. All it does is keep power when the console is disconnected from AC mains power. And I never did realize the plastic is actually is dark green. I thought it was but I just deduced I was crazy.
Well it'd be smart in theory if you moved your xbox a lot or didn't always keep it powered on, but it's not a critical component like the supercapacitor on an NEC TurboGrafx-16 or the battery on the Sega Saturn where you lose your saves when that part fails.
@@Nukle0n it was super handy if you went to LAN parties like a lot of us did. However it would've still been trivial to just reset the clock when at the party because it takes 20 seconds to do.
As a particular fan of the original Xbox I greatly enjoyed this video. I've only got a single, superstock crystal one, but had to replace a bunch of caps on the thing recently... and learn soldering to do so. I actually super like some of the things done to that modded one, being able to see the disc spinning is nice~
If your drive is stuck, you can usually get it to open bu pushing the tray upwards and pressing eject. Worth knowing if you want to try to replace the belt without opening the drive. As stated though, it's worth opening the console to check the timing cap.
That Purple Xbox is swank Personally i have a soft sport for the Xbox. And have two of them, a standard black one and a crystal one. Both modded. As for that ejection hole it does work, on standard Xbox drives. I also never knew the Xbox is a dark dark green not black.
I once fixed the dvd drive rubber belt by ejecting the drive, and rubbing it with a q-tip dipped in an alcohol cleaning agent. Then manually pulling the drive in and out a few times, clean again and then done. Worked like a charm.
At least the on the Xbox controller you have a pcb to work on. The PS2 controllers have plastic paperthin printboards that melts within an inch of a hot soldering tip. In the end I never bothered repairing those as I now use wireless Logitechs.
It would be if you just ignore the GPU, which was unique and extremely powerful for the time of release. It has similar pixel shader performance to Geforce 3 ti500, and its vertex shader performance is twice as high. These are in part synthetic considerations, in real use it wouldn't reach quite as high on pixel/texture throughput due to memory bus sharing. In part it was still impressively fast because you still had that computational throughput. But the dominance naturally wouldn't last long. Only half a year to a year after Xbox came out, that level of GPU performance has shifted into midrange on PC, and much higher spec PC parts were available. Trying to compete against 5+ years of successively improving PC technology during console's lifespan is a fool's errand.
Do you have any disk drive error tips? I ordered a $15 laser replacement on eBay. Hoping that will do the trick. I tried cleaning the laser on mine but no luck.
I saw a comment somewhere of a guy that fixed a Thomson drive by reflowing the solder joints on the drive where the ribbon cable connects to the laser assembly. If all else fails, reflowing solder joints can fix a cold/broken solder joint. You can't really tell by looking either. Most people replace the entire drive when they can't get it to work so you don't have anything to lose at that point.
The Xbox does have a manual eject there is a small hole that you can shove a paperclip into that is very easy to miss if you don't already know about it.
I have two Xbox units that for some reason have a noisier image compared to all my others. What could be the cause of this if I already replaced clock capacitor?
All my Xboxs have bad clock caps, but mine (like my original one I got for Christmas years ago when I was younger), needed the traces repaired. It was a long and tedious process but I managed to fix it. Then to find out my Xbox's DVD laser is shot. Reads CD's fine, but not DVD's, just buzzes trying. Replaced the drive out of another Xbox, no buzz, but says that it cannot read the disc (the first drive issues no error). So......damn. Time to hunt down a working optical drive on eBay and hope I don't get screwed.
For the 'black' xbox, the power connector looked a bit askew when you closed it up. Also, I wonder if you could make an adapter for the PicoPSU for the OG Xbox.
@@Nukle0n I mean, isn't that what the PC Jr. has in it--only with tech that is +20 years older, and less efficient? The specs for the OEM power supply is "96w" and they make a 150w picopsu. It might not be able to handle the right amps for the various rails, but it was at least an idea.
@@spokehedz PC Jr usually doesn't have a spinning HDD in it and no optical drive, although you could probably add the former with a sidecar. Original PSU appears to be 100 watt but I don't know how that's distributed. Also apparently only the 1.6 board uses ATX, earlier ones use a proprietary system, so you'd need some kinda adapter board/cable.
@@spokehedz That's fine. The new PSU for the dreamcast has a dedicated purpose though, which is that the original PSU idles too much without the disc drive in there, hence why you should replace it if removing the optical disc drive and replacing it with an ODE.
Thank you for knowing and telling people that a standard Xbox shell is dark green, not black. I have argued with many people about this... Do you also agree that a US Super Nintendo is very light purple, not grey like the Super Famicom?
Worth noting that adding a modhip allows for an NTP server to be used to keep the time up to date. Gotta pull mine apart and do a belt change when I can be bothered, Xecuter 3 means I don't have to load discs any more.
2:07 I have late 90's Sony cassette decks with belts that have turned to goo, and have replaced belts in 80's stuff that was only slightly stretched out.
I've had good luck renewing belts by putting them into a cup of hot water from a coffee machine with a drop of soap for ten minutes. It shrinks the belt a bit and becomes more pliable, as well as cleaning slightly for better grip. Obviously won't work on belts that have turned to dust or rotten goo, but if it's just loose it works pretty well.
My xbox has a weird problem I just can't find a tutorial for. When you press the power button it tries to boot up but after a second it shuts off, then a couple seconds later does the same thing but lasts on for two seconds, then after yet another reboot attempt it goes from green to flashing orange and yellow and does absolutely nothing except for spinning up the hard drive. I have it disassembled now and I just can't see anything obviously wrong with it, what could the problem ever be for it to behave in such a strange way?
I took mine apart a while back noticed 4 completely ruined traces on the back of the board and after I read a guide kinda pushed it under my desk and forgot about it. Maybe I'll give it a go now that this popped up and reminded me.
the reason people didn't like the 1.6 revision was because they weren't hardmoddable. and softmodding was pretty hard at that point. I remember softmodding my 1.6 in 2010ish and had to quickly unplug and replug the IDE cable for the hard drive to an Athlon XP box to get it working properly with the softmodder. Said Xbox isn't powering anymore so I'm not even sure if it's a 1.6 or if I have a 1.5 and need to open it to inspect for cap juice. pretty sure my belt on the drive is good though, but once you get them all running you should consider modding them and dropping in IDE to SATA adapters and some SSDs since that is a much more viable option... and honestly, I'd love to see you try to compile xbmc4xbox for one of these since the source files are out there but it requires some drawn-out time to compile it. I got to the point in an XP VM where unpacking all the source files was too many nested folders for NTFS to handle, meaning it needs to be compiled on a Linux machine, most likely.
I turned my xbox on without a game in it, and a few minutes later it started making this sound like something was jammed and then I got the rrod... Anyone know what likely needs fixed on it?
Most PC drives from the era have the same issue. I have bought LG and NEC PC drives around 2002-2004, and by 2009 they gained the belt issue too. I also had some Lite-On drives but they died early enough to not even get to the belt issue for some other reason. Even my 2010 SATA DVD drive recently needed belt service. Microsoft really didn't care what optical drive goes into the box, they were sourced from all major suppliers and were pretty much their regular PC drives with no extra hardware changes for the Xbox, maybe custom firmware but that's about it.
When it comes to the 1.6 & 1.6b revisions, the plus side is they have a more reliable clock-capacitor that doesn't leak as easily. But the downsides are you cannot run the system without it (again, applies to 1.6 & beyond), and the xcalibur video encoder is notorious for not working properly with 480p resolutions, even with the component cords! That's why many OG XBOX enthusiasts prefer revision 1.4 and/or earlier!
I remember I modified mine. Made the fan be connected to hard drive molex with a molex to fan connector adapter. Gave fan higher speed vs slow speed that seemed to not help when playing graphics intense games it was hot.
Thank you. Followed this video to fix this Halo edition Xbox that I found being thrown away. A DVD Drive swap and capacitor removal & cleaning later and it's working like a champ, just a bit noisy. Thermal paste replacement maybe? I'm surprised at how easy it is to open up this system.
Finally found an OG Xbox that's the same as mine. Released in 2033 between the 1.0 and the 1.6 versions, I wasn't sure of the capacitor that needed yanking out. Mine wasn't leaking whatsoever but still did anyway. Good video.
you could also use a little bit of lithium white grease on the DVD drive lens rail and never-ending screw (i used a toothpick to apply it), and also if they are too ugly, you can swap the joystick plastic thumbstick with new ones, i believe even the XBox 360 ones fit in there.
I really need some help! Basically I have a modded xbox but when I try to play an original disc it won’t launch? It will tell me what game I inserted but just restarts the system if I try to launch it? Any help would be appreciated
so you dont need the clock Capacitor is it on just this one or on most of them i have 2005 x box never done anything to it and works good just wondering if i should check mine out see how bad it is i have 2 other xbox too but have to take them apart see what year they are got them off ebay
So I have, multiple questions because I have only turned on my Xbox once and may want to pursue doing preventative maintenance on it. 1) Is the fan in the rear of the case standard, can it be replaced with a noctua fan easily? 2) That hard drive seems to be pretty standard, can you replace it with a compact flash solution or ssd? 3) I own the Mountain Dew Xbox, and it has an issue where the disk drive will only open if I stick a paperclip in the super tiny hole on the front of the console you didn't notice at first, is there a clip or something inside the console I can repair? It opens on it's own once you poke it if I remember correctly. 4) If you do want to replace that time capacitor, if you have one on your board, can you find a non-leaking replacement?
I think it's a 70x25mm fan. I have heard of some people chopping up a bunch of plastic bits, and fitting a standard 80x25mm fan in there, and i mean a lot of plastic. Noctua makes 60x25 and 80x25mm fans, and i don't think 60 is a good idea, maybe not enough airflow, a bit of leakage, but you can probably do it. There are decent aftermarket 70mm fans around that can be installed without butchering up your console. I'd have my doubts though that noise level can be reduced significantly while maintaining or improving temperature, unless you go for bigger fan, unless the fan motor has become loud over time - and if it did, maybe maintaining it would be the first thing to try. Yes, you will find instructions on how to replace the hard drive with a modern SSD somewhere on the Internet. The information on the hard drive is uniquely tied to the mainboard so there comes one potential challenge. The issue with your xbox optical drive is likely exactly what has been shown here, bad belt on the tray motor. When the belt goes bad it at first doesn't stop working entirely but it gets pretty wonky, where whenever you have jostled it or the tray is a little bit already raised it will work fine but has difficulty engaging at first. Or maybe there's a bit of friction somewhere in the tray rails and the tray raising mechanism, if there was a silicone lube on there, it might have degraded somehow, maybe by absorbing dust or something, or maybe some parts have worn. Anyway lubricate those things so they don't continue to wear down and also make sure none of the lubricant can get onto the belt, and if you get a better tighter belt, you should be good. The capacitor can be replaced. The original spec calls for a 1F 2.5V EDLC. You can look at your local component supplier what they have, they should have a whole section of "Supercaps" or "Double-Layer Capacitors" and you choose one which has the same specs or higher. Many of them might have an inconvenient footprint. It's difficult to say that they will never leak, but it is evident that the EDLC technology has advanced by quite a bit in 20 years, they're just completely different now. Among devices that have been installed 20 or more years ago and have not yet leaked, i think Panasonic GoldCap has a good reputation. Choosing higher voltage grade will likely make it more robust (and you probably don't need all that much more robustness, just a little, to make it last 20+ years rather than like 7 that they did), and choosing a higher capacity will make it hold time... hopefully longer than 5 hours :D The engineering on the RTC circuit is actually a bit pathetic. I also suspect a retrofit of a 2.4V NiMH battery (e.g. two AAA cells in series, or a specialised little unit) can be suitable. If without the cap you measure 2.4-2.6V across the points where it would be, that's mostly a good enough indication that that would be a fine approach, but if you try and the battery happens to get warm, you might want to add a series resistor, probably in the 22-100 Ohm range, but i bet none is needed. You should be able to measure with console connected to mains but not "powered on". Please be careful, the power supply has numerous deadly exposed bits in that state, including live heatsinks, maybe cover it up with a sheet of acetate or Kapton tape while working on the system, and try to combine multiple precautions at the same time, please assume that each precaution can fail.
@@SianaGearz Thanks so much! Can't wait to get around to working on it, with all this info it should be way less nerve racking. (It's in storage rn so by the time I get back to it, it may end up not being *preventative* maintenance sadly)
@@JonTheGeek I think storage is a pretty good case. Because i mean normally the Xbox spends years upon years and decade upon decades connected to the mains. The power supply standby section is engaged and always trying to top up the supercap, always generating a little bit of heat and a little bit of electrolyte ion movement, which promotes electrolyte degradation, until it starts boiling and escapes. In storage there's comparatively little happening.
After cleaning the disk drive up my xbox still won't read disc's. I've tried all of my games, to no avail. Even bought a game that is known to be working from a retro shop and it still doesn't. Is it possible that the clock capacitor caused this?
Does part 2 exist? Couldn't find it. I have 3 original xboxes rusting and gathering dust, all 3 don't work and I need to repair them for the past 5 years lol.
My console stopped turning on. I found out the time capacitor blew. Took it out and cleaned it up. Waiting on a new power supply in hopes for it to be resurrected. Hopefully.
Trying to replace 5 caps on my original 2001 Xbox but the solder just wont melt. Ended up pulling the caps with pliers cold then drilling out the holes. I got caps of same uf and v on ebay. Yageo is the brand. hope they are ok, they are a bit smaller than originals. Now im having trouble getting the solder to stick the legs to the board. Will have to try tinning the legs maybe. Have i killed my Xbox? I dont know what to do. If I buy another one it could have same issue. It powers on for just a second and more if i hold the button. 5 caps are bulging and leaking. its v1.6 btw.
I run a 360 repair and modding business, bad drive belts are a VERY common thing I see. Don't understand, I also have DVD drives from the 90s that works just fine.
But every single PC DVD drive i had in the 2000s had its belts fail in short order, and i had 3 different OEMs, and even my current one from 2010-2011-ish has gained some issue by now.
SOMEONE PLS HELP ME WITH MY XBOX! I've opened it up and cleaned it more times then I can count and the time capacitor thing is gone. Some games it recognizes as a DVD so I cleaned the eye as best I could. It still does it sometimes but I just open it and close it again when my tray doesn't stick. The load times are ridiculous at points. I've been working on it for days and idk what to do for all of these problems, today was playing for about an hour and it froze and I lost everything. Any advice?
I totally agree with your statement that we need more Xbox videos. Still have my black Xbox I got in 2004 and a Crystal one I recently picked up for 15€. Really easy to mod and has some great exclusive games.
If the break is near the cable stress like this one, I usually cut out the wire in the affected area, then drill out the cable stress in a clamp until I can force the cable back through and secure it with glue and/or a knot on the inside. It's time consuming but worth it without spares.
Hi Buddy, I just tried turning an old xbox on and it is not working. It won't turn on. I am wondering if you can help me fix it. Anyway let me know. I have a lot of games on it and I would like to play.
So... the clock capacitor is not needed? If not then ill remove it from mine. Also, do you know where you can get a dvd drive for the xbox? Mine is unfortunately one of the bad ones
I was given as a semi-gag gift an original XBox with a weird problem. The DVD drive won't open. Now, when I use the paperclip method, it does open and even open and close, but it doesn't read disks Aaaand, here's the fun bit, it doesn't open and close after being powered on and off again. I've powered it on, and it works near as I can tell otherwise, hooks up to my TV just fine and the controller works great, just that drive problem.
The Original Xbox has the NVIDIA Graphics chip but if the Graphics chip is dead or the traces are eaten by the compactor acid then it can be replaced or it’s dead.
Oof, that reminds me of my Goodwill Outlet special, they didn't have an Xbox AV cable at the time, so when it was blinking orange, I guess they assumed it was dead a'la RROD. Scored it for $5. First thing I did was dive in and get that capacitor out. I do wish there was an easy mod I could do to replace it with an actual battery, because frankly it's a pain to have to get the "Enter time/date" screen every single time I boot it up. Added a mod chip, and eventually will upgrade the HDD to 500 GB (should be enough for most of the games I like).
I'm thinking it's a 2.5V circuit with current limiting. I think connecting two AAA NiMH cells in series in there would do the trick. I don't have an Xbox to test but that would be something i'd try. As long as there is sufficient current limiting (chances are there is given it takes a few minutes to charge even the anemic supercap) and as long as the NiMH can convert excess energy into heat without getting too warm, you don't have to worry about overcharging them all that much. I heard the supercap never worked particularly well, it would maybe hold charge for 5 hours? The RTC circuit of the Xbox consumes about two orders of magnitude more energy than the usual ones. If 2xAAA solution is adequate and workable, it'll have a bonus of storing ooooooodles more energy. Actually 2 NiMH button cells might work about as well, such as Varta V2-150H-SLF or Emmerich 120H, the 2.4V variants, of course with little relative capacity, but should be good enough for use, like you should be able to unpower it for a week or more and not worry about it. A reasonably well charged AAA pack should keep the clock ticking for months or years. It's been suggested that voltages above 2.5V are likely not safe for the electronics in the RTC circuit, so CR2032 is out, unless you want to follow it up with a proper regulator, but those leak some current. Trivial diode dropper and cell charge prevention is not necessarily adequate, as diode threshold drops rapidly with small current, and higher voltages may occur. It has also been estimated by i think Bunnie that CR2032 would need to be replaced about every 2 months due to Xbox's RTC circuit design. Maxell manganese lithium chemistry such as MN2032 is not adequate because it doesn't take charge below 2.6V, it needs 3.0-3.3V to work, and same with LiFePo4 chemistry.
that BAR AT THE BOTTOM OF THE AD you absolute legend
The v1.6's clock capacitor is the gold nichicon by the IDE header. Those aren't known to leak like the powerstor aerogel caps used in earlier models.
And about the bad clock capacitor with what can it be replaced? does a AAA 1.2 rechargeable nimh or nicd would work? or a li-ion 3.7V small battery?
You can just replace it with a more reliable supercap. It's not really designed to work with a battery. You'd probably have to design your own circuit to charge and interface the battery to the clock circuit if wanted to go that route.
@@xenonkay link to it? :D
Yeah got a link for that part?
Mine was the Powerstor Aerogel capacitor from 2003 and wasn't leaking at all after taking apart my Xbox for the 1st time today.
13:35 well there's your problem. The drive belt appears to be in wild perpetual motion.
"WHEEEE! I'M FREE! SO LONG SUCKAS!"
yeah, that's annoying. I just wish more manufactures would test their products to obey the laws of physics but *sigh*
I like that you connected the xbox to a PlayStation tv
Oh the irony.
Playstation display. Not TV lol
What is a "PlayStation tv?"
I work at a retro game shop as a technician and have gotten my cap replace time down to 15 minutes.
As for the belts, in my experience they're usually slipping on the wheels from dirt/dust. I take them out and give them a rinse with some dish soap. Works pretty well. The disc drives are by far the biggest pain because Microsoft used about 5 different brands that are all very different in terms of quality and parts. For instance many drives don't have the manual eject in the same place as the pin hole on the outside of the case, if they have them at all.
I've also noticed that storing the systems stacked on top of each other can warp the plastic and ruin the drives. (Serviced 30+ OG Xboxes.)
The pinhole to open the drive will work but you need to have the power on senor Akbkuku
Hi great video as always! Another common failure on this lovely old machines are the traces underneath the motherboard for the power button. They usually get corroded by the leaking clock capacitor and you lose the power button functionality. An easy fix if you know what you are looking for just two bodge wires to bypass the broken traces.
One minute and I'm in like the early 2000s.
Glad to see keeping your old project pieces keeping other devices alive. And wow, that green cable makes perfect sense, why did they use black for that?
It isn’t Microsoft’s fault the clock capacitor was leaky, most of the 2000s saw “capacitor plague”, and many electronics suffered from capacitors that would leak years down the line.
The clock capacitor is actually more useless than you made it out to seem. All it does is keep power when the console is disconnected from AC mains power.
And I never did realize the plastic is actually is dark green. I thought it was but I just deduced I was crazy.
Well it'd be smart in theory if you moved your xbox a lot or didn't always keep it powered on, but it's not a critical component like the supercapacitor on an NEC TurboGrafx-16 or the battery on the Sega Saturn where you lose your saves when that part fails.
Same
@@Nukle0n it was super handy if you went to LAN parties like a lot of us did. However it would've still been trivial to just reset the clock when at the party because it takes 20 seconds to do.
As a particular fan of the original Xbox I greatly enjoyed this video. I've only got a single, superstock crystal one, but had to replace a bunch of caps on the thing recently... and learn soldering to do so. I actually super like some of the things done to that modded one, being able to see the disc spinning is nice~
If your drive is stuck, you can usually get it to open bu pushing the tray upwards and pressing eject. Worth knowing if you want to try to replace the belt without opening the drive. As stated though, it's worth opening the console to check the timing cap.
That Purple Xbox is swank
Personally i have a soft sport for the Xbox.
And have two of them, a standard black one and a crystal one.
Both modded.
As for that ejection hole it does work, on standard Xbox drives.
I also never knew the Xbox is a dark dark green not black.
The reason Xbox is in my wish list, is the _Steel Battalion_ controller. Now that's a controller!
Burnout 3, man that brings back memories. I have it on PS2. Played the hell out of it in the late 2000s.
Great game Burn out 2 and 3 on Ps2 :D
Play it again play it more.
Don't know if your doing it or TH-cam, but I like the progress bar during the ad. Makes it easy to skip past it. ;D
the fact that an xbox is connected to a PSTV is the reason you got a new sub
I once fixed the dvd drive rubber belt by ejecting the drive, and rubbing it with a q-tip dipped in an alcohol cleaning agent. Then manually pulling the drive in and out a few times, clean again and then done. Worked like a charm.
I know your comment is 2yrs old but DUDE, I just used your method...WORKED LIKE A CHARM! Thrift store Xbox up and running!
At least the on the Xbox controller you have a pcb to work on. The PS2 controllers have plastic paperthin printboards that melts within an inch of a hot soldering tip. In the end I never bothered repairing those as I now use wireless Logitechs.
At the time it was an amazing leap forward in console technology, and it's just a mid-range desktop from the period with power saving in mind.
It would be if you just ignore the GPU, which was unique and extremely powerful for the time of release. It has similar pixel shader performance to Geforce 3 ti500, and its vertex shader performance is twice as high. These are in part synthetic considerations, in real use it wouldn't reach quite as high on pixel/texture throughput due to memory bus sharing. In part it was still impressively fast because you still had that computational throughput.
But the dominance naturally wouldn't last long. Only half a year to a year after Xbox came out, that level of GPU performance has shifted into midrange on PC, and much higher spec PC parts were available. Trying to compete against 5+ years of successively improving PC technology during console's lifespan is a fool's errand.
Do you have any disk drive error tips? I ordered a $15 laser replacement on eBay. Hoping that will do the trick. I tried cleaning the laser on mine but no luck.
I saw a comment somewhere of a guy that fixed a Thomson drive by reflowing the solder joints on the drive where the ribbon cable connects to the laser assembly. If all else fails, reflowing solder joints can fix a cold/broken solder joint. You can't really tell by looking either. Most people replace the entire drive when they can't get it to work so you don't have anything to lose at that point.
The Xbox does have a manual eject there is a small hole that you can shove a paperclip into that is very easy to miss if you don't already know about it.
I think 1.6 revision was the one that removed the extra ram option to flash debug kit firmware, which is why people may hate it
That's correct. It's also significantly more difficult to hardmod. And it has some very niche compatibility issues with the Xcalibur chip.
At least there’s not some sort of insect colony in it.......
I have two Xbox units that for some reason have a noisier image compared to all my others. What could be the cause of this if I already replaced clock capacitor?
All my Xboxs have bad clock caps, but mine (like my original one I got for Christmas years ago when I was younger), needed the traces repaired. It was a long and tedious process but I managed to fix it. Then to find out my Xbox's DVD laser is shot. Reads CD's fine, but not DVD's, just buzzes trying. Replaced the drive out of another Xbox, no buzz, but says that it cannot read the disc (the first drive issues no error). So......damn. Time to hunt down a working optical drive on eBay and hope I don't get screwed.
They’re likely from 2001-2003.
For the 'black' xbox, the power connector looked a bit askew when you closed it up. Also, I wonder if you could make an adapter for the PicoPSU for the OG Xbox.
PicoPSU might not be great when it has both a DVD drive and a 3.5" HDD?
@@Nukle0n I mean, isn't that what the PC Jr. has in it--only with tech that is +20 years older, and less efficient? The specs for the OEM power supply is "96w" and they make a 150w picopsu. It might not be able to handle the right amps for the various rails, but it was at least an idea.
@@spokehedz PC Jr usually doesn't have a spinning HDD in it and no optical drive, although you could probably add the former with a sidecar. Original PSU appears to be 100 watt but I don't know how that's distributed. Also apparently only the 1.6 board uses ATX, earlier ones use a proprietary system, so you'd need some kinda adapter board/cable.
@@Nukle0n It was just an idea. I mean, they just made a new adapter board for the Dreamcast, but the OG XBox gets not enough love these days.
@@spokehedz That's fine. The new PSU for the dreamcast has a dedicated purpose though, which is that the original PSU idles too much without the disc drive in there, hence why you should replace it if removing the optical disc drive and replacing it with an ODE.
The pin hole in the front is exactly to open the drive manually by just sticking like a paper clip...
A M$ XBox running on a Sony Playstation branded TV... dogs and cats, living together! MASS HYSTERIA!!!
Thank you for knowing and telling people that a standard Xbox shell is dark green, not black. I have argued with many people about this... Do you also agree that a US Super Nintendo is very light purple, not grey like the Super Famicom?
The Black cable on the Halo Controller was and is my biggest bug bite on the whole system.
I too love the original 'Duke' controller.
Worth noting that adding a modhip allows for an NTP server to be used to keep the time up to date. Gotta pull mine apart and do a belt change when I can be bothered, Xecuter 3 means I don't have to load discs any more.
2:07 I have late 90's Sony cassette decks with belts that have turned to goo, and have replaced belts in 80's stuff that was only slightly stretched out.
I've had good luck renewing belts by putting them into a cup of hot water from a coffee machine with a drop of soap for ten minutes. It shrinks the belt a bit and becomes more pliable, as well as cleaning slightly for better grip. Obviously won't work on belts that have turned to dust or rotten goo, but if it's just loose it works pretty well.
Power supply is not ATX, different pinout, +3.3V standby, +3.3V poweron signal etc.
My xbox has a weird problem I just can't find a tutorial for. When you press the power button it tries to boot up but after a second it shuts off, then a couple seconds later does the same thing but lasts on for two seconds, then after yet another reboot attempt it goes from green to flashing orange and yellow and does absolutely nothing except for spinning up the hard drive.
I have it disassembled now and I just can't see anything obviously wrong with it, what could the problem ever be for it to behave in such a strange way?
Heeeeey, you got a Playstation 3D Display!
I'm currently using mine as my main PC monitor! :D
Dark green. Such a cool little detail.
I took mine apart a while back noticed 4 completely ruined traces on the back of the board and after I read a guide kinda pushed it under my desk and forgot about it. Maybe I'll give it a go now that this popped up and reminded me.
Personally I love taking apart the Xbox. I put all my rage into the Wii for using 20 different screws
the reason people didn't like the 1.6 revision was because they weren't hardmoddable. and softmodding was pretty hard at that point. I remember softmodding my 1.6 in 2010ish and had to quickly unplug and replug the IDE cable for the hard drive to an Athlon XP box to get it working properly with the softmodder. Said Xbox isn't powering anymore so I'm not even sure if it's a 1.6 or if I have a 1.5 and need to open it to inspect for cap juice. pretty sure my belt on the drive is good though, but once you get them all running you should consider modding them and dropping in IDE to SATA adapters and some SSDs since that is a much more viable option... and honestly, I'd love to see you try to compile xbmc4xbox for one of these since the source files are out there but it requires some drawn-out time to compile it. I got to the point in an XP VM where unpacking all the source files was too many nested folders for NTFS to handle, meaning it needs to be compiled on a Linux machine, most likely.
Words can't describe how awesome it is to see an Old School X-Box these days!
🌟💯🎮
Thnx @AkBKukU😎
I was always & will always be a PS2 person. Good to see more old consoles bought back up to fully operational condition.
I turned my xbox on without a game in it, and a few minutes later it started making this sound like something was jammed and then I got the rrod... Anyone know what likely needs fixed on it?
Microsoft choose the same belts for the 360. Really common problem.
Most PC drives from the era have the same issue. I have bought LG and NEC PC drives around 2002-2004, and by 2009 they gained the belt issue too. I also had some Lite-On drives but they died early enough to not even get to the belt issue for some other reason. Even my 2010 SATA DVD drive recently needed belt service. Microsoft really didn't care what optical drive goes into the box, they were sourced from all major suppliers and were pretty much their regular PC drives with no extra hardware changes for the Xbox, maybe custom firmware but that's about it.
When it comes to the 1.6 & 1.6b revisions, the plus side is they have a more reliable clock-capacitor that doesn't leak as easily. But the downsides are you cannot run the system without it (again, applies to 1.6 & beyond), and the xcalibur video encoder is notorious for not working properly with 480p resolutions, even with the component cords! That's why many OG XBOX enthusiasts prefer revision 1.4 and/or earlier!
On my Xbox, I just bought a replacement DVD drive. I think I did so for better compatibility with certain discs, though.
I love that purple xbox! It looks (personally) better than a green/halo spec ed !
I remember I modified mine. Made the fan be connected to hard drive molex with a molex to fan connector adapter. Gave fan higher speed vs slow speed that seemed to not help when playing graphics intense games it was hot.
Strange that you take the time to disassemble, but then you do not take the time to fully clean???
Yea its like he doesn't give a crap and like hes being asked putting in effort to repair them
Thank you. Followed this video to fix this Halo edition Xbox that I found being thrown away. A DVD Drive swap and capacitor removal & cleaning later and it's working like a champ, just a bit noisy. Thermal paste replacement maybe? I'm surprised at how easy it is to open up this system.
What DVD drive did you use and where did you get it?
I have a clear plastic xbox which will not power up, what shopuld I look at to repaire, where would I start?
Finally found an OG Xbox that's the same as mine. Released in 2033 between the 1.0 and the 1.6 versions, I wasn't sure of the capacitor that needed yanking out. Mine wasn't leaking whatsoever but still did anyway. Good video.
mans got a future xbox from 2033
Did you have to put thermal paste on them
Amazing video! Such good work.
you could also use a little bit of lithium white grease on the DVD drive lens rail and never-ending screw (i used a toothpick to apply it), and also if they are too ugly, you can swap the joystick plastic thumbstick with new ones, i believe even the XBox 360 ones fit in there.
The 1.6 had a Hitachi drive, those are pretty rare
I miss my og xbox I had such good times on it and it was my first console to play halo 2 online.
Can someone please lead me to the correct belt to purchase
My dude would you happen to have an Xbox crystal disc drive clip for the tray?
I really need some help! Basically I have a modded xbox but when I try to play an original disc it won’t launch? It will tell me what game I inserted but just restarts the system if I try to launch it?
Any help would be appreciated
Did he just call Black Green....
so you dont need the clock Capacitor is it on just this one or on most of them i have 2005 x box never done anything to it and works good just wondering if i should check mine out see how bad it is i have 2 other xbox too but have to take them apart see what year they are got them off ebay
That progress bar for the ads earns you way more internet points than you realize.
So I have, multiple questions because I have only turned on my Xbox once and may want to pursue doing preventative maintenance on it.
1) Is the fan in the rear of the case standard, can it be replaced with a noctua fan easily?
2) That hard drive seems to be pretty standard, can you replace it with a compact flash solution or ssd?
3) I own the Mountain Dew Xbox, and it has an issue where the disk drive will only open if I stick a paperclip in the super tiny hole on the front of the console you didn't notice at first, is there a clip or something inside the console I can repair? It opens on it's own once you poke it if I remember correctly.
4) If you do want to replace that time capacitor, if you have one on your board, can you find a non-leaking replacement?
I think it's a 70x25mm fan. I have heard of some people chopping up a bunch of plastic bits, and fitting a standard 80x25mm fan in there, and i mean a lot of plastic. Noctua makes 60x25 and 80x25mm fans, and i don't think 60 is a good idea, maybe not enough airflow, a bit of leakage, but you can probably do it. There are decent aftermarket 70mm fans around that can be installed without butchering up your console. I'd have my doubts though that noise level can be reduced significantly while maintaining or improving temperature, unless you go for bigger fan, unless the fan motor has become loud over time - and if it did, maybe maintaining it would be the first thing to try.
Yes, you will find instructions on how to replace the hard drive with a modern SSD somewhere on the Internet. The information on the hard drive is uniquely tied to the mainboard so there comes one potential challenge.
The issue with your xbox optical drive is likely exactly what has been shown here, bad belt on the tray motor. When the belt goes bad it at first doesn't stop working entirely but it gets pretty wonky, where whenever you have jostled it or the tray is a little bit already raised it will work fine but has difficulty engaging at first. Or maybe there's a bit of friction somewhere in the tray rails and the tray raising mechanism, if there was a silicone lube on there, it might have degraded somehow, maybe by absorbing dust or something, or maybe some parts have worn. Anyway lubricate those things so they don't continue to wear down and also make sure none of the lubricant can get onto the belt, and if you get a better tighter belt, you should be good.
The capacitor can be replaced. The original spec calls for a 1F 2.5V EDLC. You can look at your local component supplier what they have, they should have a whole section of "Supercaps" or "Double-Layer Capacitors" and you choose one which has the same specs or higher. Many of them might have an inconvenient footprint. It's difficult to say that they will never leak, but it is evident that the EDLC technology has advanced by quite a bit in 20 years, they're just completely different now. Among devices that have been installed 20 or more years ago and have not yet leaked, i think Panasonic GoldCap has a good reputation. Choosing higher voltage grade will likely make it more robust (and you probably don't need all that much more robustness, just a little, to make it last 20+ years rather than like 7 that they did), and choosing a higher capacity will make it hold time... hopefully longer than 5 hours :D The engineering on the RTC circuit is actually a bit pathetic.
I also suspect a retrofit of a 2.4V NiMH battery (e.g. two AAA cells in series, or a specialised little unit) can be suitable. If without the cap you measure 2.4-2.6V across the points where it would be, that's mostly a good enough indication that that would be a fine approach, but if you try and the battery happens to get warm, you might want to add a series resistor, probably in the 22-100 Ohm range, but i bet none is needed. You should be able to measure with console connected to mains but not "powered on". Please be careful, the power supply has numerous deadly exposed bits in that state, including live heatsinks, maybe cover it up with a sheet of acetate or Kapton tape while working on the system, and try to combine multiple precautions at the same time, please assume that each precaution can fail.
@@SianaGearz Thanks so much! Can't wait to get around to working on it, with all this info it should be way less nerve racking.
(It's in storage rn so by the time I get back to it, it may end up not being *preventative* maintenance sadly)
@@JonTheGeek I think storage is a pretty good case. Because i mean normally the Xbox spends years upon years and decade upon decades connected to the mains. The power supply standby section is engaged and always trying to top up the supercap, always generating a little bit of heat and a little bit of electrolyte ion movement, which promotes electrolyte degradation, until it starts boiling and escapes. In storage there's comparatively little happening.
After cleaning the disk drive up my xbox still won't read disc's. I've tried all of my games, to no avail. Even bought a game that is known to be working from a retro shop and it still doesn't. Is it possible that the clock capacitor caused this?
Great video to educate one self on some of the xbox's more common problems. 👍
If an Xbox disc drive sometimes doesn’t open, but sometimes does, would that be a belt problem or something else?
Does part 2 exist? Couldn't find it. I have 3 original xboxes rusting and gathering dust, all 3 don't work and I need to repair them for the past 5 years lol.
I did notice that removing the time capacitor does mess up save files with some games. The Xbox can't chronologically sort new saves anymore.
My console stopped turning on. I found out the time capacitor blew. Took it out and cleaned it up. Waiting on a new power supply in hopes for it to be resurrected. Hopefully.
Trying to replace 5 caps on my original 2001 Xbox but the solder just wont melt. Ended up pulling the caps with pliers cold then drilling out the holes. I got caps of same uf and v on ebay. Yageo is the brand. hope they are ok, they are a bit smaller than originals. Now im having trouble getting the solder to stick the legs to the board. Will have to try tinning the legs maybe.
Have i killed my Xbox?
I dont know what to do. If I buy another one it could have same issue. It powers on for just a second and more if i hold the button. 5 caps are bulging and leaking. its v1.6 btw.
First time I played Doom 3 was on the OG xbox. It was more powerful than the pc I used at the time. Good times! :P
Keep em coming bro! Good video!
I run a 360 repair and modding business, bad drive belts are a VERY common thing I see. Don't understand, I also have DVD drives from the 90s that works just fine.
But every single PC DVD drive i had in the 2000s had its belts fail in short order, and i had 3 different OEMs, and even my current one from 2010-2011-ish has gained some issue by now.
I have an xbox that won't fully boot unless you open the disc tray. Any idea what the problem might be with this one? Cheers :)
The 1.6s do have a clock cap but if you remove it the console won't boot
I bought my og off a guy for 50 bucks it worked for about 30-45 mins straight randomly shut off and won’t turn back on any advice?
I never had trouble with cdrom yet
People don't like 1.6s because they aren't TSOP-flashable
It would be great if there was a site that sold repro stickers for this console.
that gives me an idea
The facial expressions in the outro are simply amazing :D
SOMEONE PLS HELP ME WITH MY XBOX! I've opened it up and cleaned it more times then I can count and the time capacitor thing is gone. Some games it recognizes as a DVD so I cleaned the eye as best I could. It still does it sometimes but I just open it and close it again when my tray doesn't stick. The load times are ridiculous at points. I've been working on it for days and idk what to do for all of these problems, today was playing for about an hour and it froze and I lost everything. Any advice?
I totally agree with your statement that we need more Xbox videos.
Still have my black Xbox I got in 2004 and a Crystal one I recently picked up for 15€.
Really easy to mod and has some great exclusive games.
Sometime could you show how you would fix the cable for those that don't have a spare one?
If the break is near the cable stress like this one, I usually cut out the wire in the affected area, then drill out the cable stress in a clamp until I can force the cable back through and secure it with glue and/or a knot on the inside. It's time consuming but worth it without spares.
Hi Buddy, I just tried turning an old xbox on and it is not working. It won't turn on. I am wondering if you can help me fix it. Anyway let me know. I have a lot of games on it and I would like to play.
Excellent video, thank you!
the 1.6 and 1.6b dont have this issue
An hdd conversion/upgrade would have been nice. The og hdd is 20 years old.
is that TV supposed to resemble a psp go?
I had a chance to buy one of those green crystal xbox's :( I've always regreted not picking it up
"stupid torx screws" is what I muttered the first time I worked on my SAAB lmao
So... the clock capacitor is not needed? If not then ill remove it from mine. Also, do you know where you can get a dvd drive for the xbox? Mine is unfortunately one of the bad ones
I was given as a semi-gag gift an original XBox with a weird problem. The DVD drive won't open. Now, when I use the paperclip method, it does open and even open and close, but it doesn't read disks Aaaand, here's the fun bit, it doesn't open and close after being powered on and off again. I've powered it on, and it works near as I can tell otherwise, hooks up to my TV just fine and the controller works great, just that drive problem.
Higher current/AMPs (thick cable) required for high RPM motor.
Sometimes the power supplies go bad as well. Especially if you're dealing with a fox link power supply.
The Original Xbox has the NVIDIA Graphics chip but if the Graphics chip is dead or the traces are eaten by the compactor acid then it can be replaced or it’s dead.
Yeah, it was quite an enjoyable video...👍🏼💯✔
I would love to watch a Classic XBOX Hard Drive mod video tutorial from you. Cheers.
Oof, that reminds me of my Goodwill Outlet special, they didn't have an Xbox AV cable at the time, so when it was blinking orange, I guess they assumed it was dead a'la RROD. Scored it for $5. First thing I did was dive in and get that capacitor out. I do wish there was an easy mod I could do to replace it with an actual battery, because frankly it's a pain to have to get the "Enter time/date" screen every single time I boot it up. Added a mod chip, and eventually will upgrade the HDD to 500 GB (should be enough for most of the games I like).
I'm thinking it's a 2.5V circuit with current limiting. I think connecting two AAA NiMH cells in series in there would do the trick. I don't have an Xbox to test but that would be something i'd try. As long as there is sufficient current limiting (chances are there is given it takes a few minutes to charge even the anemic supercap) and as long as the NiMH can convert excess energy into heat without getting too warm, you don't have to worry about overcharging them all that much.
I heard the supercap never worked particularly well, it would maybe hold charge for 5 hours? The RTC circuit of the Xbox consumes about two orders of magnitude more energy than the usual ones. If 2xAAA solution is adequate and workable, it'll have a bonus of storing ooooooodles more energy. Actually 2 NiMH button cells might work about as well, such as Varta V2-150H-SLF or Emmerich 120H, the 2.4V variants, of course with little relative capacity, but should be good enough for use, like you should be able to unpower it for a week or more and not worry about it. A reasonably well charged AAA pack should keep the clock ticking for months or years.
It's been suggested that voltages above 2.5V are likely not safe for the electronics in the RTC circuit, so CR2032 is out, unless you want to follow it up with a proper regulator, but those leak some current. Trivial diode dropper and cell charge prevention is not necessarily adequate, as diode threshold drops rapidly with small current, and higher voltages may occur. It has also been estimated by i think Bunnie that CR2032 would need to be replaced about every 2 months due to Xbox's RTC circuit design. Maxell manganese lithium chemistry such as MN2032 is not adequate because it doesn't take charge below 2.6V, it needs 3.0-3.3V to work, and same with LiFePo4 chemistry.
The reason they went with the capacitors was because a standard coin battery would only last 2 hours and need changed.