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You can thaw it out now.

I followed this guide about a year ago when my Xbox 360 died. This brought it back to life and it's still going strong today.

Fix it. http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/repair/ring_of_light_x-clamp_fix.htm This kit is supposed to correct the RROD.

Even more fuel to the fire is they could have avoided such issues,
had they installed cheap pads that cost a few pennies in some of the older systems DVD drive
Pads.
There was an Article on the whole problem but I can't find it.

That's a design flaw. The disc should not be able to move like that when tilting the machine, and it was all to save Microsoft probably $0.05 per unit in manufacturing: http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/repair/Refurbishing-the-HL-Xbox-360-DVD-Drive.htm

LED lights are a cheap fun way to teach some basics. All you need is a battery (or even better, several different batteries with different voltages), an LED (or several LED's with different voltages), and a bunch of resistors.

You can get packs of green, red, and yellow LED's for less than 50 cents an LED. resistors are a buck for packs of 10. And batteries are batteries. Figuring out the resistor needed to light up an LED based on the voltage from a single battery or series of batteries can be neat.

If you want to take it a step further, bring in some 50 cent USB a-b cables. Slash them and toss out the B side, find the 5V and ground line, and have them figure out the resistor needed to light an LED for USB voltage (like a woot light!). USB power = 5V 100ma usually (it goes up to 500ma, but the driver usually has to negotiate it up; it should be 100ma; buy a cheap powered hub if you want to keep it safe from the computer). There are lots of links on how to figure out the voltage of an LED, this one is ok.

there have been 3 xbox 360 dvd drives, all simple pc model drives, 1 by samsung, 1 by hitachi and 1 by benq. if the problem hasn't been fixed by having 3 seperate drive model changes then it is the norm for the industry http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/Xbox_360_DVD_Drive_Comparison.htm [llamma.com]

there have been 3 xbox 360 dvd drives, all simple pc model drives, 1 by samsung, 1 by hitachi and 1 by benq. if the problem hasn't been fixed by having 3 seperate drive model changes then it is the norm for the industry http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/Xbox_360_DVD_Drive_Comparison.htm

{didn't post first time}

I found the link to the do-it-yourself stuff...

http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/repair/Refurbishing-the-HL-Xbox-360-DVD-Drive.htm

Maybe because this information is already known? Nothing new was really mentioned here. We already know the error codes of the red rings, including the RROD (general hardware error). We already knew that the GPU built up a lot of heat, and we already knew that the DVD drive failure rate was high. Relying just on the summary (not having read TFA), we have learned nothing new. xbox 360 error codes

The XBOX 360 is a marvel of design and XBL revolutionized on-line play

...given all of the other hardware-related problems that Xbox 360 has had with overheating, brittle solder joints, optical disk scratching, and general instability.

Here is a pretty simple fix in case anyone is brave enough to try. Also there is a movie link that shows the degree of the scratches. Be aware, the page is a visual disaster on the eyes. You have been warned.

"Main board scans from the more recent Elite consoles have shown a reinforced main board surrounding the processors, and this change is likely also reflected in newly produced units as well."

In addition the elite also has epoxy to help reduce flexing of the GPU in relation to the mainboard. http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/news/inside_the_xbox _360_elite.htm So far I have not heard about reliability issues with the elite, as far as I know they have been addressed. It would be nice if you could cite a source indicating a high failure rate on the elite, in particular a high rate of 3RLoD failure.

Well they have fixed/will be fixing most of the design flaws

They've added a much improved heatsink to the GPU, They've reinforced the PCB around the processors to keep it from warping, and they should be pumping out the 65nm chips any day now (for all we know they already are).

It will be much less costly for them to actually fix these errors than to pay for additionally two way shipping and replacement of 1/4 to 1/3rd of everything they produce.

Please more consoles with contacts that wear out in a few years! (Actually, I think that's Sony's department now.)
Don't forget that it is Microsoft's department as well!

Again - why should I have to install another little widget on my laptop or PC (which has to be MS, btw) for functionality that is technically already in the X360? Furthermore, if a change in GUI is all it takes to make you forget your using an MS product... I'm assuming that your entire network is already MS centric.

You don't. You could certainly copy all of your music to the Xbox 360 hard drive, if you really wanted to. You can also connect mp3 players and external hard drives (FAT32-formatted only) via USB and read from those. However, if you want to do the streaming thing you need something that will feed it the data. Windows Media Connect is little more than an app that feeds UPnP media devices (like the Xbox 360, or the Roku Soundbridge, or one of the many other "networked media devices out there). As such, you don't really need WMC to get your data. You just need something that will do the same thing as WMC, like Connect360 for OS X. I'd be surprised if nobody's working on (or already finished) a similar app for Linux.

How loud are your regular drives exactly? The drive in my laptop (IBM T41) is audible during spin-up, and quiets down a lot afterwards. The X360 on the other hand starts loud and stays loud - loud enough that sitting about 5 feet away from it, I have to turn up the volume on the stereo significantly to mask the drive noise. Yes, I understand that loud drives are common. But the day that a quiet gizmo will come out that does what I want it to do, the X360 will be relegated to strictly playing games that are exclusive to the X360. And that's not MS' goal.

Supposedly the new Samsung drive is quieter than the orignal Hitachi drive. You can try talking Microsoft into doing a gratis swap, or you could try to find one for sale somewhere (I'm sure the llamma will get some eventually, but who knows when or for what price?). Then again, my 360 has a Hitachi drive and the sound is not so overwhelming when it's ~10 feet away in my media center. Maybe I've just gotten used to it.

I only started using it again when I decided to mod it to run unsigned binaries like XBMC on it. An interesting side effect was that I was able to copy my until recently unusable games to the hard drive to actually get to play them without the system locking up with an "Unable to read disc" message all too often.

Of course, with a modified system you would no longer be able to play on Live. Whether that matters to you or not is a different issue.

The problem with your DVD drive was unfortunately common, and I'm surprised you never got a real repair for it (or at least a refurbished console). That said, the "correct" fix is to replace your crappy DVD drive (probably a Thomson) with one of the better drives from Phillips, Samsung, or Hitachi. Like you, my original Xbox had a piece of crap Thomson, but I fixed it by replacing it with a Phillips and everything was better (the DVD drive doesn't factor in to the identity of the console like the hard drive and motherboard do, so it's not seen as a hack and bannable offense). The Phillips drive did eventually die from natural causes, at which point I replaced the drive again, this time with a Samsung. Since the second replacement was not needed until I could buy a complete used Xbox for the price of a DVD drive at llama.com, I just went down to the local Game Crazy and opened Xboxes until I found one with a drive I wanted. After swapping the drives, my old box with all of my non-transferable saves was back in business. No modchip necessary, though now I have a spare Xbox in which I could put an old flakey Thomson (because the Phillips was really dead, not just flakey) that might be worth modding some day.

I only started using it again when I decided to mod it to run unsigned binaries like XBMC on it. An interesting side effect was that I was able to copy my until recently unusable games to the hard drive to actually get to play them without the system locking up with an "Unable to read disc" message all too often.

Of course, with a modified system you would no longer be able to play on Live. Whether that matters to you or not is a different issue.

The problem with your DVD drive was unfortunately common, and I'm surprised you never got a real repair for it (or at least a refurbished console). That said, the "correct" fix is to replace your crappy DVD drive (probably a Thomson) with one of the better drives from Phillips, Samsung, or Hitachi. Like you, my original Xbox had a piece of crap Thomson, but I fixed it by replacing it with a Phillips and everything was better (the DVD drive doesn't factor in to the identity of the console like the hard drive and motherboard do, so it's not seen as a hack and bannable offense). The Phillips drive did eventually die from natural causes, at which point I replaced the drive again, this time with a Samsung. Since the second replacement was not needed until I could buy a complete used Xbox for the price of a DVD drive at llama.com, I just went down to the local Game Crazy and opened Xboxes until I found one with a drive I wanted. After swapping the drives, my old box with all of my non-transferable saves was back in business. No modchip necessary, though now I have a spare Xbox in which I could put an old flakey Thomson (because the Phillips was really dead, not just flakey) that might be worth modding some day.

I think this is yet another huge misstep by the Xbox team. Non-technical people don't traditionally do well with different but very similar products. I'm sure they'll get all games to work on both models, but I have a feeling some will recommend running on the faster one only.

As others have pointed out, don't expect to see a speed increase from this process change. Instead, this will allow for more stable and cheaper consoles (cheaper for Microsoft; who knows when they'll give us a price drop?).

However, with the xbox 360, propietary everything, the people with first rev 360's might feel frozen out, and might feel forced into buying a new version. You don't want to alienate your customers, especially when you have competion in the future.

What does proprietary vs. non-proprietary have to do with it? The original Xbox was "proprietary", even though it was based on standard parts (the CPU was a one-off design, the GPU was a one-off design, and everything was surface-mounted. You couldn't swap the CPU, GPU, or add more memory unless you were awesome with soldering). Anyway, you do realize that the original Xbox went through eight different "versions" ("revisions" may be a better word), right? Aside from getting screwed with a Thompson DVD drive (the version had little bearing on what drive you'd get, but that Thompson drives stopped shipping with later versions), all versions work exactly the same. In fact, the only reason you'd care about what version you have is if you need to do repairs yourself and need specific parts, or if you want to mod the box and need to make sure you get the right modchip package.

More importantly, this kind of product revision has always happened with consoles. Even Nintendo did it, way back with the NES. Sony does it, and obviously Microsoft does to. Expect to see a number of revisions of the 360 over the years, and unless they really screw something up (like Sony did with the PSTwo revision) you should expect all consoles to be equivalent.

Yep. If you've got spare Xbox, PS2, Dreamcast or GC controllers, you can use one of these: http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=29&produ cts_id=4532& or http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=163&prod ucts_id=3174& or you can make one yourself: http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Mods/xbox_controller_to _pc_usb.htm

First read on Xbox-scene.com a few weeks ago.

You should contact the legal firm of Spiro Moss Barness, etc... They are one of many firms united in a class action lawsuit about the Thompson DVD drives that were used in the Xbox. Microsoft seem to have been aware of the lack of quality in these drives as later models used different manufacturers. Despite this, if you talk to their customer service reps, they continue to ask you if your discs are dirty despite the fact you tell them you just bought the damn game.

I don't give a rat's ass about Sony's problems. I'm here to ask about the awful consumer experience I had with my original Xbox and what exactly is the truth about this new product. Here are links that show what a known issue those drives were.

http://sentientcreations.com/xboxIssues/problem.ph p

http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/xbox_dvd_repair .htm

Now there's an entire market based upon replacing your Xbox's DVD drive with a better one such as Samsung.

Microsoft's support solution: clean the disc. No matter how many times you tell them the disc is brand new, they say it's a dirty disc.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;8167

Then there was the power supply issue. A recall in which power cords were issued to cover up shoddy circuitry that could and did cause house fires. Mostly due to bad soldering. In the recall, older Xboxes were given power cords with breakers, so in the event of a short, you may burn out your Xbox but at least your house won't burn down.

http://s4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Technology/ar/t 215.htm

So a few weeks ago we started to see Xbox 360s in demo retail models showing the dreaded Error 74. Photograph of it here.

http://joystiq.com/entry/1234000480066825/

Now we have reports of crashes that yes, are online and could be from a vocal minority, but I have never heard of or owned a console that crashes the way photographs show us is happening to the 360 - and let's remember the people complaining about it are the ones who braved the cold and the nuisance of picking one up.

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/xbox-360/hours-old-an d-pgr3-crashing-like-mad-138978.php

Now apparently there is a fix in the form of suspending the power supply. People are finding it's working. Ergo, the power supply is defective. Just like the one on the original Xbox which was RECALLED.

Whatever marketing spiel Microsoft want to give, I want for them to answer one thing. What exactly is Error 74 and Error 79 - what does it mean is happening to the box. They have refused, as they did with the Thompson DVD drive, to let us know what is going wrong. Even if it isolated. Does it bode poorly for the future? Why is there a SPECIFIC error message already in the box's OS that is happening to people?

Now we know for certain that the machine is not only prone to overheating, there is an inbuilt error message related to it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907533/

And did you hear about how the tech support person told that guy to "wipe his video cables with a soft cloth"? Too rich.

Y e a h.

The PS controllers are easier to use on a computer?

Google's first result on xbox usb controller. Note lack of programming chips, or even any chips at all.

Wasn't the XBOX controller interface basically USB with different pin positions or something?

IIRC the Xbox Console USM ships with the Thompson DVD drive standard, pictured here in middle. The Thompson drive costs much less than the Hitachi, Samsung, or Phillips drives that can also be used. But some of the Thompson drives have problems. These problems don't show up with games written on single layer (orig Halo, JSRF/Sega, D&D Heroes, etc.), only with games written in 2-layer DVD (LOTR Third Age, KOTOR II, GTA:SA, etc.). The problems require a multimeter and Torx drivers to fix and you can't do it yourself without voiding the warranty. The returns and rumors are hurting sales in some places, and Microsoft's corporate tools are unable to FUD their way out of it. But if your local supplier happened to get USMs with the higher quality drives, then he has no idea a problem exists. Then when Microsoft adjusts shipping amounts across the board, suppliers who never experienced the problem complain about a conspiracy.

I found myself in the unfortunate circumstance where my games (all single layer) worked until the warranty expired, at which time I rented a scratchless KOTOR II, watched it hang repeatedly, and finally learned the truth. My single layer games still played fine.

Just for fun, didja notice the gamasutra article links to itself? I clicked for hours watching the banner ad change, and it was almost as fulfilling as finishing Fable.

IIRC the Xbox Console USM ships with the Thompson DVD drive standard, pictured here in middle. The Thompson drive costs much less than the Hitachi, Samsung, or Phillips drives that can also be used. But some of the Thompson drives have problems. These problems don't show up with games written on single layer (orig Halo, JSRF/Sega, D&D Heroes, etc.), only with games written in 2-layer DVD (LOTR Third Age, KOTOR II, GTA:SA, etc.). The problems require a multimeter and Torx drivers to fix and you can't do it yourself without voiding the warranty. The returns and rumors are hurting sales in some places, and Microsoft's corporate tools are unable to FUD their way out of it. But if your local supplier happened to get USMs with the higher quality drives, then he has no idea a problem exists. Then when Microsoft adjusts shipping amounts across the board, suppliers who never experienced the problem complain about a conspiracy.

I found myself in the unfortunate circumstance where my games (all single layer) worked until the warranty expired, at which time I rented a scratchless KOTOR II, watched it hang repeatedly, and finally learned the truth. My single layer games still played fine.

Just for fun, didja notice the gamasutra article links to itself? I clicked for hours watching the banner ad change, and it was almost as fulfilling as finishing Fable.

IIRC the Xbox Console USM ships with the Thompson DVD drive standard, pictured here in middle. The Thompson drive costs much less than the Hitachi, Samsung, or Phillips drives that can also be used. But some of the Thompson drives have problems. These problems don't show up with games written on single layer (orig Halo, JSRF/Sega, D&D Heroes, etc.), only with games written in 2-layer DVD (LOTR Third Age, KOTOR II, GTA:SA, etc.). The problems require a multimeter and Torx drivers to fix and you can't do it yourself without voiding the warranty. The returns and rumors are hurting sales in some places, and Microsoft's corporate tools are unable to FUD their way out of it. But if your local supplier happened to get USMs with the higher quality drives, then he has no idea a problem exists. Then when Microsoft adjusts shipping amounts across the board, suppliers who never experienced the problem complain about a conspiracy.

I found myself in the unfortunate circumstance where my games (all single layer) worked until the warranty expired, at which time I rented a scratchless KOTOR II, watched it hang repeatedly, and finally learned the truth. My single layer games still played fine.

Just for fun, didja notice the gamasutra article links to itself? I clicked for hours watching the banner ad change, and it was almost as fulfilling as finishing Fable.

IIRC the Xbox Console USM ships with the Thompson DVD drive standard, pictured here in middle. The Thompson drive costs much less than the Hitachi, Samsung, or Phillips drives that can also be used. But some of the Thompson drives have problems. These problems don't show up with games written on single layer (orig Halo, JSRF/Sega, D&D Heroes, etc.), only with games written in 2-layer DVD (LOTR Third Age, KOTOR II, GTA:SA, etc.). The problems require a multimeter and Torx drivers to fix and you can't do it yourself without voiding the warranty. The returns and rumors are hurting sales in some places, and Microsoft's corporate tools are unable to FUD their way out of it. But if your local supplier happened to get USMs with the higher quality drives, then he has no idea a problem exists. Then when Microsoft adjusts shipping amounts across the board, suppliers who never experienced the problem complain about a conspiracy.

I found myself in the unfortunate circumstance where my games (all single layer) worked until the warranty expired, at which time I rented a scratchless KOTOR II, watched it hang repeatedly, and finally learned the truth. My single layer games still played fine.

Just for fun, didja notice the gamasutra article links to itself? I clicked for hours watching the banner ad change, and it was almost as fulfilling as finishing Fable.

from the article: "Along with a 5× DVD drive for game loading and video playback, initial versions included an 8-Gbyte hard drive to improve startup time. Microsoft has since removed that drive to lower system costs."

I think they meant to say that Microsoft has stopped using the 5x DVD drives in new Xboxs, not that they have removed the hard disk. Xboxs have shipped with 2x(Thompson,Philips) and 5x(Samsung) DVD ROMs. The Samsung Drives read burned disks while you are lucky if the others read any disks at all. Most XBox hacks require you to be able to read a burned disk, so I imagine that made them change more than the expense of a 5x DVD-ROM. I have a Thompson drive and can't read any burned media(I've tried DVD-R, DVD+RW, CD-R, and CD-RW). Luckily you don't HAVE to be able to read burned disks to install any of the hacks on your Xbox.

You can already get "real" rosters for college games for Xbox and PS2. Plus people go in and update the NFL rosters to include things such as Ricky Williams retiring right before the season.

ActionReplay (Xbox) has 43 "Power Saves" for EA's NCAA 2005 which include 13 different rosters for Div 1A.

If you don't want to pay for their memory card you can download their software and use a USB memory stick or your own Xbox Memory Card.

Fine, 70 million sold, just like Microsoft has sold 15.5 million units. Let's not forget resale and refurbishment which only get counted once, too. Either way you look at it, both companies have issues that make their numbers appear more impressive than they truly are. But 70 million is still substantially more than 15.5 million, nearly triple the market penetration. As for your remarks about replacement units and playing pirated games, the same holds true for the XBox. Let's not forget the "dirty disk" class action against Microsoft and the bad hard drive unit replacements. There's also the "illegal", by Microsoft definitions, Linux installations. There's also mod chips, which weren't nearly as much of an issue with the PS2 as they were for the PSOne but were a big issue for Microsoft and the first XBox.

None of that really matters as much as the game unit sales of the two "series" that we were discussing. GTA 3 more than doubled the sales of Halo in the three years since they were both released while GTA: VC nearly tripled the sales of Halo in just two years time, Halo was out an entire year before the release of GTA: VC and it's sales aren't even close. GTA:VC wasn't touted as being the defining game of the platform like Halo was when it came out either.

You come across like a demented fanboy when you take in the big picture here. Sorry, GTA is a more popular title than Halo will ever be, which was my point in the first place, Halo isn't really as popular as Mcrosoft wants everybody to believe it is.

http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/xbox_dvd_repair .htm/

Link to some troubleshooting tips.

JA

Here is a great site for determining your drive type and addressing the Dirty Disk Errors. Link

Xbox warranty is only 90 days. Suck0rz. But they do offer an extended two-year one, which you have to buy at the time of purchase I guess

That's correct, but there is also a range of serial numbers (no, I don't know the range of numbers or the build dates they cover) that XBox support will fix even outside of warranty. The problem comes from having the hard drive. For some insane reason, part of fixing the DVD-ROM (a simple replacement job you could do yourself without even a mod chip, if you were to buy replacement parts) involves wiping the hard drive. Now that many games have moved to being hard drive only (you can't copy their saves from the hard drive to a memory card), and others use very large files (a single KOTOR save game file is larger than the 8MB memory cards you can buy for XBox), that means you're going to be screwed on many games you're playing (and that's assuming that you do shell out for many memory cards to save what you can). Not to mention the huge inconvenience of re-ripping any CDs you've saved to the hard drive (the CD-ripping experience is so poor that I've never bothered to do it more than once).

The warranty is crap - Only 90 days. Obviously, the two biggest weak points on that thing are the HD and the DVD reader. I never understood why the decision was made to install a hard disk. I mean, it's a console - Kids play with it, and the thing is subject to a few bumps and drops. Not good for an HD. If you don't have the thing chipped and your HD fails you are basically screwed, unless you want to pay blood money for repair. If you're chipped you can just take that 10GB junker out and put in a $50 40GB drive.

As far as the DVD reader goes, there are sites on the net that sell replacement lasers for them and have tutorials for repairing the drive.

The warranty is crap - Only 90 days. Obviously, the two biggest weak points on that thing are the HD and the DVD reader. I never understood why the decision was made to install a hard disk. I mean, it's a console - Kids play with it, and the thing is subject to a few bumps and drops. Not good for an HD. If you don't have the thing chipped and your HD fails you are basically screwed, unless you want to pay blood money for repair. If you're chipped you can just take that 10GB junker out and put in a $50 40GB drive.

As far as the DVD reader goes, there are sites on the net that sell replacement lasers for them and have tutorials for repairing the drive.

Oh you mean like this?

So... I don't have to imagine a beowulf cluster of these!

Feel free to try, and succeed.

The mod does work as a functional controller, not just for linux running, as lots of Counter-Strike fans use this to play CS for X-box old-school style.

not that I'm a big m$ fan, but direct 3d sorta makes up for the changing hardware; and last I heard, they are trying to make a standard pc gaming controler. probably will end up as one of theese and one of theese

OK, I RTFA. Interesting as hell... I read a few posts here that say something along the lines of "well it'd be ultimate IF it had a TV capture/tuner card on it."

I agree...

What would the possibilities of taking something like this
and hooking it up to the xbox with a reverse one of these?

IANAP (Programmer), but it seems like the hardware part is certainly feasible. I did a quick google to see if anyone has done something like this, and I did find something about the xbox USB stack being proprietary, but that's not exactly stopped people before. Does anyone here on slashdot know of a project to do something along these lines?

I'm going to buy an Xbox every week and throw it away just to hurt microsoft!

Why throw it away? At least build a beowulf cluster of those!.

1 used xbox: $150
1 cheapmod: $10
-or-
rented copy of "mech assault" or "007 agent under fire" plus memory card: $20
1 copy of xbox media center (visit #xbins on efnet to obtain this): priceless! (and free too!)

XBox Media Center (XBMC) will play VOB files across the network from machines sharing the files via SMB (regular windows networking) or 2 other xbox-only streaming protocols. XBMC also plays divx, xvid, mpeg, quicktime, realmedia, ogm, and other video codecs. throw in mp3/ogg support, streaming internet radio from shoutcast, a picutre viewer for your digital pics, and even weather updates from the weather channel.com and you have yourself a pretty cheap playback system.

oh yeah and it can play xbox games too.

xbox media center website
information on hacking the xbox (news, tutorials, and forums)
reliable source of cheap chips in the us

...I'm quite sure they can break them apart and sell them as spare parts. The Xbox (and PS2 I'd imagine) spare parts scene is a pretty good one, just look at places like llamma.com.

There's a page that describes the mod at http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Mods/xbox_controller_to _pc_usb.htm.

The driver is available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/xboxhid/.