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Fix Your Crashing X-Box 360 With String
mkraft writes "A gamer fed up with his new Xbox 360 crashing every 20 minutes has fixed the problem by raising the power supply off the ground with some string. Goldeneyemaster over at the GameSpot forums indicates that the main reason for his Xbox 360 freezing up is the power supply overheating. The solution is to lift the power supply off the floor and allow the air to circulate better around it."
Not having seen one, ( nor will i buy one ), but i would imagine that a set of LARGE rubber feet would raise it enough to get some air flow..
Oh, and keep it out of the carpet..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm wondering what will happen next summer, problems will get even worse.
That's no excuse. This is a freakin' game console. You've got to expect the power supply to be sitting down on a carpet and design around that.
...Why didn't they do more in-depth burn-in tests of these?...
Why would they?
Why should they incur that expense?
They have beta-tes^H^H customers out there that willingly PAY THEM $400+ to do it for them. Literally fighting each other at stores for the oppurtunity.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
That would explain why the product is so scarce in the first month or so. Release a couple thousand, listen to the problems, adjust, release the rest.
This absurd situation is the direct result of buying a sysphisticated piece of electronic hardware from a software company.
;-)
... a huge software monopoly
... nope never could happen. For the flamers reading: Apple is primarily a hardware company, they are merely most famous for their software (well until iPod) and that software is the hook, the justification, for buying their more expensive hardware (have to cite the Mini as a break in that historical trend - not in a literal sense but in a practical sense). This is why they will not offer Mac OS X for the standard PC architecture.
Microsoft has produced sophisticated hardware before, for example Z80 coprocessor cards for Apple IIs. This let Apple II users run CP/M back in the day.
OK that was a while ago, more recently we have keyboard, mice, joysticks. Not quite sophisticated, even when you toss in force feeback
The above may not qualify as sophisticated by it does show that they are also a hardware company to some degree.
And, uh, you are aware that the XBox360 is a followup to something called the XBox? I think that little piece of hardware may fall in to the "sophisticated" category.
Irrelevant. Apple enjoys an equally monopolistic position over *it's* customers and Apple is able to design some very nice hardware.
This kind of thing, and hell, this precise situation, would never happen in a company that is run by engineers.
Like a hardware company named Apple, a company that has been producing sophisticated hardware for nearly 30 years? Oh yeah, they've never shipped with bad power supplies, bad batteries that could catch on fire,
If use of Apple offends you we could use HP (pre-Compaq), Intel, or a host of other companies to prove the same point.
[blockquote]Do not block any ventilation openings on the console or power supply. Do not place the console or power supply on a bed, sofa, or other soft surface that may block ventilation openings. Do not place the console or power supply in a confined space, such as a bookcase, rack, or stereo cabinet, unless the space is well ventilated.
Do not place the console or power supply near any heat sources, such as radiators, heat registers, stoves, or amplifiers.[/blockquote]
So where do I put it? Not everyone has a concrete pad with air conditioning running over it to play their games. This is an applicance like your stereo, like your tv, like most of the stuff people stuff into an entertainment center. It's insane that you have to have so much ventilation for a game system like that.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Maybe that's because you didn't read the manual, which says:
My most recent 20" box fan came with a manual. It says to never ever EVER put the fan in a window. The picture on the box shows it in a window. I have it in a window. It works fine there.
I have a humidifier, with a great big scary orange sticker on the inside of the lid, that actually says (paraphrased) "WARNING: If this unit becomes wet, unplug it, let it dry fully, and have it inspected by an authorized service technician before attempting to use it again". And what purpose does this lid, with so dire a warning, serve? You lift this particular lid to... FILL THE THING WITH WATER!
Virtually the entire warning section in most manuals exists solely for the purpose of helping the manufacturer fight off product liability suits. In the case of the box fan, some moron probably tried to use one in a window in the rain, and got zapped or burned his house down. That doesn't mean that I can't put a fan in the window on a nice sunny day, it just means if I do something stupid Lesko can say "see, we told you so!". For the humidifier, I don't quite know what they had in mind, but I have 100% confidence it involves covering their butts in some way.
So when the XBox360 says not to use it on a bed or sofa, which I expect accounts for where 99% of people would use it... Even those who read the warnings will tend to ignore it as just another sad attempt to protect Microsoft from morons.
Why not? It's a game console. Remember playing SMB with your friends when you were little? The nintendo would sit out in front of the TV on the floor and the game pads would connect to that, so you could sit on the furnature while playing.
Small kids play these game systems, everyone knows that. They should be built tough. I'm guessing the Xbox 360 is probably built tough, but it only takes a single weak part to ruin all of the effort.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Good thing it's not summer over there, or there might be even more issues reported.
Can't wait for the Australian release - mid summer - with all the people who don't have air-conditioned homes trying to run this think in 35+ degress celcius and see what happens...
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Why should it fall on the engineers?
Legal responsibility, that's why. The whole point of a Professional Engineer can be summed up as "the buck stops here, and I can vouch for every piece of the design, so if the design was followed, I agree (personally; not my company) to pay the penalties."
Most people don't know this, but 'Engineer' is not some phrase you can toss around or apply as desired. It's actually a legally defined term, such as 'Attorney,' 'Medical Doctor,' 'Registered Nurse,' or 'Senator'. As is the case with the title 'attorney' or 'M.D.', it's a criminal offense to call onself an Engineer if s/he don't have a Bachelors (or better) degree from an accredited university, as well as having been officially tested and licenced by the proper governmental authorities (and have the requisite number of years of experience in the field, and have your apprenticeship signed off by multiple Professional Engineers). You can't just tack the name 'Engineer' to a job and/or title; as is the case with Attorney, in which you have to be licensed by Bar, or a Medical Doctor, in which you have to be certified by the boards, an Engineer must also meet similar requirements.
The law was written to allow only competent, licenced individuals to make decisions that can have lethal consequences. Professional Engineers are quite aware of the consequences should they not perform their job with all dilligence.
While it's been fashionable lately for tech wannabies to tack the phrase 'Engineer' to their job description; ie. "Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer", or "Certified Netware Engineer", 'network engineer', this practice is illegal and punishible as fraud in most localities. (Microsoft can call it whatever they want; but technically, you can only say you have an MCSE certificate, not that you're an Engineer.)
The practice has really only survived because Engineers, in general, don't get all pissy about people abusing their official/professional title. Hell, I only mention it for education's sake: I have an Engineering degree, I legally can't call myself an Engineer for precicely this reason -- I'm not professionally licensed by the state (nor can I become licenced until I have a few years more experience). Yet when people ask, I tell them I'm an Engineer...
Of course, in the case of people misusing the title of Attorneys or Medical Doctors... I can understand the Doctors worrying-- I wouldn't want to find out my 'doctor' simply put the initials 'M.D.' on his front door. But who in their right mind would want to piss off the same profession that includes the prosecuting attorney, the judge, and the guy defending you?
In every state in the USA (and pretty much every other democratic nation), a Professional Engineer has to sign his (or her) name to every design before it can be sold and/or built. If the design is found to be faulty, civil cases (for money) can be brought against the company. Criminal cases can be brought against the engineer for his/her negligence. Such cases against engineers aren't uncommon (IIRC, it happened to the engineers who signed off the design of the World Trade Center).
Mechanical engineers are the ones who are (legally) responsible for any thermal issues involved in a design.
Electrical Engineers don't generally have to be professionally licenced; case in point: at my university, two of the EE professors are licenced. All of the ME professors are. EE students don't have to pass the FE (fundamentals of engineering) exam to get their degree; ME students do. The number of cases where it's required to be a licenced EE are currently quite small; the largest one is to be an expert witness in a court of law. But an ME needs the licence for just about everything he does.
A good part of this is difference is maturity: The understanding of electrical devices is only a couple of centuries old; however mechanical devices are a couple millenia more mature. I'm sure a century from now, an E
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
It is in Texas, where this nonsense was been repealed.
Which actually happens about 0.01% of the time. If the failure of the design won't turn somebody into a nasty smear or splatter, the law is universally ignored. With no consequences to the public. Welcome to the real world.
It has survived because prosecuting it would bring the wrath of the state legislature crashing down. As it did in Texas, when it was discovered that companies were being driven out of business by a state board dumb enough to believe their own pieces of paper, a state board who said with a straight face that the inventor of the integrated circuit was definitely not an engineer.
Have you actually read some of these laws? Like the one in my jurisdiction that requires not merely that the P.E. have a bachelors degree, but that it must come from an institution where every technical professor also has a PE (I.e., no institution on Earth grants qualifying degrees.)
Or the ones that define engineering so broadly that telling someone that two inches of styrofoam out to keep their six pack cool all day is a regulated act of engineering. So broadly that all radio hams must be PEs.
Wrong. The letter of the law requires all design threats to property to be licensed. Not just significant threats, all threats no matter how tiny. Every electronic device incorporating a totem-pole output must be approved by a PE (because the device will destroy itself if the upper and lower switches are turned on at the same time). That the device costs $0.08 and makes a light blink in a novelty toy powered by a AAA battery does not matter. It is Regulated Engineering and by god must be controlled.
Because writing aircraft fly-by-wire firmware and writing Hollywood graphics rendering software are both software engineering. Both require tremendous technical knowledge, the techniques for getting correct results are well established, and billions of dollars depend on each. Yet the required quality is drastically different. One must never fail, while it's OK if the other needs a full-time babysitter.
Licensure on the basis of knowledge, education, or task will always fail. Everyone will ingore it, and any engineering board foolish enough to try to enforce its regulations will be sternly corrected by their state legislature. The rational approach would be to draw up a list of particular types of designs that are regulated. E.g., airplanes, custom architecture, outdoor power lines, tanks operated above a pressure of N psi, and so forth.
And what if you could bring a particular software engineer to justice