Slashdot Mirror
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."
Now, I wonder...
Why didn't they do more in-depth burn-in tests of these?
I mean, sure, defects are common in manufacturing, but something as simple to detect as overheating?
With a unit of this cost, one would think that their engineering team would have, at the very least, warned that overheating 'may' be an issue.
If you have an Xbox 360, read the label of power supply. Post who manufactures it, and where it was manufactured. Perhaps there are other consumer devices that use power supplies from the same manufacturer that we should check for overheating.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Oh, and keep it out of the carpet..
Indeed. How many of these do you suppose are stuffed behind the entertainment center with the rest of the wall warts?
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Hardware is not easy. This is not say software is, but there are different issues. Even companies like Apple that has been doing hardware to over 20 years gets into trouble. At the beginning they had major issue. No one will ever forget that one had to lift then Apple /// up a couple inches and then drop it to reseat the ram. We can look at overheating batteries in laptops from Apple and other equally experienced designers.
Which is to say that MS can only buy so much experience. What is interesting is that people have little doubt that MS will eventually produce a quality product. Contrast this to say views on Linux that claim a perpetually inferior OS, even though in many Linux has made faster gains on MS Windows and Unix than MS made on Apple or Unix.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I went back to report and had a very hard time from the product manager (it was in fact so bad that half way through the meeting I told him I had to switch out of the language we were using back to my native English because I did not want a grammatical error to turn into an "admission" in a court of law.) But in the end he gave up.
The engineers then gave me lunch and told me that everybody knew that the project manager had specified to the PSU manaufacturer that the unit had to work up to 35C free air - completely failing to allow for its being used on a carpet, on top of a hot TV, or even on top of the TV covered in magazines. Nobody could understand what sort of a house he must live in that he was unaware of how the box was actually likely to be used.
Pining for the fjords
Made in China.
It could easily have been a management problem too... As frickin' huge as the thing is, it's possible it was even larger during development, and the management word came down "the PSU must be smaller! Otherwise the japanese won't buy it. Consequences be damned!", and it turns out this was the smallest they could get it.
How about not putting the PSU on carpet. . . I bet that would fix 9 out of every 10 complaints.
If you bought a new PC, would you set your PSU on the carpet? no you wouldn't.
When I get an X360 I'm going to stuff it in a PC case (the whole console) and mount the PSU in the regular PSU alotted area. . .
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Air is a crappy heat conductor, but in many cases it is your only option.
Water conducts heat about 25x better than air (which is why hypothermia hits in minutes when you are in 35 degree water, but can stand in 35 degree air for half an hour or more with little more than a shiver) but not too many people will let you flood their homes just to keep them warm.
Modern electronics use cooling fans because they are cheap, and because they work good enough. For serious heat management, you are back to liquids (look at car engines, for example.)
It looks like the MS power supply could use some cooling fins, because dunking it in mineral oil (while effective) isn't particularly end user friendly.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I had a laptop power supply that kept overheating. I simply put it on a 12"x12" piece of ceramic tile left over from my kitchen.
The tile would get just a little warm, and it kept the power supply from getting hot.
Sorry, but that horse has bolted
Back in the old days when I had my Atari 800XL, I upgraded it to 256K of RAM. The extra power draw was enough to cause the power supply to overheat and fail. The power supply was encased in hard plastic and had no ventilation. My solution was to place the power supply in a zip-lock baggie that was obviously open at the top to allow the cables to go out, but then the lower half was submerged in a pot of water. Worked perfectly until I finally came across a power supply that was ventilated.
Eh, there are always excuses for stuff like this.
People manufacture or design bum power supplies all the time. It seems like once or twice a year there is a story on Slashdot about a major power supply recall. At least this one hasn't burned someone's living room down yet.
Who knows what happened with this incident. When I see an ID mishap such as this, it's usually because some idiot at a manufacturing plant in BFE didn't adhere to a design spec.
Since this problem didn't seem to show up with during the small preliminary manufacturing runs, and designers / engineers usually run heat and environment tests, it could probably be a problem with final manufacturing.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
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. ;-)
The first X-Box was a big PC in a box. Literally, if you open it up, it's a bunch of standard computer parts. I'd call that "good marketing in getting people to buy a keyboard-less PC," but not sophisticated hardware design.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Umm yeah... Thats why maintainence at my building decided to shut off the air conditioning unit over the weekend. I came back monday to find a bunch of dead PSUs in my server room. Thats why all real servers come with two PSUs because PSUs don't fail.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Are you aware that the Xbox was just a PC with a custom OS (a customized version of Windows)? It was NOT sophisticated. Actually, if I remember correctly, the first-generation Xbox crashed quite a bit, too. . .
"Apple enjoys an equally monopolistic position over *it's* customers and Apple is able to design some very nice hardware."
The key word is *ITS*. Microsoft's monopolistic actions affect EVERYONE - I don't use Windows or Office, but I'm forced into using Word documents because most people do use Windows and Office.
Also. . . Apple knows its place when it comes to hardware - they get help when they need it. Other companies' technologies are in the iPod - the only one that comes to mind is Real, but there are others. Apple knew it wasn't a pro when it comes to audio technologies, so they got help. And also, Apple has become good at making hardware and has both hardware and software down to a science. When they do something, they make sure they get it right. They're not perfect, but they're far ahead of MS.
"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, ... 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."
But Apple learned from their mistakes, didn't they? Plus, from what I remember, the iPod with the exploding batteries did that because of misuse (it went through the washing machine - AND was taken apart by a curious teenager). Just recently, MS had a recall for the Xbox power cord because it had burned people's hands and caught things on fire - not because of misuse but because it simply got too hot!
And if "Apple is primarily a hardware company" and "they will not offer Mac OS X for the standard PC architecture". . . then why are they releasing OS X for x86 (which is generally considered the "standard PC architecture")? And what about their software listed at http://www.apple.com/software/ such as iPhoto, Safari, Final Cut Studio, and Quicktime?
www.linuxpenguin.net
You know, it was MS (and Sony) that decided that this "media center" should be residing in the living room. It was *their* idea that gaming should be centered around the TV, rather than around the PC. It was *their* idea that the next-gen consoles should be psuedo-DVRs, DVD players, music jukeboxes AND gaming machines.
If they want to compete in that arena, where VCRs, DVD players, stereos, and the last generation of consoles lived (and every console before that), then they better make damn sure their hardware works in that environement. After all, *they* are the ones that want to compete in the living room. The console must conform to the entertainment center, not the other way around...the $400 purchase simply won't drive the design of a living room for 95% of the people buying one (that number was made up...but I'm sure it is a vast majority).
If this is not the case, then the XBox360, PS3 and whatever else just become another type of PC, with an entire area set up to accomodate that particular piece of hardware. Trust me when I say that this is not what most consumers want, and is certainly ot what MS (Sony) wants. If we are going to do that, just get a nice PC and game there. At least PCs are upgradeable as you go along to accomodate new requirements as games come out.
The solution? Design a friggin' power supply that doesn't overheat when it sits on a carpeted floor, or in the back of a entertainment center. It's been done thousands of times before, and we need to see this for what it is: a defect. Just like the release of the PSP, just because the manual says that "8 or fewer dead/stuck pixels are normal and not a defect." doesn't *actually mean* that 8 or fewer dead/stuck pixels isn't a defect. MS can tell us that the power supply should be placed in the bottom shelf of your freezer to "properly" set up the XBox360, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a problem with the unit.
NOTE: I am not a bitter Xbox360 owner (I don't own one at all), just simply observing from the sidelines. I agree people should do their research, but that doesn't mean the company can make whatever demands they want on the consumer in the manual and they become reasonable.
Duck Tape
Duct tape sucks on air ducts. Does not last very long at all.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
The knowledge needed to make a large project happen is wide ranging, and not always found in a textbook, and not always found with a consultant. Supply chains, economy estimates, component interactions, assembly are truly intersting and difficult problems. The simple act of asking someone else to build something, especially if you do not understand the product, can be a major pain. And the last point about using companies that sacrifice cost for quality. That is experience. Knowing who can be trusted, and who can't.
Companies do have core competencies, and it when they merge and buy and consilidate in a fantasy that core compentencies and cultures do no matter that trouble starts. We make fun of their stupidy when the stock falls as cultures collide, but it is comments like the parent and grandparents that promote those bad decisions in the first place.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Joystiq or Spong had a comparison of the power supply for the Xbox360 (huge) and the 360 devbox sent to reviewers so they can play pre-release builts and games from other regions (huger, yes, that's possible, somehow). I assume they made the bigger power supply first and it worked fine. Then someone at MS decided size was an issue, they made a new smaller power supply but to do so they had to make it borderline overheating. Now people use that power supply in situations not quite as ideal as a hard floor in an air conditioned laboratory and *gasp* it overheats.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I'm sure everyone remembers blowing in their NES cartridges....looks like the game world has come 360
The amount of heat generated by anything goes up as the volume, but the ability to dissipate heat only goes up as the square. Which means you can only make heat-generating things up to a certain size vefore they require cooling.
That's why internal-combustion cylinders can only be made so big-- somewhere around 3-4 liters each there's too much heat generated to be carried away by the limited wall space.
Same thing with power supplies-- you can nowdays build them to generate lots of watts per cubic inch, but then getting rid of the heat is a problem.
In a floor-mount power supply you really can't use a fan-- it would get clogged up very quickly by your house dust and cat hairs. They could have used an extruded aluminum case with heat-sink fins on it, but that would have added a couple dollars to the cost. Plus requiring a three-wire line cord and extra certificationh.
So they went with some marginal convection cooling vents and a lot of finger-crossing.
Not too surprising if they were the same floks that designed the old xbox power supply, with its bound-to-break power connector.
I have a carpet, therefore my home does not meet the minimum specifications for owning a xbox360, how idiotic is that...I love carpeting it keeps my feet warm. But the worst part is that idiots will still line up to buy this engineering fiasco, that out of the gate doesnt work properly...you think they would have tried it out at somebody's house since its a HOME CONSOLE.
steve
That would explain why the product is so scarce in the first month or so.
No, that's marketing. Just about every news outlet ran stories about geeks camped out overnight to buy an xbox and how they sold out so quickly = lotsa free advertising. Many of the "campers" were planted there by PR companies that specialise in generating "buzz" for a product, concert, movie, etc.
By keeping supplies low for now they make the xbox look cool & exclusive.
Ultimately MS wants to sell millions of xboxes, so supplies will increase soon, probably 2 weeks - don't want to miss the christmas rush.
The laws regarding the use of the title "Engineer" are both stupid and universally ignored. The way the title is actually used "Engineer" is pretty much the same as "Doctor". Anybody can call themselves a "Doctor" (and in reality "Engineer"), but only those properly licensed can call themselves "M.D." (or "P.E.") It is the height of stupidity to say that people who are in fact engineers cannot call themselves an engineer simply because nobody has developed a licensing exam for their discipline yet.
I am a Computer Engineer, and have been for six years. I have taken a 4-year program in Computer Engineering at a University program accredited by the Accrediation Board for Engineering and Technology (THE U.S. engineering acccrediting organization), and I have received a well-rounded program of instruction by well-qualified professors. Nevertheless, the program as designed would not leave me with even a chance of passing the FE exam. (It's missing thermo, fluids, and power engineering) If an ABET-accredited engineering curriculum is structured to leave out topics necessary to pass the FE exam, then perhaps not even ABET belives that an "Engineer" needs to take one of those exams.
One of the requirements of a P.E. license is to work underneath a licensed engineer/mentor. I work for a gigantic technology company and I don't know of a single engineer I could work under if I had bothered to take the FE exam in college.
I believe that licensing for Professional Engineers should be expanded, as many of the things that Software or Computer Engineers do are things that have consequences drastic enough (loss of life, bankruptcy of companies, misdirection of funds, etc.) that licensing seems sensible. However, until relevant exams can be developed, any such efforts are silly.
SirWired