Microsoft Insider Details Xbox 360 Red Ring Problems

kylemonger writes "A blogger at the Seattle PI has interviewed a Microsoft insider about the Xbox 360 project. The insider purports to have the background story on the 'red ring of death' (RROD) failures and why they are so common. 'RROD is caused by anything that fails in the "digital backbone" on the mother board. Also known as a core digital error. CPU, GPU, memory, etc. Bad parts, incompatible parts (timing problems) bad manufacturing process (like solder joints), misapplied heat sinks or thermal interface material, missing parts, broken parts, parts of the wrong value, missed test coverage. Any one or more, on any chip, or many other discrete components, would cause this. And many of the failures were obviously infant mortality, where they work when they leave the factory and fail early in use. The main design flaw was the excessive heat on the GPU warping the mother board around it. This would stress the solder joints on the GPU and any bad joints would then fail in early life. There are also other significantly high failure rates in other areas, like the DVD.'"

Comments

Did I miss the part where this was different?

[UserChrisCanter4]

Seriously, this is no different than any other game console out there in the CD era.

I went through two dead PS1 consoles before I got to one that lasted. Go google about turning a PSX upside down; the original models (with discrete RCA jacks on the back) had serious overheating problems that caused FMVs to stutter and skip like mad. One of the most common fixes in that era was turning the unit upside down to allow more air to circulate. The same gen PSXs and the 1st major revision (when they went to an A/V Multi-out port) also had serious problems with failing laser "eyes" and scratching discs. During the PSX's popularity, it was relatively easy to find cheap replacement lenses from third parties because it was such a common failure point.

The PS2 had its own host of problems, and I replaced the first one I had after it scratched the crap out of two of my games less than a week after I camped out to buy one on launch day. Sony's kind advice, "take it back to the store and get another" was sort of worthless given that none were available immediately following the launch, and it took two hours of arguing on the phone before they agreed to replace it under warranty. Outside of my anecdotal evidence, the PS2's problems with CD-ROM games (google PS2 blue disc fix) are pretty well known. Apparently the CD laser, but not the DVD one, had a tendency to warp out of alignment after repeated use, but it wasn't as big an issue since most games were on DVD after the first year or so. It's an easy problem to identify since PS2 CD-ROM games have a blue-tinted surface.

Dreamcast? Well, it wasn't really out there in the same kind of numbers as the other two, but I do remember a lot of people having problems with the analog triggers on the controllers; the springs would fail and the trigger would depress in permanently or stay permanently out. Fixing it on your own wasn't too tough, but it's still a pretty fundamental design flaw. And as for controller failures...

PSP: The original japanese model had a button (triangle or square, I believe) that pretty much continuously failed. Apparently the mechanism inside was just off-center enough that repeated use of the button caused it to become permanently depressed.

Hmmm... XBox: Certain models of DVD drives were extremely prone to failure, and MS switched suppliers three or four times looking for better sources. I replaced mine, but in fairness it was four years after I bought the unit.

So, (surprise!), once the game industry moved to the optical world with all of the extra moving parts, things started going downhill. This also happened to coincide with the point when game consoles started requiring fans and serious heatsinks to compensate for the heat output. Are we seriously surprised here that sub-$350 hardware fails? I mean, I'll definitely grant you that the RROD is more frequent than some of the older problems, but it also represents a myriad of failure scenarios. If the PSX had an "error" light that lit up for its various problems, there'd probably be more out there about the failure light than there is about the individual failings. And don't forget what one /.er aptly described as the "internet bullhorn effect." People bitch like mad about their problems online and the skewed sample makes it look like there are far bigger issues than there actually are. This article's 30% failure number simply doesn't match up with what anyone else has reported or what seems to be the case anecdotally for many.

But even if we grant the 30% number, MS has actually done the right thing here and extended everyone's coverage for RROD failures. There have been plenty of similar scenarios in game console history of common failure points, but thus far MS has been the only one who actually sucked it up and did something for people. As much as I dislike some of what Microsoft does and has done, they've gone a lot further in this scenario than any other company has been willing to. If you're super-concerned, just add $40 t

Red Ring Huh?

[FrankDrebin]

Red Ring Problems

I had no idea the goatse guy worked for Microsoft.