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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.'"
Because you just know it's going to fail.
At least their diagnostics were comprehensive enough to catch all those failure modes.
What sort of things would cause those different parts to fail?
The sun coming up, basically.
it's called 360 because of the trip it takes
from microsoft, to you, back to microsoft, to you again
http://bash.org/?806949
I have had my 360 since a few months after the lauch and I have never had any RROD problems with it either.
Then again, I'm having good luck with Vista so I guess I'm inversely jinxed.
...in the basement?? preposterous!!
Have you tried playing it?
...is a vindaloo.
Just FYI, you mean "leak", a leek is a vegetable - sorry, I don't normally troll spelling/grammar, but it was mildly amusing reading your post and thinking of the vegetable each time :)
This reminds me of the episode of Venture Brothers where they go to the space station and it has a single red light labeled "Trouble" that blinks when any problem occurs... :)
Yes. A 1000 times yes. This is the second time my xbox failed (on it's way to Texas so sayeth UPS), the 1st time I shipped it away. I'm kind of going through a low grade withdrawl. I stupidly created an unreadable gamertag since I never thought I'd be playing with people who don't know me. Over the year I had my xbox it changed how I entertained myself. I didn't go out drinking as much, going to movies as much, and I watch A LOT less TV. The xbox had nearly killed TV for me entirely, which in the midst of a writers strike is fucking painful. But I had been at the point where I'd play the occasional RPG, but mostly I had a regular game or series of games with people I'd met on xbox live. It's social and relaxed, got it's share of pithy comments (why bother sticking with games filled with asshats when you got people who aren't asshats to play with), but also competative. It's a complete entertainment experience. One I clearly partook of too often, given my symptomatic reaction. But just Gears of War, I've played that for about 500 hours for $60 bucks. Even if you include the price of the console, that's just dominating value. I've considered buying a second "spare" xbox to use in case of repair. And this might be the addiction talking, but with just one Gears of War game a year, it makes a certain twisted economic sense. Then since I was the only guy who had a 360, cause I was the only one of my friends who had an HD tv, my place was something of the cool place to hang out. Now, I'm jittery, posting AC on a laptop, as I sit in the dark. Alone.
Your question boils down to was my life before "400 dollars better" than it is now. Yeah. Easily. Thank god for superbowls and superbowl parties.
So you see the ring and your XBox dies...
There's a movie in there somewhere...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You'll know when it happens, all your electronic devices will turn to blue screens.
My condolences.
...coffee machine's got the same problem. almost every day there's a ring of red light flashing and it stops working, but then i refill the water and the RRoD disappears. Maybe you should try this with the Xboxes as well - i'm almost sure that the RRoD will disappear INSTANTLY!
"Fast, cheap, reliable, pick any two" when you go to buy any videogame system.
You mean "Fast, cheap, reliable, Microsoft*, pick any two"
* Microsoft counts as two
I am not stubborn. I am right!
>> Dude, my SNES has PENNIES rattling around in it and it still plays.
WOW!! First piggy bank case mod! Weren't you supposed to choose an iMac, though?
Now I know where that term comes from... it's not crashing computers, it's M$'s ulterior motive - to take over the world!
"it's Pinky, Pinky and the brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain"
Ah, towels, isn't there anything they can't do!
Ok, true, you have to remember where your towel is...
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
... that a common "fix" for RROD 360's is to wrap them in a towel. This causes the bad ROHS solder balls to expand and make better connections.
This problem should be known as "XBOX menstruation" with the fix being "tampaxing":
Person1: "Damn my XBOX is now showing the red ring and is refusing to work properly".
Person2: "Have you tried tampaxing?"
Person1: "Eh?"
Person2: "Your XBOX is suffering from XBOX menstration. Tampaxing deals with the flow issues"
Person1: "Thanks, your right tampaxing has fixed the issue!".
If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it. -- Calvin Coolidge