Ok I did it myself.
To begin with, it works.
I had not had the opportunity to try a Matrix before, and I was a bit worried about the pogo pins, so I decided to try the TSOP flash in the hopes of removing the Matrix.
After viewing several photos of Matrix installations AFTER the chip was removed, I can understand why it has so many problems and why the pogo pins are NOT a good idea.
Solder is relatively soft and maleable. The Matrix attempts to imbed the pins INTO the solder with the pressure exerted by the screw.
Over time the solder will bend (actually it melts a little) to give way to the pins. This results in the indentations you see after removing the Matrix. It also explains why people are having problems with the chip not working after some time goes by. The solder has "moved out of the way" so to speak of the pins reducing contact. Ugh not good.
Anyway it took 3-5 flash attempts before the Matrix Flashing "took" on my P4 850EMV motherboard. The flash verified fine as well. I flashed using the TSOP flash bin released yesterday.
I created a Evolution-X 1.8.2813 HD install disk with the EvoX 2.5, blue, err, ybox bios I made using FanCBox from the EvoX2.5 release bin.
On this disk I had also copied a 4034 rev level setup from another machine as I was also attempting a hard disk install at the same time.
The disk was created using RecordNowMax in data mode. I verified that it would boot on two older machines before proceeding.
I utilized a "pin point" 12 watt Weller soldering iron. These irons are MUCH smaller than the pencil and pen point irons most of you are using. The tip litterally IS a pin point in size.
With this iron there is little chance of lifted rings or traces as the heat is simply too low. Along with this I use low temperature solder as an added safety measure.
I bridged the jumper without problem by tinning the iron and letting the solder "bubble" a bit. After this I scraped off any excess leaving the tip of the iron shiny. This left just enough solder on the iron to easily bridge the jumper points.
Likewise I used the same technique to affix the wires to the rather tiny rings.
It helps to have a large lighted bench magnifying glass while doing this.
I purposely used as little solder as possible on the ground wire as I knew I would be removing it as soon as I was done.
Aligning the Matrix without the LED proved to be a bit of a chore and it took me about seven attempts to discover the proper strength and alignment.
I found that I had to tighten the mod chip down MUCH TIGHTER than I expected given the plastic base, but yet not enough to ruin the plastic itself. With insufficient torque the Matrix would not properly contact the grounding point next to the smiley face on the chip.
Newbies be aware of this. It must be firmly affixed but you must be very careful as you'll be on the verge of breaking the plastic post. Ugh.
The Xbox booted to the solid red LED on the matrix as I held the ground wire on the screw. The voltage is about 5v or so, so there is no problem of shock holding it by hand.
I let go of the ground wire and my previously created CD booted right up.
Selecting the Bios Flashing item identified the bios as a Hyndai chip an it proceeded to erase the bios. I had a bit of trepidation at this point as I was worried that maybe this particular Xbox might not be able to read the bios file from the CD.
I've never have had the problems everyone reports with CD reads as I always use DVD-R's that have behaved flawlessly. This time things were no different as the flashing completed succesfully and the Xbox shut itself off.
I unpluged the cord, removed the Matrix, reconnected and booted the Xbox with the now blue "X" logo from my HD Prep CD.
So far so good!
I quickly removed the old hard drive and replaced it with a brand new WD 1200DJ drive, again rebooted from the CD and let the HDPrep run.
This took about 5 minutes and included transfering the contents of the other identical Xbox to the hard drive. After it was finished I selected the fix attributes command and let it run.
Finally I ran boXplorer from the CD which I had added to the HDPrep CD's Menu to run from the DVD, and used it to rename the Evolution-X dashboard to yboxdash.xbe.
Upon a reboot I had a ready to go Xbox with a flashed TSOP and no mod chip to burden it electrically, or that would be knocked out of alignment.
The Matrix went into a anti-static bag awaiting a future date with another Xbox.
Completion Times
Flashing Matrix & Verification: 6 minutes
Wiring Xbox: 1hr 20mins as I dismantled it complete and verified all points.
Installing Matrix: 30 minutes of screwing around learning the proper setup.
Swapping drives: 20 minutes which included prepping the new drive using the CD
Author
Topic: Flash Tsop With Matrix + Evox (Read 575 times)