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[Speedy357]

Alright, the quick stats:
1.0 Xbox
X2 Lite modchip

My friend scrounged up a free used modded Xbox with what the owner described as "a broken modchip."

Several years ago I was making pretty decent money with Xbox repair, and had several boxes of my own with XBMC for a cheap networked home-theater system. It was pretty rad, but I've gone about 4 years without having to open up an Xbox and I'm a little rusty on some of the details these days.

Anyway, I started with plugging the box in and turning it on, and was presented with error code 05 - unlocked hard drive. It was also making a loud buzzing noise, which turned out to be the GPU fan. I had a spare, so I quickly replaced that. Upon opening the box, I find that the wire to the bottom D0 point had gotten pinched between the motherboard and a standoff, smashing it flat.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of not checking to see if it was still carrying a voltage. I immediately assumed the smashed wire kept the D0 from being grounded and thus didn't allow the modchip to override the BIOS, allowing the unlocked hard drive to present an error.

So, I replaced the smashed wire, plugged everything back in, and now the Xbox reboots twice before staying on, throwing up the flashing orange. Googling to refresh my memory on the color flash errors only presents me with "bad trace or solder splash." So, I check the voltage on the pin headers and D0 point, but they all check out fine.

When the modchip is disconnected, I get no error aside from the 05 code. With the modchip connected, I get the double reboot and flashing orange. Is the modchip physically damaged, or does it simply need a reflash? And if it is the latter, can i reflash the X2 Lite without any hardware aside from the Xbox and the modchip itself? (i.e. no BIOS bank selector control panels like the X3CE comes with.)

[JEB-101]

It has been a while since I played with the original xbox, but when I got the FRAO it was usually associated with bad soldering under the header, re-flow the connections and see if that helps...

Also, FRAO is also caused by solder splash (happens often when upgrading ram) so take a close look at the board, make sure he didn't play around, soldering something on the board of what not..

For the reflashing, if you have a second one laying around you can try booting off of of it see if it gets you anywhere, if so, just hotswap and flash it from there.

Another method would be more tricky, if you have a working moded box, boot into it, put the unlocked hard drive in it, lock it with a known key, and put it back in it's original owner along with the eeprom of the one you locked the drive in.

Hope this helps a bit!

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)
JEB

[Speedy357]

Yeah, hot swapping was a no-go. My only other Xbox now is a 1.6b with an X3CE. The larger pin header results in some physical incompatibility that prevents the X2 Lite from being able to connect.

Aside from that, I re-soldered the pin header and am now rid of the flashing orange.

Unfortunately now I'm back to error code 05. I'm also getting a high voltage reading on pin #1 (the one with the triangle marker). It should be 0.2V, but I'm getting 0.6. It was reading the correct 0.2V before resoldering, but a very, very close inspection under a magnifying glass reveals no possibility of a solder splash crossing traces or anything that I can attribute to myself.

I know the mod chip is has a physical connection, as aside from the high voltage on pin 1 everything is reading correctly, including the D0 (measured from the connection that goes into the modchip, so I know the solder joint and wire on that are fine now.

If I remember everything correctly, the only possibilities that leaves now is a junked chip or a bad flash. I'm leaning towards a bad chip, as my experience with bad flashes have never involved the stock xbox bios getting used on launch - normally just some flavor of flashing lights and rebooting.

[Speedy357]

Alright, I fixed the Xbox, but not the modchip. I was digging around in my closet and found a solderless X2.3b Lite that I used to have. I had to replace it a while ago because the Xbox it was in I bought used, and someone had already partially stripped the screw hole it attaches to.

So yeah, I just desoldered the pin header and put the 2.3b in there instead. Not like I need it these days. I also glued on some of the extra rubber feet I had lying around, even though my friend still has the ones that came with his at his apartment. If I could justify cramming more spare Xbox stuff in there to open up some shelf space in my closet I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Thanks for trying to help, JEB-101, but sometimes you just can't beat having a bunch of spares lying around ready for replacement.