Just bought a Faulty 360

ZXSpectrum

ZXSpectrum

ZXSpectrum

Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
Derby
Got it off the bay... i only really wanted the chassis not the 360 for a project ;) It has 3 Rings of red death... Wonder if i can get it working with the X-Clamp Trick.. Anyone got a link to any guides?

:)
 
Well if its got the 3 Rings. you can send it off to microsoft and gett it fixed for free because they gave a free three year warrenty to all that had the 3 Red Rings
 
Go for it m$ are rather good with the 360 replacements just pile a sad story to them,tell them you paid lots and have been ripped off e.t.c you get the idea :D
 
Chances are if it's from an auction site then it's going to have a voided warranty sticker anyway. I've bought 3 off an auction site which I've managed to fix though - some needed some other tricks to remain stable (like a blasting with a heatgun which I now do as a matter of cause as the xclamp replacement alone won't last) but they're all still going strong. Here's some URLs to check out:

http://www.x-clamp-fix.com/catalog/product_info.php?info=p5_X-Clamp-Fix-DIY-Kit.html
http://www.danhrules.co.uk/3rlod/
http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/repair/ring_of_light_x-clamp_fix.htm

Personally what I do is strip the whole thing down, clean the old thermal gunk off then cover the plastic ports and capacitors up with tin foil, leaving just the scaler chip, southbridge, RAM, GPU and CPU exposed. Then I blast the whole board with a heatgun for a few minutes. I then let it cool down for half hour and blast the other side for a few minutes. Once the board's cooled down again I do the xclamp replacement using these bits from B&Q:

Machine Screw
Pan Head Slotted
5x10mm 10 Pack
AVF-853746

Flat Washer
M5 10 Pack
AVF-852398

A single 10 pack of bolts is fine as you only use 8, but I use 24 washers, so 3 packs of those are needed. I turn the board upside down and put one washer on each bolt and place it through each of the four GPU heatsink mounting holes. I then put a thick piece of card under the board so I can turn it over without the bolts falling out. You then need to take out the little screw in clips on each heatsink with either pliers or the proper hex screwdriver tool. Once they're out, I put 2 washers on each bolt, add fresh thermal paste and sit the GPU heatsink on top then slowly slide the board across the card until I can do each bolt up loosely with my fingers. Once they're all reasonably secure I use a small flathead screwdriver to do them up a bit tighter, but I've found it's best to simply use the force in my fingers instead of relying on my arms to do the work. I've seen many xclamp replacements where people have done the bolts up as tight as they can - this is not needed. Once that's done I repeat for the CPU.

I've revived 3 dead 360s I've bought cheap off an auction site and several for my friends. Out of the 12 I've done only one has failed and even then the problem wasn't 3 red lights, it just gets graphics corruption and eventually hard locks. Not a bad success rate though :)
 
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Phemo said:
Chances are if it's from an auction site then it's going to have a voided warranty sticker anyway. I've bought 3 off an auction site which I've managed to fix though - some needed some other tricks to remain stable (like a blasting with a heatgun which I now do as a matter of cause as the xclamp replacement alone won't last) but they're all still going strong. Here's some URLs to check out:

http://www.x-clamp-fix.com/catalog/product_info.php?info=p5_X-Clamp-Fix-DIY-Kit.html
http://www.danhrules.co.uk/3rlod/
http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/repair/ring_of_light_x-clamp_fix.htm

Personally what I do is strip the whole thing down, clean the old thermal gunk off then cover the plastic ports and capacitors up with tin foil, leaving just the scaler chip, southbridge, RAM, GPU and CPU exposed. Then I blast the whole board with a heatgun for a few minutes. I then let it cool down for half hour and blast the other side for a few minutes. Once the board's cooled down again I do the xclamp replacement using these bits from B&Q:

Machine Screw
Pan Head Slotted
5x10mm 10 Pack
AVF-853746

Flat Washer
M5 10 Pack
AVF-852398

A single 10 pack of bolts is fine as you only use 8, but I use 24 washers, so 3 packs of those are needed. I turn the board upside down and put one washer on each bolt and place it through each of the four GPU heatsink mounting holes. I then put a thick piece of card under the board so I can turn it over without the bolts falling out. You then need to take out the little screw in clips on each heatsink with either pliers or the proper hex screwdriver tool. Once they're out, I put 2 washers on each bolt, add fresh thermal paste and sit the GPU heatsink on top then slowly slide the board across the card until I can do each bolt up loosely with my fingers. Once they're all reasonably secure I use a small flathead screwdriver to do them up a bit tighter, but I've found it's best to simply use the force in my fingers instead of relying on my arms to do the work. I've seen many xclamp replacements where people have done the bolts up as tight as they can - this is not needed. Once that's done I repeat for the CPU.

I've revived 3 dead 360s I've bought cheap off an auction site and several for my friends. Out of the 12 I've done only one has failed and even then the problem wasn't 3 red lights, it just gets graphics corruption and eventually hard locks. Not a bad success rate though :)
Click to expand...

i've been wanting to fix my 360 from the rrod, dont have any b&q's next to me found some sites that sell machine screws online but they list them as M1 M2 M3 etc etc, what type fits the 360 perfectly
 
Well i paid £55 for it and a tenner postage... A bit pricey but if i can get it working its a bonus if not i can go ahead with my project... :)

Cheers Phemo i will give that a try... Got all that stuff at work so will report back on my progress... :)
 
I have a spare 360 that's faulty. I've never had a chance to get it sent back to M$, work hours, pick ups and delivery never works out.

Might just give this a bash :D
 
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It's hard to say, but it's quite high. If the xclamp replacement is done correctly I would estimate certainly over 70 or 80%. A fair few consoles last a few months and then die again with just the xclamp replacement though, after which pretty much the only way to revive them again is to get them professionally solder reflowed or to just go at the board with a heatgun to melt the solder and rejoin the broken solder points.

Another trick which does work (although I'm not advising anyone does this) is putting the motherboard in the oven with all capacitors/plastic ports covered in foil, without the heatsinks attached as this could crush the CPU/GPU solder balls. I have done that before with success - 3 or 4 minutes at 230 degrees C did the trick ;), but the heatgun method is far safer. The solder used in the 360 has a melting point of around 218 degrees C I believe so as long as it's not left on too high a temp or for long enough for the solder to get totally ruined it's ok. If using a heatgun it's important to never keep the gun still, it needs to be constantly moved over the board.

In short, a decent solder reflow - by which I mean heatgun method, etc - and the xclamp replacement combined seems to result in a much longer lasting 360. There's little point to the stupid towel trick, or leaving the GPU to overheat as neither method causes the 360 to get anywhere near hot enough to melt the solder, something which a lot of people don't seem to understand.
 
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KennyBhoy said:
I have a spare 360 that's faulty. I've never had a chance to get it sent back to M$, work hours, pick ups and delivery never works out.

Might just give this a bash :D
Click to expand...
I just got them to pick it up and return it at my works office, hardly takes any effort. Get it sorted!
 
MikeHunt79 said:
If I was going to do the oven trick I would remove all the non SMD caps first! :eek:
Click to expand...

Yeah obviously it's not ideal, but as long as the caps are covered they seem to come out ok. I've just used a few layers of tin foil to cover the caps up and they look absolutely fine. Have seen some results where people haven't bothered to cover anything up at all and it's resulted in quite a few leaky caps and even one exploded cap :) It's a risky last resort method really, but if you've got a board that's totally shot, it isn't going to cause it any more harm as long as you do it right ;)
 
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