Vince's Ebay Repair Thread - (Console Repairs & Mods)

I know they have all these changeable buttons and little rear triggers and all sorts.. Nice things to be honest.

Still a rip off. MS & Sony are making a killing on controllers.

Xbox elite=£150. Go outside the console space and suddenly, Kingkong 3 pro £75 (arguably better than the Elite as well). Flydigi Apex 4 (£100 or so). Even the stock controller is a joke. £49.99 for a standard controller, while you can get an 8bitdo Ultimate (hall effect sticks, 2 back paddles, rechargeable battery, charging dock) for £45.

Console controller prices are criminal.
 
Still a rip off. MS & Sony are making a killing on controllers.

Xbox elite=£150. Go outside the console space and suddenly, Kingkong 3 pro £75 (arguably better than the Elite as well). Flydigi Apex 4 (£100 or so). Even the stock controller is a joke. £49.99 for a standard controller, while you can get an 8bitdo Ultimate (hall effect sticks, 2 back paddles, rechargeable battery, charging dock) for £45.

Console controller prices are criminal.

Yea I'm not sure I'd spend the money but now its here... decent.
 
G29 has been collected and should be with you in 48hrs, like an idiot i packed it but forgot to include the details in box:rolleyes: but as said there's no rush take as long as you want, if you need any details just pm me. thanks again:)
 
G29 has been collected and should be with you in 48hrs, like an idiot i packed it but forgot to include the details in box:rolleyes: but as said there's no rush take as long as you want, if you need any details just pm me. thanks again:)

Sweet - I am only out today and will be at home for the rest of the week so will let you know when it gets to me!
 
Time for a moan about the series X - So I got that series X and had a quick look last night... I found a short on a 5v rail and managed to track it down to a cap... good news I thought... cleared the short and put it back together and beep on beep off... not good! I stripped it down again and popped the ssd out, without the SSD it stays on.. so it's an ssd problem as well. Throw the nvme into my desktop and the issue is clear... some numpty has already been here and the ssd doesnt have any of its EFI partitions that hold the encryption keys for the console... Console is now a paper weight as without that efi partition you cannot rebuild the console, full stop... its done.

Called MS for a chat to see what I can do if anything and there are no options... Once the drive fails or if some numpty deletes the partition its game over. Why build a console where you put what it needs to boot onto a media with finite life? Total garbage design. It's now a parts console sadly... The worst part the drive is in perfect health and had somebody not opened it and fiddled we would be up and running :(

The only good news is that I can strip it for parts, the ssd is worth probably 75 quid and I can get back the rest of my investment selling the boards as donor boards etc. It's just sad that in some 15 years time all of these will start failing with no known way to rebuild them.
 
Last edited:
No chance of data recovery on the SSD?

What happens if the SSD fails? Surely MS have a contingency for that situation?

edit - just read up, only MS can repair and 48 steps to get to the SSD... Jesus wept.

 
Last edited:
No chance of data recovery on the SSD?

What happens if the SSD fails? Surely MS have a contingency for that situation?

Nope, no they don't.... if it fails and the disk is unreadable its done. Game over.

I left the drive running for the last 18 hours with recovery tools to see if I can recover the partition tables but its done, nothing there to recover. So instead of accept total failure I have purchased 2 more broken series X machines...

Gluten for punishment :cry:

Edit: The 48 steps arent too bad tbh... getting at the SSD isn't so bad what happens if the ssd fails is the disaster.
 
Last edited:
Nope, no they don't.... if it fails and the disk is unreadable its done. Game over.

I left the drive running for the last 18 hours with recovery tools to see if I can recover the partition tables but its done, nothing there to recover. So instead of accept total failure I have purchased 2 more broken series X machines...

Gluten for punishment :cry:

Edit: The 48 steps arent too bad tbh... getting at the SSD isn't so bad what happens if the ssd fails is the disaster.

Shame we can't just install another OS on these things and use them as desktops. :(

48 steps compared to say just lifting a cover to get at the SSD, MS buried this in the heart of the machine. They never had any intention of upgrade, user repair, or even their own repair I dare say. Weak.
 
Shame we can't just install another OS on these things and use them as desktops. :(

48 steps compared to say just lifting a cover to get at the SSD, MS buried this in the heart of the machine. They never had any intention of upgrade, user repair, or even their own repair I dare say. Weak.

I cant even do that as its bios is effectively on the dead part lol... Perhaps someday somebody will break the encryption, its possible as from the schematics it looks like there are three separate SPI/EEPROMs onboard.... Why they didn't load EFI and console keys into an EEPROM/flash when the console has 3 of them already aside from the nvme is totally beyond me.
 
I'm yet to get either a PS5 or a Series X as my One X is still doing everything I want, but reading this makes me lean towards a Playstation!
 
I cant even do that as its bios is effectively on the dead part lol... Perhaps someday somebody will break the encryption, its possible as from the schematics it looks like there are three separate SPI/EEPROMs onboard.... Why they didn't load EFI and console keys into an EEPROM/flash when the console has 3 of them already aside from the nvme is totally beyond me.


That 0x6000 offset is probably why it doesn't find anything in the partition recovery.
 

That 0x6000 offset is probably why it doesn't find anything in the partition recovery.

Enough time has been spent on this one I feel! Sadly that's the end for the road for this console. As it currently stands it will get stripped and sold for individual parts so I can recoup some cash. But before it does that I have a couple of series consoles coming to have a look at :)
 
SSD being soldered is a bit dodgy, but the consoles have had dodgy choices repair wise for years.

Even the 360, years old, yet has nonsense like being paired to the console with a key. Drive pcb fails & you don't have the key, no more disc games for the console. Nand fails and you don't have the cpu key to make a donor nand, console is done.

It's a joke, so many companies bang on about being "green" and then make everything as hard as possible to repair and service so you throw it away and buy new.
 
Vince I get the fun of reaping the switch! Replaced the battery in my misses lcd model last week and the thing is really neatly put together making the swap that fine line between intricate and fun!

Got a plan next week to swap a barrel jack input to a retro laptop to a usb-c pd board...
 
Vince will 100% not need this advice, BUT, to all the normal people out there, never do what I did, and rush in to stripping down a Steam Deck...


img host

Oouf. Sad times man!! It's easy done though and those little sd cards don't hold up well to a brute force attack :D
 
I just repaired a deck myself a few weeks back. Still love em, upgraded my base model from 64gb to 512gb while I was at it as I ended up swapping bits and bods between my working one and the faulty one to isolate the issue.
 
Back
Top Bottom