Untitled Document
wHaT tHe!
Here at gametronix we see repairs from all over the country, some of them are
just run of the mill wear and tear, but we often get those DIY gone wrong suprises,
bizzare repair jobs and justy nasty work performed by people who should've just
stuck to their day job :)
Here we will be compiling our 'what the' stories! stay tuned
Xbox power supply burnout! 20/06/05
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This is the bottom view of a xbox power supply burnout. You may have heard
about the famous 'power cord recall'.This is one unit that didn't make it.
As you can see repeated arcing has eaten away the copper tracks and cause
burn damage to the high voltage section of the pcb. Checkout the detail
here
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It will
fit! (not) 30/09/04
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This customers xbox was booked in with the fault 'the picture just
keeps going on and off'. Our first thought was they had some dodgey cables.
We pulled it apart only to find the av connector had been forced in and
was shorting out some smd inductors and had broken several other small
cap's, not to mention cracked the plastic housing (we prised the earthing
shield up). They were lucky to get any video signal at all! We later found
out that the tv cabinet 'only just fits it in'. Yeah, with a hell of a
push! check out the detail here
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How to connect to an IDE bus! (not) 30/08/04
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This is another infamous alladin (ugh) install, this time they got the
no wire bit right, but i guess they just could't figure out how to connect
to the ide bus, with that big plug in the way and all... I know, lets just
hack a chunk out of the side of the connector and solder it on! Its gotta
be a lot easier than soldering on the other side. Just in case these 2 jobs
are related, these pages are about how to NOT install a mod! Checkout the
detail here
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Install
a no wire mod with wires 30/07/04
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This owner of this little xbox motherboard came past the workshop proporting
"my mod isn't working". The install wasn't actually too bad, besides
the fact that the mod was designed to be installed without wires :) the
'WhAt ThE!" was the wire running up inside the ide connector that wasn't
soldered, it was wire wrapped! A tip to the installer if they can recognize
their work, never run a wire on the connector side of and IDE plug, there
is no room. |
Good enough
- never is 18/07/04
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We often see jobs like this where all the ingredients are there, but the
workmanship is just sloppy, or a bit slapstick. This installer has a nice
little pcb mount going on but has just slapped it inside any old where and
taken little care with the securing of the chip. When using a setup such
as that, the weight of the pcb and chip should be secured propely to avoid
excess strain on the solder joins, otherwise you end up with broken wires.
No doubt this has arisen from the old 'good enough' slogan, when it rarely
ever is. |
Smokin!
28/06/04
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The owner of this unmodified xbox claimed honest to goodness that smoke
came out of their xbox and we were told in detail how it stank, why we ever
doubted the customer we dont know, other than that the xbox was still functioning
100%. So we opened it up anyway, just for fun :) and to our suprise we saw
the most charcoaled motherboard we'd seen in a longtime (but usually they
dont function). Interestingly that largeish looking capacitor there is a
1 Farad cap that is used to backup the clock time, but it only provides
a few hours of backup downtime before you have to reset the clock. So why
all the charcoal? we could never really say for certainty but it looks like
a smd transistor short circuited and the main track carrying the excess
current was part of an internal layer causing the charcoal effect, probably
somewhat lucky the xbox didnt catch on fire! We thought it was a nice touch
being right next to the ms logo. |
This wire'l
do! 12/06/04
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This install was just plain ugly really, our main reason for 'wHaT tHe'
status was the use of such thick gauge wire, which completely stipped the
d0 via from the board, most likely as a result of too much heat initially
applied to the board, resulting in a lifting of the copper from the circuit
board, the wire being around 7 times thicker than it neede to be. |
