Well I just about have my original xbox back up and running perfectly ( short of figuring out the whole emule rom situation) thanks to some great individuals on this awesome site. I now however have a new and way more interesting black box sitting in front of me with an xbox logo on top, but after trying to power it up I wonder,LOL. The situation is this, while powering up the system seems to attempt booting 3 seperate times, sometimes beeping from the hdd just before powering off and re-booting. Other times there are no beeps and others it may beep one long beep upon powering off. The light around the eject button always comes on green during each boot up and on the 3rd time it begins to flash red and orange. I have no video or audion on the screen during any of this. I have read a few threads on other sites stating so many possibilities from it could be a bad mod attempt to it could be a video cable prob. I have read forums on how to repair a bad mod attempt as well as other possible fixes. I see no evidence as to a matrix chip having been attempted and lean more toward thinking it is a possible motherboard issue. I only posted this thread here to get some input from the place I have been able to attain accurate information on my xbox issues thus far. I hope someone out there can offer some help. Thanks...
Well, I guess you mean by the HDD beeping that it makes noise right? sounds kind of like a beep or squelch? with no audio or video at all durning the whole thing? I would say the HDD is BAD. Try this, unplug the HDD ide cable and power supply connector, then plug it up and power it on, does any audio or video come on the tv? Let me know what happens. Unicron
Well I unplugged the HDD and upon powering up I get the same thing as far as the 3 boots and no audio or video, but without the beeps from the HDD obviously. Any ideas?
Take a look at the Xbox motherboard to make sure everything is ok, start by looking for solder traces. The christmas lights your referring to is callad a FRAG (flashing red and green) which is normal after a bad mod attempt. Another scenario cool be a loose or leaking capacitor.
Well, with the HDD unpluged we can rule out software problems, unless you have tried to flash your bios chip with a mod?? What version of xbox is it? can you tell. If it was a 1.6 and no power at all I'd say the POSB transistor was bad and easily replaced. But seeing how it comes on tells me it is gettting power at least partal power... It is possiable that you have lost voltage from part for the powers supply. Also a Voltage reg, chip that converts the 5V to 3.3V for the Bios chip and Eeprom chip could have blowen, there are also a few resistors on the MB that could have blowen. If you could post a picture of the mother board up close in sections if you have to, I might be able to help. Let me know. Unicron
OMG mate i had the same problem trust me it none of that belive it or not for me it was squished cabels!!!!!!! can u belive that so open it up and check the cord.
Come to think about it I had a xbox that did the a simular thing and it was a pinched HDD cable!!! I replaced it with a new 88 wire one and it fixed the problem so you might try taking it apart and take to dvd and hard drive out of the xbox completely and unhook the IDE cable from the xbox and try to power it up with video cable in, you never know. If after all that and it still dosn't work, let me know. Unicron And just for the record... Just because something dosn't WORK dosn't mean throw it against the WALL, some ppl don't have piles of money to waste on buying a new car when they get a flat tire... electronics aren't any diffrent alot of time it's something simple to fix, of course if your not a trained electronics tech like me with over 20 years of computer repair and programming, throwing stuff at walls may be you way of fixing things.
Yeah same thing happened to me mate luckly a cool guy down the street knew more than me and was able to fix it
Well I did a little troubleshooting of my xbox today by using a working xbox of the same version that also is not chipped. I started by switching the hdd into the working xbox, but with different eeproms " no dice". I did however at least get a video feed with an error code, so that was allright. I next moved onto the dvd drive and after switching this noticed something odd. Not that it affects the current malfunction, but upon installing it into the working box, I noticed it would not eject the tray. I disassembled the drive and tried again and voila, it opened fine. I then noticed a nasty gouge inside the drive tray where the disc would normally sit. I tried replacing the shrouding several times and even put in a drive that wouldn't read discs anymore just to see if it would open. The original drive wouldn't open at all with the shroud on, but with it off it would. The unreadable disc would eject after the third boot and after it started flashing red and orange. Anyway that really dosen't matter much as it dosen't seem to be the root of my issues. I swapped mother boards next to see if maybe it was a power supply or something else, but still nothing. I am beginning to think it is a bad motherboard, but anymore suggestions or any specific locations to observe on the board would be awesome. Thanks again guys for all the knowledge...
wait hold on there.. you swaped mother boards to test powers supply? did you hook the good mb to the "bad" xbox power supply and if so did it work ok? did you hook the bad mb to the good power supply and did it do anything diffrent, video, audio or same thing? need more clear info on what your doing..... see what the bad mb does on the good power supply. no dvd and no hdd just the mb first... do you get video and/or audio? let us know.
Sorry I wasn't more clear. I guess all of the small details make all the difference huh, lol. I didn't want to switch my known good components to the bad side, in case it happened to be a power issue. I don't know alot about electronics, but I do know a very small amount. I used to be in the Army and my job was supposed to be equivilent to an electronics tech. I must say however that my training wasn't that indepth as I only had basic electronics, some basic soldering and a list of other fields that I rarely used after completing AIT. I did switch motherboards, but I thought it best to go to the known good power supply. After installing the board I did try a check with the good dvd drive as well as good hdd. I still got no audio or video. I also tried with the hdd that is matched with the mother board and as far as the audio and video got the same thing. The only thing really kept the same in all the above tests was the good power supply in the setup and the good dvd drive. I did not however test with the board in the good setup without any drives hooked up. Well hopefully this answers any questions. If not please let me know and hopefully some more ideas will follow.
the last thing I can tell you is to pull the mb completly out of the xbox shell. Lay the motehr board on a towel on a table and place a fan next to it to blow air accross the cpu heat sink and hook just the power switch up to it will have to take it out of the case as well. then connect the xbox power supplie to a SWITCHED 6 way outlet so you can cut power to the AC. hok the power supply to the xbox again you may have to take it out and lay it on the towle next to the mb. so all you hould have connected is the power supply to the mother board, and the power switch from the xbox, nothing else. Now WITHOUT the AV cable hooked up, turn on the AC power then the XBOX What DOes it do? Green and Amber lights flashing? Next turn off AC power... Hook the AV cable up to the xbox mb. Turn on AC What does it do? Any video or audio? What colors show up or flash? TURN off AC power Look around the bottom of the mb for burned traces and look around the top for anything burned or broken. If you can't find anything wrong then you have two choices at this point, Throw that MB away and buy one off Llamma or somewhere thats the same as the one you have so you can reuse your Power supply and HDD and DVD drive. (some send you an unlocked HDD with the MB) or send it in for repair to llamma or someone and hope they can fix it. If your going to throw the MB away let me know first, I'd like to take a look at it if you would be willing to ship it to me. Well, sorry I can't help you out more, but it sounds like one of the video chips is crapped out, or you have a power problem on the board itself... Unicron
