My sisters-in-law’s boyfriend has provided me with yest another project. Two Xbox 360s that are unable to open the disc treys. Normally all this entails is a simple replacement of the drive belt to resolve, and for the first one this was the case. The second Xbox was originally a referb from Game stop and where as it has identical symptoms, it had a much more interesting issue.
First some history: The Xbox 360 launched in late 2005 and was plagued with the infamous red ring of death. This was caused by overheating of insufficient cooling, resulting in the chip slowly de-soldering itself from the board. Microsoft was forced to extend coverage to all effected consoles for three years and replace them with their own refurbished units. But the design largely remained the same. Microsoft usually just reflowed the solder and shipped them back out only to inevitably meet the same fate. By the end of the 360s life span roughly every 2/3 Xbox 360s would have failed (not counting the later slim model).
So how did GameStop differ in their refurbishment of this self-baking console? They added in a splice that steals power from the optical drive to double the output of the cooling fans! Upon first powering this unit up the fans were noticeably lauder than the first. Looking inside revealed why. This splice didn’t have a resistor of any kind to limit the power robed from the optical drive and by this point, the optical drive didn’t have enough power to function. Removing this modification restored power to the optical drive and decreased the decibel rating considerably.
So, can anything really be done to prevent the red ring of death in these old Xbox 360s? In my experience, not really. Back in the day I acquired a red ringed 360 elite for $20 at a flea market. The seller didn’t know about Microsoft’s extended warranty. I shipped it off and got my referb back. I promptly modified it with better rear fans and a side intake fan for improved air flow. It was louder but I figured it was worth it for the significant improvement to airflow. But alas, it red ringed two more times before I gave up and sold it on eBay for a few hundred. I was tired of having to put the guts back in the original shell and carefully re-apply the tamper stickers. I do miss that old box, but it was a ticking time bomb and the Xbox 360 slim my wife later bought was a vastly superior design.
pollopesca 