I decided to try one more time to see if I could get the 360 up again. I reread the xclamp tutorial and found out I had overheated it wrong this last time. The step I missed was putting the fan over the CPU, so the GPU could overheat. Basically if the CPU overheats the 360 shuts down and gives 2 red error lights. By putting the fan on the CPU it doesn’t do this and runs normal while heating up the GPU. I let it warm up for about 15 minutes and then got the 2 red lights from the CPU overheating. I let everything cool down for another 10 minutes and then fired it up and got a picture back. I just finished playing roughly 2 hours of Guitar Hero World Tour and it worked without a glitch. The main culprit with a lot of this is that Microsoft used a lead free solder. Here is an exceprt on the 360 wikipedia page:
One possible cause of the General Hardware Error is cold soldering. The added mass of the CSP chips (including the GPU and CPU) resists heat flow that allows proper soldering of the lead-free solders underneath the motherboard. This causes cracking and voids in the solders themselves from prolonged constant temperature changes inside the console. Lead-free solders, however, might be the cause of this because, when properly soldered, they take on a dull appearance that professionals take as a cold solder joint in older methods, thus leading to confusion. Lead-free solders also require a greater amount of heat (213 degrees celsius) to solder properly when compared to older lead/tin solders (185 degrees celsius).
So the idea is to overheat the GPU so the solder melts back to fix the connection. That was apparently the problem as it is working now. I still have another 360 coming that I picked up on ebay that had a red ring of death. I’m thinking now I will fix it up and see if I can make a little extra money.
1 comment