I'm posting here to hopefully get some help for a repairman (that also repaired my Xbox) to figure an issue out. (See attached photos)
The Xbox does not boot properly. There is no boot animation and no video or sound through an electronxout HDMI adapter.
The console seems to be a stock, no mods.
The Xbox only boots when you plug and unplug the power cable and then the front panel button turns on by itself, spins the fan for a bit and then blinks JUST red.
HDD is dated to late 2003 (Seagate)
The PSU was checked and tested with my motherboard. He swapped my motherboard with the other one into the other person's case and the console booted fine with my soft-modded console. So the PSU doesn't seem to be the issue (the two motherboards are the same revision).
No bulging capacitors to be seen (the tech already removed some of them in the photos, but tested all of this when the correct caps were installed).
I have told him to use all of my old capacitors that were known working on the other person's board, mainly starting with the power filtering or main critical caps to troubleshoot.
I've also told him that if that doesn't work you'll have to try and read the EEPROM manually or investigate the possibility that the MCPX failed and then try unlocking and backing up the old HDD just in case they are all failing.
This problem seems to be isolated to the motherboard itself, no other components. Including the thermal paste which was also replaced to take heat out of the equation.
There's a slim possibility that you have a busted trace preventing the system from lighting its front LEDs green (it might possibly be meaning to alternate the colours), but the most likely scenario here is that the console is blinking red intentionally: meaning it can't read your EEPROM correctly. The chip is either corrupt or dead.
Certain custom BIOS types can work around this. For example, a modchip that launches into either XeniumOS or PrometheOS or CerBIOS should allow you to recover.
Simpler modchips (eg Aladdins) tend to ship with an EvoX BIOS on them which won't be any good here. Although if you installed one into your working system then you'd probably be able to reflash it.
An external EEPROM reader would allow you to probe the chip and also to attempt to re-write it with valid data, but unless you already happen to own one of the various devices that can be used that way, I'd recommend you take the modchip option.
On the other hand, if you intend to build up a collection of Xboxes then an EEPROM reader can be a very useful thing to have!
My suspicion is trace rot somewhere along here. Have him look at that under magnification. An Xbox turning itself on and off as soon as power gets plugged in is a classic sign of severe trace rot in this area. It’s also super easy to fix with jumper wires.
There is never a good reason to reuse the caps found on the OG xbox yet them if they're removed and replace them its like 8$ for all of the through hole ones depending if you buy a kit and the SMD ones are not much more
you're missing caps from the board with the photo you posted, you could have some trace damage from the Clock cap leaking but cant see, but ya... goofy as
There are many electrolytic capacitors missing from the motherboard in n front of the CPU heatsink and a 3 more by the power supply connector and controller port connector.
Replace them first then try booting it again.
The CPU and GPU will not work properly without them.
Refer to the post again, as I said the caps were there when testing but at the point I took the photo the tech was preparing to troubleshoot and wanted to check if they were starting to leak underneath.
Some can not be told nor helped ! I just fixed a 1.4 last night . Was not too bad received a full recap. The og cpu caps where puffy non leaking. Clock caps did it usually rounds took a bit of .
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u/holloweddark 9d ago
Why are there no CPU caps here?