For The Problem Solvers Out There!, Try to figure this one out! Options

[TheBends]

I'll try to make this brief to bring you up to speed.

About a year ago I tried to mod my first XBox. I soldered to the D0 point underneath the board. Unfortunately the wire pulled a trace off the board. I then took the XBox to someone I met who knows how to solder to the top D0 point VERY well. He soldered to the top point and we proceeded to hook the XBox up to see if it worked. Keep in mind the chip had never been flashed up to this point and still had cromwell on it. Well, dummy us hooked the Xbox up to his HighDef TV. We could hear it booting up but couldn't see anything. We thought it was still screwed up which it probably wasn't since I later learned that cromwell will not show with the high-def AV pack. BUMMER. Anyway, we took the Xbox apart and tried to fix the trace. I think we screwed things up even worse trying to fix the trace ourselves! Now after soldering the chip back in all we get is the flashing error on the eject button and no sound or video. Bummer. I then bought a "previously owned" Xbox and started over fresh.

Fast forward to today....

I was talking to my uncle and he mentions that he does work with a company that fixes circuit boards. This company owed him a favor. So he gives them my Xbox board to see if they can fix the trace. They did a FANTASTIC job. It looked very good when I got it back! So I put the Xbox back together and fired it up....flashing error still and nothing else. Soldered the mod chip back in and I get video and sound back! I can see it booting up! WOO HOO! Now the mystery begins....

Here is where the problem solving comes into play...

This XBOX has never been modded (so to speak). I never got to the point of actually backing up the hardrive, adding EVOX and all that stuff. With the original harddrive in the XBOX it boots up with ERROR #06. Error 6 means the hardrive is locked. This is wierd since it is the original hardrive for that xbox! Why wouldn't it be able to unlock it? So then I figured I would try to put an unlocked hardrive in there. I grabbed an 8gig drive from another XBox that I know was unlocked. Boot up the XBox and now I get ERROR 16!? What the @#^$!?!? It's a wierd error screen though because the screen is cut in half diagonally but you can still see the error code is #16. Hard to explain. Error #16 means it's missing dashboard files. Wierd.

The problem is I don't have a back-up of the original C: to place on a new unlocked hardrive to see if it will boot. I never got to that point of backing up the original hardrive.

I'm looking for ideas on what to try next. Any help would be greatly appreciated. This has turned into more of a challenge for me and I am racking my brain!

Other things of note:
The machine never boots a bios. I never get the "MS" logo at the bottom of the Xbox logo. It just sits there and eventually goes to the error screen.


Any ideas or suggestions?

[mrRobinson]

you can try booting slayers off cd with the hdd you get error 16 on and reload everything off slayers to it. See if that helps anything.

[bleugh]

you could stick a mod in, make up an evox boot disc and FTP a dashboard to the box,

slayers disc has a dashboard recovery function on it

you could carefully unsolder the eeprom from the 'broken' xbox and put it and the hard drive in an 'unbroken' xbox, that would allow you to prove if the one mobo is working or not, and possibly allow you to 'backup' the eeprom settings so you can copy them to your PC for safe keeping!,
you could also use evox to then unlock the hard drive so you can then re-swap eeproms and boot onto the 'broken' xbox, that would allow you to FTP to it and at least get evox running to start, then reinstall all the dash and stuff later on!

so, quite a few things to try :-)

as for errors, maybe the hard drive has been corrupted somehow!, or possibly error 16 means something else, rather than nulocked hard drive, the modding scene may have just associated that error with unlocked hard drive because thats when it appears most!

[chefelf]

QUOTE (TheBends @ Jan 8 2004, 09:21 AM)

I'll try to make this brief to bring you up to speed.

Nice try.

The Error 16 is explained in the FAQ pinned topic in this forum. Typically when you get the Error 16 it means it's because the time is not set. This usually happens when you do a HDD swap. I'm a bit confused about what you've done exactly but I think you may have damaged (or erased) the information needed by your motherboard to unlock the drive.

Read through that FAQ ( http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?act...ST&f=41&t=98909 ) and see if it gives you any ideas but like I said it's usually for people who've swapped out their HDD. Your only option at this point may be to install a modchip to get the box working. The hard drive is most likely fine so using a modchip to bypass your MS BIOS may be the best thing to do.

Hopefully others will have more information about what things you could try.

Note: You may want to keep your posts a lot shorter. Posts of this length don't tend to get too many replies.

Hope that helps.

[TheBends]

Answering a few of the replies:

~ Mod chip (Xecuter) has been installed. Only way I got it to boot to the error screen.
~ The machine never boots a DVD so therefore I can't get it to boot an EVOX disc.

Chefelf, was that better?

Thanks for the help so far guys. Keep the ideas coming!

[chefelf]

What BIOS do you have flashed on the Xecutor? Is it Lite or Pro?

[TheBends]

It's an Xecuter Lite. It has an old Xecuter bios flashed on it. I used the chip in another xbox at one time but it hasn't been used in awhile. Think I should drop it in another Xbox to see if it still works?

It seems to me the xbox never gets to the point of loading the bios anyway?

What really confuses me is why I get a locked hardrive error with the original hardrive?

[Perplexer]

Flash X2 4979 or 4980, or EvoX D6 or M7 to your chip, then try to boot from CD/DVD.

[chefelf]

QUOTE (Perplexer @ Jan 8 2004, 10:32 AM)

Flash X2 4979 or 4980, or EvoX D6 or M7 to your chip, then try to boot from CD/DVD.

Yeah... the Xecutor 4979 has the MS clock fix on it. You may have luck if you can do that... though you may need a programmer to do it.

[TheBends]

In case you guys were wondering what ever happened with my issues......

Tonight I decided to work on this some more. I was getting ready to take the chip out so I could flash it with a newer bios and I thought I would boot it back up to make sure I had the drive in with Error16. Turned it on and it booted up!! It booted right off the Evox DVD I had in it! No error codes!

I am wondering if leaving it unplugged for an extended period of time had something to do with it?

Anyway, I put in a 120gig hardrive I had and got everything back up and running. Now the funny part....

Every time I try to put the cover back on it doesn't boot! I get flashing errors with no video at all. Take the cover off and it boots back up just fine. Either the chip is not soldered in good or there is a loose connection somewhere. Also, I had this thing apart for so long that I lost a couple of the motherboard screws and also the screws that holds the DVD drive in place. I doubt that has anything to do with it but it could be a possibility!

Anyway, just thought I would let you guys know that I was able to bring life back into my dead Xbox. Thanks for all of your help!

Bends

[Trevante]

i think it's those screws. I've heard of that problem before. I think it has to do with a wire being cramped when u put the cover back on, so you probably need to replace those screws that you lost.