Xenium Suddenly Stops Working, But Aladdin Works.., new Xenium ICE frag after 30 mins of use Options

[kcassady]

OK, here goes this is my story...

Recently bought a v1.6 Xbox and a Xenium ICE to go with it. Got the Xbox new here in town, and the chip from bmmods.com.

Found an installer in my area to put the chip in. The chip installation was apparently succesful, I watched the guy do it and although this is my first modded Xbox, I've been building PCs for over 10 years, and every thing looked good. Did a pinheader install, remembering to remove the extra pin, and all of his solders looked good. Plugged in the Xbox and it booted into the Xenium OS no prob. Satisfied with the work I took the box home to update the OS, load a bios, and do a HDD swap.

The chip had the OS2 pre-release on it so I downloaded 2.0.1. Loaded the new Xenium OS from the harddrive after FTPing in, that came up no problem. After I got into the new OS I setup the retail bios on the chip and booted into the M$ dashboard to set my system date and time. I got the M8 for the 1.6 from SlaYer's 2.6 and verified the MD5 hash of both files. I loaded the M8 on the chip, and booted into SlaYer's 2.6 no prob. While I was moving through the menus the Xbox suddenly reboots with no apparent cause, system temperature looked fine in SlaYer's dash, 147F. Upon trying to power it on again the eject LED flashes green three times and each time I hear the HDD and the DVD spin up, then it just flashes red and green. The chip only has a red LED on now as well.

I take the Xbox back to the installer, he removes the Xenium, and it boots the retail bios. Then we put an Aladdin in flashed with the 1.6 M8, no problem! But we can't figure out what is the prob with the Xenium. But at least my box is now modded, so I take it home. After searching around on the forums I see that the Xenium has a switch on it for a recovery mode. I would like to use my Xenium as opposed to this Aladdin. Does anybody out there have any theories as to what happened, and what might be a possible solution? Can this recovery mode fix my chip? Why would it just fail? Is this a problem with the Xenium?

I'm willing to pay the installer to reinstall the Xenium, if there is some hope of ever getting it working again. I know that he only has to resolder one connection, and I'm thinking about taking a buddies box to him anyways. So far I'm loving my new box, but I'd really like it if I could get that Xenium going in it, running multiple bioses would be killer. Anyways that's it, end of story. I present this problem to those who know more about this than I do. All feedback is appreciated.

[kcassady]

bump

[kcassady]

OK, guess nobody wants to take a stab at this thing. However I am seeing alot of other posts in this forum describing basically the same problem, but unfortunatly nobody is responding to those posts either.

For those suffering similar fates I will continue the saga of my story. I took my box and the Xenium back to the installer and we tried booting the chip in recovery mode with no luck. Now this is a chip that was installed following the directions to the T, and only after reviewing many guides to be absolutely sure of the procedure. Initially the chip worked flawlessly. The OS was updated with no errors, again following ever instruction, and worked perfectly at the next boot. The retail bios and the M8 both worked on the chip, then after 30 mins of use, POOF! dead chip. But an Aladdin chip works fine, and stock settings work fine. At this point all I can do is throw my hands up in the air, and sadly I'm about to throw my $50 Xenium in the trash.

To all those who are having this power on/power off then frag problem with the Xenium, try another chip. If that works, well that will at least isolate the problem to the Xenium. If there is enough of this going around... who know's, sounds like there's something dodgy going on with these chips. Anyways it would be nice to get to get this thing going, although now that I think about it ... it would make a pretty stylish addition to my key ring.

[pROvIs]

our of curiosity. about how many times have you flashed the chip?

[gamefreakgcb]

147F? thats a bit too high dont you think? Mines at a comfy 108F. Perhaps thats the problem and that u must have splashed some solder or something on the ICE. Ive had my ICE now for months with no problems.

[smack_blitz]

just contact bmmods and ask for a exchange. your case is very strange to me. I also did pinheaders. Booted first, and still goin for a month now.

IMO, it could very well be the chip. If you have access to another ICED xbox, you can try ur chip on it to see if it works or not, to be sure.

good luck

[kcassady]

Hey thanks for the replies everybody,

pROvIs - This is a new chip, so it's only been flashed once with the M8. However I'm not sure, when you set up the Xenium for the retail bios does it boot it from the Xbox motherboard or does it copy the retail bios to the Xenium and boot from there. If it's the latter then twice really, retail and M8.

gamefreakgcb - You're absolutely right 147F would probably be a bit toasty. After researching the web I read somewhere that the latest EvoX doesn't report the temp correctly with the 1.6 so I'm not sure how accurate that reading is. In fact it never displays ANYTHING but 147F so I don't think it's really reading anything. I just modded my friend's v1.1 and his CPU runs 110-120 and his MB 80-90, so for now I'm just going to forget about temps.

smack_blitz - I think returning the chip would be the thing to do, I'm just a bit wary with the whole Xenium experience so far. The chip seriously has some great potential, I'm just scratching my head over this whole working for 30 min then instant death business.

Thanks folks, looks like I'm going to try to exchange the chip. If I get a new one I'll report back here with an update. If any one has a thought about what might have gone wrong in the first place, please chime in with any theories.

[smack_blitz]

If you installed it urself, i would definately think human error. But u got it installed by a pro, and used pinheaders, not solderless. I really think it's the chip. And the fact that another chip worked after removing the xenium.

I wouldn't worry about gettin another ice. Maybe it's just a stroke of luck that u got a defective chip.

[Gumba]

The temperature reading on a 1.6 is either inaccurate or just plain wrong... ignore it.

[appleguru]

kcassady: Only thing I can think of: check where the 3.3v wire was soldered. The point your installer may have used could very well be the one that provides an unstable 3.3v that could cause the very symptoms you're reporting.

Also, the Aladdin uses 5V instead of 3.3V, so this would also lend towards this explanation.

[kcassady]

Thanks for the extra replies, one other point of interest. When I took the Xenium back for the second go-around, the installer said he left the Xbox in a condition where I could just swap the Aladdin out should I get a new Xenium. What he said was that the quick connection for the d0 on the Xenium was still installed on the motherboard, but shorted out. All I should have to is take out the Aladdin d0 and all, then unshort the connection for the d0 on the Xenium soldered to my motherboard, plug the Xenium in to the pinheader, and plug the d0 into the Xenium. Does this sound right to everyone?

appleguru's comment about the Aladdin using the 5v and the Xenium using the 3.3v confuses me though. Then I really shouldn't be able to just swap the chips, they run on different voltages, correct? This was the first time the installer had ever done a Xenium, so I'm begining to suspect that the error might be on that end, but it did work for a short amount of time, so I don't know.

I think at this point I'm in a bit over my head, hopefully this makes some kind of sense to somebody. It sounds like I should get this straightened out though before I go popping another Xenium in there. I brought the installation instructions with me to the installer, but he kept mentioning that they seemed "weird", so I showed him the instructions posted at the top of this forum. He claimed that he's done over a hundred boxes, but maybe the guy only knows how to install the Aladdins. I did have to watch over his shoulder and remind him to remove pin 4 from the pinheader before soldering so that shakes my confidence a little... could he have somehow borked the LPC rebuild so that it would only kinda work with the Xenium, but work fine with an Aladdin by supplying the wrong voltages? If the Xenium was running on a 5v would it work for 30 min and then pop, and that would explain why the Aladdin works fine? Thanks again everybody, I'm seriously impressed with the community and your guys support.

This post has been edited by kcassady: Oct 21 2004, 02:05 AM

[appleguru]

[kcassady]

Thanks appleguru, of course how silly of me, the voltages are on different pins that makes perfect sense. I guess my head was swimming with all this to take in at once. As for the 3.3v, the top most photo is the one I took to the installer, so that's how things should be done. Anyways this weekend I'll crack my box and take a peek to see that's how it was done. Thanks again.