4 ms·

The real serious RROD on the 360 was caused by failure of the solder joints between the GPU flip-chip and the substrate due to thermal cycling. Since this lin

The real serious RROD on the 360 was caused by failure of the solder joints between the GPU flip-chip and the substrate due to thermal cycling. Since this linux install won't ever utilize the GPU of the 360 in a way that would get it very hot (or if the number of thermal cycles is just kept very low in total, that failure mode may simply never be an issue. And this is definitely the type of project someone is doing for fun anyway. Unfortunately even at idle the 360 isn't super power efficient, drawing ~70 watts or more, or else this could actually be a pretty neat project for repurposing a 360 as a NAS or something.

throwaway894345 3y ago
Wow, I forgot about that. I remember there was a last-ditch hack to try and resurrect a RRODed 360 which was to wrap a towel around it to force it to overheat, thus (possibly) re-melting the solder joints. This worked for us once, but only for a short time and subsequent towel-hacks did not bring it back. They did eventually release a new version of the 360 that doesn't RROD, which I eventually bought (realistically MS should have given these out to customers who experienced RRODs for free, but of course they had to scam kids out of whatever little money they had). Now that I have a series X, the "only" major problem is that microsoft's controllers interfere with every wireless headset I've tried (including Microsoft's own wireless headset) super consistently (yes, everything has updated firmware). I'm sure hardware development isn't easy, but microsoft seems reliably bad at it.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  > They did eventually release a new version of the 360 that doesn't RROD, which I eventually bought (realistically MS should have given these out to customers who experienced RRODs for free, but of course they had to scam kids out of whatever little money they had). They did? They had a very generous policy where you were covered for three years after purchase, in which time they would repair or replace the hardware free of charge. If you RRoD'd in the later span of that, you would almost definitely have received an improved model (rather than them bothering to repair yours).
  - wolrah 3y ago
    > They did? They had a very generous policy where you were covered for three years after purchase, in which time they would repair or replace the hardware free of charge. If you RRoD'd in the later span of that, you would almost definitely have received an improved model (rather than them bothering to repair yours). There were two refreshes of the "Fat" 360 generation trying to resolve the RRoD issue, and as you might guess the first one helped but didn't solve the problem. Unfortunately for early adopters, the first refresh was where HDMI was added and while a non-HDMI version of that board was created for warranty repair use the same never happened for the second refresh. If you bought an early Xbox 360 that didn't have HDMI ports you were never going to get a completely fixed box unless you managed to get support to just replace it entirely with a new one.
    - deaddodo 3y ago
      There were five revisions in the first 36 months of the Xbox 360's life: https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/901401/xenon-zephyr-falcon-opus-jasper-valhalla https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/901401/xenon-zephyr... If you purchased your 360 on launch day, you would qualify for the Jasper model (65nm CPU/65nm GPU, which is the primary "no RRoD" model) for over two months. Everyone after was in an even better position. In addition, there are many reports of early buyers having their RRoD replacement honored for one or two months outside of the guaranteed window. Compare that to Sony and their Yellow Light of Death, who didn't offer any replacements or support after their standard warranty period. Compounded by the fact that the vast majority of consoles that suffered it were the full-Backwards Compatibility models, superior to what could be purchased in replacement. The point isn't "boo hoo, stop crying about RRoDs"; it's that Microsoft is one of the worst companies to try to call out in this case. Their support for an issue caused by a third party manufacturer's chip was unprecedented and probably one of the best examples of a company supporting their product; even if it still doesn't reach your personal standards.
      - wolrah 3y ago
        > There were five revisions in the first 36 months of the Xbox 360's life: Zephyr was pretty much just a Xenon board with HDMI hardware added, and Opus was a Falcon with HDMI hardware removed, so I count Falcon/Opus as the first refresh and Jasper as the second. > If you purchased your 360 on launch day, you would qualify for the Jasper model (65nm CPU/65nm GPU, which is the primary "no RRoD" model) for over two months. Opus exists solely for warranty replacements for Xenons. It never shipped to retail. If you had a Xenon fail under warranty you got back another Xenon until mid-2008. I've personally never seen someone get a Jasper back in exchange for a failed Xenon or Opus. If you didn't have HDMI you were stuck with the older hardware. Not saying it never happened, but if it happened it missed my entire sample size. > Their support for an issue caused by a third party manufacturer's chip was unprecedented AFAIK the problem was the combination of RoHS solder plus heat cycling plus a poorly designed retention mechanism. I don't know what if any part of that physical design of the cooling system IBM might have been responsible for but the chip itself wasn't the issue. I definitely would not say this was an issue "caused by a third party manufacturer's chip"

throwaway894345 3y ago

Wow, I forgot about that. I remember there was a last-ditch hack to try and resurrect a RRODed 360 which was to wrap a towel around it to force it to overheat, thus (possibly) re-melting the solder joints. This worked for us once, but only for a short time and subsequent towel-hacks did not bring it back. They did eventually release a new version of the 360 that doesn't RROD, which I eventually bought (realistically MS should have given these out to customers who experienced RRODs for free, but of course they had to scam kids out of whatever little money they had). Now that I have a series X, the "only" major problem is that microsoft's controllers interfere with every wireless headset I've tried (including Microsoft's own wireless headset) super consistently (yes, everything has updated firmware). I'm sure hardware development isn't easy, but microsoft seems reliably bad at it.

deaddodo 3y ago
> They did eventually release a new version of the 360 that doesn't RROD, which I eventually bought (realistically MS should have given these out to customers who experienced RRODs for free, but of course they had to scam kids out of whatever little money they had). They did? They had a very generous policy where you were covered for three years after purchase, in which time they would repair or replace the hardware free of charge. If you RRoD'd in the later span of that, you would almost definitely have received an improved model (rather than them bothering to repair yours).
- wolrah 3y ago
  > They did? They had a very generous policy where you were covered for three years after purchase, in which time they would repair or replace the hardware free of charge. If you RRoD'd in the later span of that, you would almost definitely have received an improved model (rather than them bothering to repair yours). There were two refreshes of the "Fat" 360 generation trying to resolve the RRoD issue, and as you might guess the first one helped but didn't solve the problem. Unfortunately for early adopters, the first refresh was where HDMI was added and while a non-HDMI version of that board was created for warranty repair use the same never happened for the second refresh. If you bought an early Xbox 360 that didn't have HDMI ports you were never going to get a completely fixed box unless you managed to get support to just replace it entirely with a new one.
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    There were five revisions in the first 36 months of the Xbox 360's life: https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/901401/xenon-zephyr-falcon-opus-jasper-valhalla https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/901401/xenon-zephyr... If you purchased your 360 on launch day, you would qualify for the Jasper model (65nm CPU/65nm GPU, which is the primary "no RRoD" model) for over two months. Everyone after was in an even better position. In addition, there are many reports of early buyers having their RRoD replacement honored for one or two months outside of the guaranteed window. Compare that to Sony and their Yellow Light of Death, who didn't offer any replacements or support after their standard warranty period. Compounded by the fact that the vast majority of consoles that suffered it were the full-Backwards Compatibility models, superior to what could be purchased in replacement. The point isn't "boo hoo, stop crying about RRoDs"; it's that Microsoft is one of the worst companies to try to call out in this case. Their support for an issue caused by a third party manufacturer's chip was unprecedented and probably one of the best examples of a company supporting their product; even if it still doesn't reach your personal standards.
    - wolrah 3y ago
      > There were five revisions in the first 36 months of the Xbox 360's life: Zephyr was pretty much just a Xenon board with HDMI hardware added, and Opus was a Falcon with HDMI hardware removed, so I count Falcon/Opus as the first refresh and Jasper as the second. > If you purchased your 360 on launch day, you would qualify for the Jasper model (65nm CPU/65nm GPU, which is the primary "no RRoD" model) for over two months. Opus exists solely for warranty replacements for Xenons. It never shipped to retail. If you had a Xenon fail under warranty you got back another Xenon until mid-2008. I've personally never seen someone get a Jasper back in exchange for a failed Xenon or Opus. If you didn't have HDMI you were stuck with the older hardware. Not saying it never happened, but if it happened it missed my entire sample size. > Their support for an issue caused by a third party manufacturer's chip was unprecedented AFAIK the problem was the combination of RoHS solder plus heat cycling plus a poorly designed retention mechanism. I don't know what if any part of that physical design of the cooling system IBM might have been responsible for but the chip itself wasn't the issue. I definitely would not say this was an issue "caused by a third party manufacturer's chip"