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I thought the design flaws of the Xbox 360 cooling system had more to do with Microsoft than any inherent design flaw by IBM. I assumed that switching to x86 pr
by vondur 7mo ago
I thought the design flaws of the Xbox 360 cooling system had more to do with Microsoft than any inherent design flaw by IBM. I assumed that switching to x86 processors let Microsoft leverage their native developer tools from Windows which helped developers.
- chasil 7mo agoThe main issue was revealed to be solder. "Microsoft did not reveal the cause of the issues publicly until 2021, when a 6-part documentary on the history of Xbox was released. The Red Ring issue was caused by the cracking of solder joints inside the GPU flip chip package, connecting the GPU to the substrate interposer, as a result of thermal stress from heating up and cooling back down when the system is power cycled."
- thenthenthen 7mo agoSounds like the 2012(?) Macbook Pro after the switch to leadless solder (?). I had to cook my motherboard 3 times in the oven to revive it.
- chasil 7mo agoFunny! I've heard that flash memory can also be revived with heat, either long duration or high intensity. https://www.extremetech.com/science/142096-self-healing-self-heating-flash-memory-survives-more-than-100-million-cycles https://www.extremetech.com/science/142096-self-healing-self...
- thenthenthen 7mo agoSome macbook hacks involved disabling sleepmode, running a benchmark and putting it in a pile of blankets for a few hours
- timw4mail 7mo agoAnd there was the same problem with early PS3s, on Nvidia's GPU package...it was a fairly widespread problem at the time.
- rwmj 7mo agoAnd Apple iBook G3s too. There's a whole thing with owners reflowing the GPU: https://www.instructables.com/Fixing-the-infamous-iBook-screen-problem/ https://www.instructables.com/Fixing-the-infamous-iBook-scre...
- keyringlight 7mo agoI seem to recall baking PC nvidia GPU boards in your oven was a reasonably common out-of-warranty fix around that era.
- Moosdijk 7mo agoI had to do this with my MacBook Pro models early 2015 and late 2017. It seems like there was a period in time when solder just wasn’t done well, it seems like.
- rangestransform 7mo agoIIRC this is to do with the phase in of RoHS and bad lead free solder
- hbn 7mo agoI don't have any solid numbers on me, but I believe early 360s failing wasn't just widespread; it was straight up most of them dying within the first couple years. It's honestly insane they more or less got away with that. And I guess also speaks to how much Microsoft was killing it in that era that people were willing to go through multiple console RMAs (which I heard was a terrible, slow, and unreliable process) to play 360 games. How far they've fallen.
- rustystump 7mo ago
- esaym 7mo agoWhen did the industry transition to different/lead free solders? Wonder if that was part of the issue?
- monocasa 7mo agoYeah, it was the transition to RoHS.