I got a X2.6 CE last week sometime and was totally psyched about moding my Xbox, here is the experiance I have had so far:
I have a 1.6 Xbox and I have never soldered anything before in my life, so I had decided that it my be a good idea to get some help with this, as I did not want to screw up my Xbox. I took it with me to my school, and had someone help me with the soldering of the LPC rebuild kit, we followed the tutorials to the letter. I got the box reassembled, took it home, pluged it in, and it started to FRAG, I tried both banks, both with flash protect on/off.
Okay, so I figured that it could be a bad install, so before doing anything else, I decided to consult with a professional. It would still boot with the chip disabled. Thanks to the team xecuter forums, I found one in my city. He came by and picked it up, spent a night and a day with it checking the connections, desoldering/resoldering, and brought it back to me, still its FRAG. Still able to boot with the chip disabled.
So, I went and bought a mutimeter, checked all of the connections, everything tested like it was suposed to, according to tutorials I have found on both this forum, as well as team xecuter's. So I decided that it would be good to desolder everything and cleanup the board, and that's where I screwed up. I burned the board a little bit, not too bad compared to some pictures I have seen in these forums, but it will not boot with the chip disabled at all anymore. I am pretty sure I just need a trace rebuilt and I am certainly going to leave that to the professional.
Okay, so I fried my Xbox, still with me? I went to Wal-Mart, got me a new box, and took it right over to this guys house. We got it open, put in a new pin header, along with a new LPC rebuild board, popped in the chip, FRAG! (still trying both banks). At this point I had already spent about $250 and was starting to get a little frustrated. So we decided to go back to some basic hardware troubleshooting skills, and we put the chip into an Xbox which has an X3 chip installed in it. (This was not a 1.6 box, but I'm not sure exactly which version the box was.) With the chip enabled on either bank, the box boots straight to MSDash, almost like the chip isn't there at all. So, for our last trick, we took the X3 chip, put it into my Xbox, and it boots right up into the modded BIOS.
Now, as you can see, I have really done my homework on this little project, (at least I think I have), and I have read tons of posts about, "99% of the time, its a bad flash or bad install, the other 1% of the time its a bad chip." I have to ask myself, am I the 1 out of 100 people that have such crappy luck? I think I might be! So I got in touch with the reseller that I got the chip from, and I was advised I should try to hotflash the chip, just to be sure. Anyway, that is what is on the agenda for tonight, because I really don't want to pay to send the chip back, and wait 14 business days for a new chip, especially if they are just going to screw me with a $10 "testing" fee. Either way, I have had a very unhappy experiance with this reseller, and defintly will not be reccommending them to anyone, but I am not here to bash them. I was just wondering if, aside from doing a hotflash, are there any other suggestions that anyone may have that I can try, and does this seem like a defective chip to anyone else? Also I was wondering if I am still restricted to flashing the M8 bios on a version 1.6 box with a 2.6CE chip?
Sorry for the long post, just wanted to make sure I included all the details.
I have a 1.6 Xbox and I have never soldered anything before in my life, so I had decided that it my be a good idea to get some help with this, as I did not want to screw up my Xbox. I took it with me to my school, and had someone help me with the soldering of the LPC rebuild kit, we followed the tutorials to the letter. I got the box reassembled, took it home, pluged it in, and it started to FRAG, I tried both banks, both with flash protect on/off.
Okay, so I figured that it could be a bad install, so before doing anything else, I decided to consult with a professional. It would still boot with the chip disabled. Thanks to the team xecuter forums, I found one in my city. He came by and picked it up, spent a night and a day with it checking the connections, desoldering/resoldering, and brought it back to me, still its FRAG. Still able to boot with the chip disabled.
So, I went and bought a mutimeter, checked all of the connections, everything tested like it was suposed to, according to tutorials I have found on both this forum, as well as team xecuter's. So I decided that it would be good to desolder everything and cleanup the board, and that's where I screwed up. I burned the board a little bit, not too bad compared to some pictures I have seen in these forums, but it will not boot with the chip disabled at all anymore. I am pretty sure I just need a trace rebuilt and I am certainly going to leave that to the professional.
Okay, so I fried my Xbox, still with me? I went to Wal-Mart, got me a new box, and took it right over to this guys house. We got it open, put in a new pin header, along with a new LPC rebuild board, popped in the chip, FRAG! (still trying both banks). At this point I had already spent about $250 and was starting to get a little frustrated. So we decided to go back to some basic hardware troubleshooting skills, and we put the chip into an Xbox which has an X3 chip installed in it. (This was not a 1.6 box, but I'm not sure exactly which version the box was.) With the chip enabled on either bank, the box boots straight to MSDash, almost like the chip isn't there at all. So, for our last trick, we took the X3 chip, put it into my Xbox, and it boots right up into the modded BIOS.
Now, as you can see, I have really done my homework on this little project, (at least I think I have), and I have read tons of posts about, "99% of the time, its a bad flash or bad install, the other 1% of the time its a bad chip." I have to ask myself, am I the 1 out of 100 people that have such crappy luck? I think I might be! So I got in touch with the reseller that I got the chip from, and I was advised I should try to hotflash the chip, just to be sure. Anyway, that is what is on the agenda for tonight, because I really don't want to pay to send the chip back, and wait 14 business days for a new chip, especially if they are just going to screw me with a $10 "testing" fee. Either way, I have had a very unhappy experiance with this reseller, and defintly will not be reccommending them to anyone, but I am not here to bash them. I was just wondering if, aside from doing a hotflash, are there any other suggestions that anyone may have that I can try, and does this seem like a defective chip to anyone else? Also I was wondering if I am still restricted to flashing the M8 bios on a version 1.6 box with a 2.6CE chip?
Sorry for the long post, just wanted to make sure I included all the details.