PLEASE HELP! Unknown Problem! Can't find help anywhere!

[Unreal_Cory]

I am asking for help with my X3 chip, I have a 1.4 Xbox, I bought the chip not long after its release.
My install went perfectly, the soldering was easy, I work as an Technician / Electronics Engineer so I have a lot of experience. I have been using EvoX dash. I also swapped the stock Hard Disk with an IBM 60GB drive and copied games directly to the drive with fantastic loading time.
As I said, the X3 chip worked perfectly and I was singing Xecuters praises!

My problem is, as of last week, I came to turn the Xbox on and.... nothing... just a black screen. Turning off and on had the same effect, disabling X3 (by power on hold) did the same, black screen. I tryed turning it on and off several times and eventually it did boot with X3 enabled, booting was really slow, the little tune you get was s --- l --- o ---- w too! Once it booted it sempt fine so I tryed booting the dash and.... black screen.
I also managed to get it to boot with X3 disabled and I get error code 21 (with very slow boot).
I have removed the motherboard again and checked soldering as advised on every forum I've checked. I've also done continuity check with a multimeter and all joints are fine. I am totally lost!

I've read loads of posts on a couple of forums and not come across this error.

I'll also add that there are no flashing eject lights with the black screen. Its just normal green colour, X3 lights are ok aswell, blue for enabled, red if disabled. The only light change I get is if I boot with X3 disabled and I get the flashing eject buttong with the error 21 code. I have tryed removing the X3 chip and I just get black screen, can't do anything.

Can anyone help me out here please!

Why would the Xbox just stop working like this?

 

[BLUEku]

Sounds like the Intel Celron 733 chip in your board is shorting out or overheating. If you have a digital laser theremoeter I would check the temp that your heat sink is getting and see how hot it is getting. Xtra heat giving off by the processor could cause it to slow down. But that is just a guess. Worth a shot right?

 

[JimBobUK]

Blue, I think you are right! I can remember seeing an article on intel chips and no heatsinks on Toms Hardware, they slow down but do not burn out!
You could fry an egg on it though!

 

[Unreal_Cory]

Thanks for your adivce, there is a lot of heat coming out the back from the fan, so what I have now done it remove the heatsinks from the CPU and GPU, cleaned off the black crappy stuff with TIM Clean and replaced it with Arctic Silver 5. I still get the problem... after a few power off - power ons when I finally get it to boot to X3 the CPU temp is 47C and GPU 41C, these are max they go up to while idle with fan @ 70%. Again if I try to go to dash it'll go black.

I have also reformatted the hard disk and tryed only standard MS Dash, no difference and tryed EvoX on again, no difference.

I did also try a DVD movie with MS Dash X3 disabled and it did work but there are random spots all over while it is playing and after about 2 mins it goes black. This is definetly not the DVD disc at fault as it works perfect in PC DVD ROM.

I've also noticed, when it is just left running X3 dash idle, after about 2 mins it will freeze (spinning green X logo stops and is non resposive) then about 10 seconds later it continues... this happens again randomly while idle between 2 - 5mins at a time.

Does anyone have any further ideas? I'm getting to the point where I'm gonna chuck the Xbox out the window and stick with PC gaming!

The Xbox is stored on top of a Sky Digibox, could that interfere with it anyway? Seems doubtful but worth asking!

Thank you for reading this!

 

[slipperysnowman]

New dash & Kinnect

So what im reading is that Kinnect wont work without the new dash , is this right ?

What do people do when they dont go online and have old dash ?

Does it have to be updated via USB ? or does Kinnect come with an update to allow play offline ?

All good I found the answer . Update via USB . Hacked xbox's need to install original drive FW before the update to avoid being flagged . LT+ can be then re flashed to the drive after the update .

As far as I know LT+ should be good to use with the new Dash and will play New Wave games . Just have to wait till it comes out .