Hacker News Reader

Comment by bArray | Hacker News Reader

We used to "fix" our old XBox consoles by wrapping them in towels and purposely overheating them to get the ?GPU? solder to reflow correctly. With some extra cooling methods added, still works to this day even though it got a red ring of death.

View on HN

I also had the overheating RROD. The problem with the 360 was the CPU heatsink mounting hardware was insufficient to maintain contact and the board would warp. It was easy enough to fix with a set of screws from the hardware store to replace the crappy 'X' clip, plus some PC thermal grease like Arctic Silver.

Relatively speaking, the CPU heatsink was massive compared to the GPU. I would assume the engineers designing it knew that the CPU was going to run very hot, especially when it launched on a 90nm architecture.

I fixed the first RROD on an Elite (Falcon) by re-balling the solder joints using a hair dryer. The next fix was an identical process to yours and it still works.

I successfully fixed an Xbox 360 with the dreaded RROD with Percussive Maintenance: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PercussiveMainte...

I remember doing this in a bar at 2am to one of those electronic paper towel dispensers. They work great, except when they don’t (which is most of the time).

A swift elbow to the side cracks the plastic locking mechanism, dropping the cover and freeing the roll.

I think that one’s called vandalism.

I call it bringing them back into compliance with local bylaws on bathrooms.

I don't understand America's fascination with these. I first visited the US over 15 years ago and they were everywhere, but since then I don't think I've even seen a single one in the UK.

It’s often in the building code or local bylaws. They don’t have to be automatic, but there’s probably evidence showing that the automatic ones reduce overutilization.

Or do you mean the UK just uses air dryers? The newer vortex ones work ok, but the previous ones were useless, which encourages people to not wash their hands at all.

Only having 1.5kw to work with probably didn’t help.

> Only having 1.5kw to work with probably didn’t help.

Hand dryers get dedicated circuits. They aren't limited to residential outlet specs.

Sure, but copper is expensive and you can pull double the current for the same wire at 240 vs 120v.

Difference here is that overheating the GPU will always apply heat directly to the specific solder area in question. It’s actually a pretty good trick.

After doing the towel trick I laid my 360 on top of a big fan so it always had cool air being forced into it. It was RROD-free until eventually a thunderstorm took it out for good along with my router.

Used to do the 'blanket fix' with the first few Intel MacBooks that had failing NVIDIA graphics chips.

Wrap them up in blankets, powered on, and wait a few hours.

Yea, the original run of the Xbox 360 had issues with the then-novel lead-free solder breaking down under high thermal loads.

If anything lead-free solder would hold up to higher temperatures. The problem was just that the entire thing got too hot in general, there was a whole spell with the PCBs warping because of the heat.

Yeah, both the PS3 and Xbox 360 had terrible thermals when they first released.

Normal operating loads. My 360 was never in an enclosed space, and it still fell prey to this. I was do the temp fix with a heat gun, but disassembling and reassembling was a pain. I eventually left the board sitting in the open without the case.

They didn't fix RROD until the slim in 2010. Every other 360 is a time bomb.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com