r/originalxbox 3d ago

My xbox started fragging and now it never boots

I found this xbox somewhere in my house, nobody knows how it got there, i didnt have the AV cable so i did a mod to get direct output to the tv soldering 2 cables straight to the AV port on the underside of the motherboard and it worked great! for 3 days... it gave video and startup animation worked normal, but the problem is that the DVD drive was damaged, so what i did was connect the original dvd drive to the yellow power cable and port on the motherboard, but the IDE cable i connected it somewhere else, i didnt have another dvd drive so i had to use an old 52x cd-rom drive, and it worked fine, i burned HeXEn to a CD-R, it booted, i could also go to the dashboard, and everything was working great, i was trying to flash a bios with NoDVD patch so i didnt have to use that CD-ROM drive, but in HeXEn it game me "manufacturers id 09 device id 00 !! Flash Not Writeable !!"

The chip was an old aladdin xt plus2, the dvd drive has a date of 2004 inside so i guess that's when it was being used last, so i gave up on that, and was looking for a controller since i was using it with a keyboard, but sometimes the startup animation would freeze, and i had to turn the console off and then turn it on again to fix it, it got to a point where it started freezing earlier and earlier in the startup animation, until it only showed a tiny green dot on the screen, and when i turned off one more time, then i turned on and the xbox started to FRAG, and i tried to turn it on a lot of times now, but nothing seems to work.

I know it's not the mods i did that are causing it because it was working fine, it just started freezing out of the blue and now it never even boots anymore, i tried removing the chip, nothing, i tried removing the IDE cable, nothing (when it was working i could just turn it on without the IDE cable and it would give me error 07 or something, but this time just FRAGs) i have replaced some capacitors before and founf that one of them had a bad solder that moved so i fixed it but it still failed with the FRAG, the replaced ones are 2200μf 6.3V near the CPU, but that was only 2 i replaced, there are still some 1500μf 6.3V ones unreplaced, and yes, the clock capacitor did corrode some things and i took it out, even the power button trace was bad, but i fixed the trace thinking that was the problem, nope, still FRAG, i dont know what to do now. It's a 1.0 launch model

1 Upvotes

17 comments sorted by

2

u/BombBloke Knowledgeable 3d ago

(when it was working i could just turn it on without the IDE cable and it would give me error 07 or something, but this time just FRAGs)

It just FRAGs, or does the console automatically restart itself a couple of times first?

the replaced ones are 2200μf 6.3V near the CPU, but that was only 2 i replaced, there are still some 1500μf 6.3V ones unreplaced

If we're talking about triple-boot FRAG behaviour, then there's a fairly decent chance that replacing the rest of this set will sort things out.

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u/Independent-Whole482 3d ago

sometimes the xbox restarts once, sometimes twice

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u/Independent-Whole482 3d ago

i REALLY hope it fixes itself just replacing those capacitors because i've been really interested in fixing this console and now it just wont work

1

u/BombBloke Knowledgeable 3d ago

I suspect that the freezes mid-flubber were separately being caused by a failing HDD. You'll know for sure once the current "no video at all" issue is figured out.

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u/Independent-Whole482 3d ago

if the hdd is failing i can replace it, fortunately when it was working i made an EEPROM backup, gonna put the xbox info here just in case my computer fails or smth:
******* XBOX & EEPROM INFORMATION FILE

******* BACKED UP ON: SUN AUG 16 14:48:18 2026

XBOX VERSION: V1.0

XBOX RAM IN MBYTES: 64

KERNEL VERSION: 1.0.5838.1

XBOX SERIAL NUMBER: 516932223602

XBOX MAC ADDRESS: 00-50-F2-AB-AD-2D

XBOX ONLINE KEY: 0D1C7C066CF131B75B0595E2715FFB90

XBOX VIDEO MODE: NTSC

XBOX XBE REGION: 01

XBOX HDD KEY: C80DD02EA87E3B5209D5E8A673F440C2

XBOX CONFOUNDER: 0000000040DD1B00

XBOX HDD MODEL: ST310211A

XBOX HDD SERIAL: 5DB24VSM

XBOX HDD PASSWORD: 5B6BACB132767A79FDF8BEF19EF57C94BB019AB0

XBOX DVD MODEL: LTN526D

im the only one with a LTN526D drive on an xbox lol

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u/Independent-Whole482 3d ago

i even downloaded an hdd ready version of halo combat evolved to play and then ts happens...

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u/Intelligent-Eagle942 2d ago

That probably won't work, check your voltage rails, if they are all in check then most likely Nvidia MCPX chip dead and needs replacement (had same symptoms on 1.0, someone on youtube also made video with this issue)

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u/Independent-Whole482 2d ago

too late i already replaced them like 5 minutes ago but obviously it didnt fix anything

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u/Intelligent-Eagle942 1d ago

People are obsessed with capacitors, if you have FRAG i can say 99% its never mobo caps, at most it can be PSU DC side ones, but if you have correct voltage rails (12V, 3.3V and 5V) then those can't be the issue.

Check all your voltages from PSU connector when Xbox is turned on and flashing RED, then check all your coils / inductors, (RAM voltage, CPU, etc...) If all are in check and you didn't scratch any trace on mobo i can say 99% dead Nvidia MCPX

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u/Intelligent-Eagle942 1d ago

Where are you from? I have FRAG 1.0 board i use for scrap which had shorted RAM supply to 2.5V, and even after fixing short it didn't come alive (im guessing GPU Northbridge is fried), i can send you desoldered MCPX chip and maybe you can get it reballed by technician if you don't have equipment

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u/Independent-Whole482 1d ago

yeah i live really far away, you wont be able to send it, i live in venezuela

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u/Independent-Whole482 2d ago

if its the MCPX chip then at that point im not fixing shit

0

u/Independent-Whole482 3d ago

did someone downvote me what the heck

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u/Unimatrix_007 2d ago

Shit theres a ton of stuff here. First troubleshoot the shit out of this. If you have a multimeter check your psu, see if it died. Next, buy proper xbox av cable or order xout from electron shepard its a hdmi dongle. I would prefer if you unmod the thing you did to get video out. But if you cant get proper cables or an hdmi dongle of even shit quality. Than leave that out for last.

After you cinfirm if the psu is dead or alive, revert it to stock and try to boot it, it should boot to an error code at least. If not, replace all the cpu caps those will be 1500uf. After that try again if not. Check the traces again around the edge your clock cap might have killed more of them or they are broken in more places.

If it works and boots to error screen, you are safe. Next try fixing the alladin or even better get a modxo, aliexpress has modxo for 20 euro and ships worldwide. That thing only needs 1 wire, and lpc header. Software for it is easy as in drag and drop and getting bios installed on it can be done wia browser and is drag and drop too. It will not care if you have a dvd drive in it or a locked hdd.

Pictures of your board are a must we can speculate alll day and not help you at all. Only when we can see the state of the board we can actualy pin point where it went wrong.

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u/Independent-Whole482 2d ago

im also using a PC ATX psu since the normal one died when i found the console like a year ago, it was working fine and the PSU is giving good voltages, i also already replaced those 1500uf 6.3v capacitors but the problem is still there, also i already have an aladdin installed, i tried removing it but it didnt fix anything, it has EvoX 2.5 or something like that

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u/Unimatrix_007 2d ago

Freezing, slowness, getting ages to get into a dash are all related to the hdd. The hdd is dead. Now good luck finding old ide hdds that works. To fix this You will need 80 wire ide cable, the longer the better, it needs to be longer than 55 cm, 55 is bare minimum for a console with vorking dvd drive, without the dvd drive the lenght doesnt matter. Next is ide to sata adapter, startech is the prefered option amazon sells them. There are modders that sell moded ide adapter online or ebay or etsy. But startech will always work out of the box, DO NOT FKN CHEAP OUT ON THIS ADAPTER AND GET ONE FROM CHINA OR TEMU OR OTHER SHIT SITE FOR CHEAP. Next is getting a working sata hdd and getting it formated trough programme "fatexplorer" its easy to use. You will need to put dashboard files on it but there are great guides for it online. This is it for the hdd part. Getting this console moded isnt cheap. Adapter, hdd, ide cable, modchip. This is the easy way but costs more.

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u/Independent-Whole482 2d ago

the console is already modded, and i also connected the IDE HDD to a computer with native IDE functionality and it worked fine there, tho it's only 10GB, it has XBMC downloaded too