Makes me wonder if they have something new up on their sleeves for the next important AAA release  (GoW3) ...
Let the banhammer swing.

1013  (RoL lights)
=
01 00 01 11 (binary)
=
71 (decimal)

Nuff said.

See ? That's what I meant when I said lose the SATA PHY functionality.

I don't think that is worth the trouble ... It is, ONLY if it's a method to bypass the slim drive write protection. Which I find unlikely...

If you tinker with the drive clock frequency you might lose the functionality of the SATA port PHY...

AFAIK, once unlocked it stays unlocked until you send the lock CDB through SATA.

Once you erase the drive (if it's properly erased) it will be on vendor mode next time you power it on.

I noticed that if you're using USB360 thinggy from TX, you need to first press the intro button with the drive off so it keeps spamming the SATA channel with vendor mode commands before you turn the drive on or else nothing happen. On my NFORCE chipset it works as it should (turn drive on and press intro button, it shows up in vendor mode instead of hang JF).

This resistor mod can be used to unbrick the drive.

Have you tried to restore the drive to it's original state (remove wires, patch cut track) right after blanking the flash ?

You can aways CPU swap and make it into a JTAG

Btw did the OP try 13599 to see if it fixes the AP25 stuff ?

I once took my time to look inside of xboxupd.bin...

I found all the "CBs, CDs, CEs and CFs" used on the update, but they were obfuscated, so it's easier, simpler and faster to just use an XBOX360 console you know the CPU key instead of reversing every updater that gets released.

You can use a JTAG to change a drive's DVD key without reprogramming the drive through vendor mode, regardless if it's stock or not...

When you press the board anywhere you change the form of the board and for example causes the GPU chip die to touch the heatsink better.
Or for example on some cases the thermal element of the GPU (GPU has two) for either the GPU core or EDRAM has it's ball cracked and the heat signal is not reaching the HANA/ANA chip, making the SouthBridge have an wrong reading in return.

That's not scientific as to "reflow" you have to dismantle the heatsink assembly and the act of dismantling and reassembling more than often cures overheat issues.

Again, that is not scientific as there's too many variables for you to get misleaded by ...



Poor/faulty contact in the RAM data or address lines will give you 0102  (E18)
Short circuit in the RAM data or address lines will give you 0110  (E24)

While these faults MIGHT happen under the RAM chips, their area, size and the fact that they do not heat enough to cause damage to their own solder makes it extremely unlikely for them to be the cause of the problem.

I suppose I know what I am talking about ...





13GUPs, 3 CPUs all screwed up, taken out from boards that had them replaced with good chips

The CPUs in particular were replaced to revive boards which were ruined by lost DVD KEY and had updated bootloaders. The donors were either JTAG'd or JTAG'able so it was obviously worth the effort.

Actually this time they're trying something feasible ....

Their idea is use an PIC12C508 or similar chip to monitor/drop/control the voltage on the via used by this hack and make sure it's at a fixed value that causes the winbond chip to unlock.

Now that MS teaches us how to unlock and flash the drives (using their ODD updater code) it's doable

These consoles are highly likely to have started working again just because you took their boards out of the metal cage.

It's impossible to take a board out of the metal cage without bending it a bit.

And again, the RAM chips do not get hot enough to have soldering problems due to heating.

I'm not saying it does not happen. I'm saying it's not related to the *main* cause of the 3ROD or 2ROD at all. Consoles with bad soldering on the RAM chips actually made out of the factory with the RAM chips poorly soldered. And that was one of the causes of early system failures back in 2005.

That's one of the reasons why people keep talking about RAM reflow currently.

Reflowing RAM is just you wasting your time which could be used on something more effective (like reballing the real culprit, the GPU.)...


Regarding a defective temperature sensor, you can change the SMC_Config to some impossible temperature like 999C to prevent the system from shutting down and then go to some application like xexmenu to discover which temperature sensor is reading wrong values.

xexmenu has the motherboard sensor labeled properly ("MB:") by the way.

The success rate with such repairs (reball with leaded balls) is low unless the GPU is replaced with a new chip.

The reason is that not only the balls are damaged by the heat, but the GPU chip itself. In this case (grid of dots on the screen) it's a obvious and clear sign of EDRAM failure and it's the last step before a persistent E74 error screen.

The only REAL FIX for E74 is GPU replacement.

I aways laugh when I see people saying that they reflow the RAM chips.

I never had to do such a thing. The problem is aways under the GPU or is the GPU itself.

Now for fast overheating it's aways the heatsink sitting wrong, not touching the die properly or (and instead of "or") thermal compound is badly applied.

And people saying things about RAM temperature... That's the MOST HILARIOUS thing about all this. There is NO RAM TEMPERATURE sensor. There is a MOTHERBOARD temperature sensor which ironically is right by the EJECT button (Q1G3 is the motherboard temperature sensor) quite far from the  RAM chips...

If the harddrive or memory unit you had connected to the XBOX360 when you got banned had the "Optional Media Update" file in it, it will be marked as unusable and you're hosed because it's deleted/marked corrupt in the same policy as the deal with DLC and Arcade games.

In MS words: "All licences to XBOX Live contents are forfeit"

They stopped making them somewere around march 2006 so a LOT of Xenons here in Brazil have the boring gray plastic (not painted) grills.

If it's a JASPER it won't do E79 if JTAG wires fail. Instead it will have no video, and no sync controllers. You will see only the power light on.