Xbox 1 hacking legend 'Bunnie' weighs in on 360 RRoD

Famous Xbox 1 hacker 'Bungie' has offered some more insights into what happens when the Xbox 360 experiences the RRoD. A while ago he sent off a RRoD'd Xbox 360 to MEFAS to get digested for solder joint inspection on the GPU thrugh a process known as dye and pry. The motherboard is flooded with red ink and the GPU is mechanically pried off the board with the red ink flowing into any small cracks in the solder balls which should leave visible red spots at the points of failure. The following two pictures indicate what a normal ball looks like after the test and one of several balls on the GPU that have exhibited partial failure.

I was a bit puzzled by these results because you didn’t see any “catastrophic” failure — pools of red ink over a connection interface — just partial cracking. Partial cracking isn’t terribly uncommon, and many products work quite well despite such artifacts. However, after reading the article linked above, if Microsoft shorted safety margins around many of the design parameters to get the product out on time, it makes sense that the summation of many partial failures could lead to a total system failure — failures that have symptoms that vaguely cluster together but are difficult to point to any single root cause. Heisenbugs. Yuck.

Complex systems are a ***** to get right — and reliable. I think about that every time I step onto an airplane, or when I read about the space program. Respect to the engineers at Boeing and NASA!

News Source: Bunniestudios

so y does the x-clamp fix this.

The DIY replacement clamps use simple physics to make sure that the GPU and board are being pressed against eachother to maintain connectivity.

The stock clamps don't

Bunnie or Bungie?

Originally Posted by neilpatel

so y does the x-clamp fix this.

when the balls fail on the grid array, the solder cracks making a gap in the connection. the xclamp or similar fixes put pressure on the bga (ball grid array) pushing the cracked solder back together. this is not a complete connection.

think of it this way. youve got some speaker wire and it was pinched in a door cutting it. rather then resoldering the wire to get basically a complete line, you take a pair of vice grips and pinch the wires together. it works, but its not completely like stock.

bunnies reports arent all that new. hes just shown what we already know to happen, in a better demonstrated way.

best fix still imo is the towel trick and an xclamp fix

Originally Posted by iLLNESS

best fix still imo is the towel trick and an xclamp fix

hasnt the towel trick got a really low success rate, and it doesnt it not work for long

what exactly does the towel-trick do?
the clamp-thing presses the points together - ok. but the towel?
all i could think of it that it heats everything up more and more?! how come that it helps?

another factor in this equation is that most electronics factories had to switch to lead free solder. everyone knows lead free solder doesn't have the same holding characteristics as the older lead based solder and once lead free solder gets hot, it seems to not bind as well thus causing connections between components (bga and others) to fail. that's why designs have to be made with lead free in mind before production has begun.

the design of the 360 i believe was finalized before the ban on lead based solder being used by electronics manufacturers. i think alot of the 360's issues also stem from the lead free solder that is used throughout the system board and components. another factor was the faulty high speed gdram chips used in early 360 production. alot of faulty gdram chips were 'allowed' to ship in 360's even though the boxes 'passed' testing, knowing that down the road the boxes may fail.

sony was one of the first facilities that switched all their plants to lead free, so they had a head start on lead free designs. sony was sort of a pioneer on implementing lead free soldering into production.

Originally Posted by msa

what exactly does the towel-trick do?
the clamp-thing presses the points together - ok. but the towel?
all i could think of it that it heats everything up more and more?! how come that it helps?

DO NOT attempt the 'towel trick'. you will probably damage the xbox or blow-up the house.

basically you wrap the whole xbox with few towels and turn it on.... this heats up the solder joints under the GPU & CPU and fixes (most of the time) the RRoD.

but using the towel trick can break other parts of the motherboards such RAM chip and so on...

other method people use 'heat gun' (ones used to take of wallpapers from rooms or whatever) to direct the heat only to the CPU & GPU.

best method i found (after x-clamp removal) is to un-plug the fans and turn on the xbox until it shows the 2 red ring light (overheating indication) or wait about 3 minutes max.

way to go zeus, misspelling a legend.

^^indeed.. so is the guy called bunnie or bungie?? there's a little difference..

Originally Posted by redwolf

DO NOT attempt the 'towel trick'. you will probably damage the xbox or blow-up the house.

basically you wrap the whole xbox with few towels and turn it on.... this heats up the solder joints under the GPU & CPU and fixes (most of the time) the RRoD.

but using the towel trick can break other parts of the motherboards such RAM chip and so on...

other method people use 'heat gun' (ones used to take of wallpapers from rooms or whatever) to direct the heat only to the CPU & GPU.

best method i found (after x-clamp removal) is to un-plug the fans and turn on the xbox until it shows the 2 red ring light (overheating indication) or wait about 3 minutes max.

The towel trick works fine(not for all) and I've seen it done in front of my face.
It made a rrod'ed box play for more than 10 hours.

In my opinion, if your xbox 360 is hacked and the "red rings of death" developed why not try the towel trick. In other words, a person may not want to send in their xbox 360 because of fear that their hacked xbox 360 will be discovered. So they want to try a repair personally and in the process save themselves seperation anxiety from their xbox 360. In this case the towel trick seems pretty reasonable BUT if YOUR xbox 360 is NOT hacked and the RROD developes DON'T do the towel trick as Microsoft will probably just REPLACE your xbox 360 if you send it in. I hope I don't get flamed for this advice but if I do BRING IT ON. Peace ya'll!

yes this is the main overall underlying problem. However, combine this with the insane tempretures the GPU reaches and the poor aircooling and APPALLING layout of the board itself its no wonder why these things can RRoD within days.

Recetly i kept getting disc read errors (original discs)

Until i took it apart i didn't realise just how hot the DVD drive was, as it was partly overlying the heatsinks which get red hot. Rather than release new SKUS with better hardware features, they should think about releasing a slimline or smaller size 360 which is completely redesigned.
That way they can get away from admitting the 360 is a total disaster in terms of design and production quality, phase them out, and increase sales in the process. Also saving billions on the extended warranties.

33percent failure rate is more than enough to jump ship and redsign, rather than continue to sell MILLIONS more units, knowing they will be returned at a huge cost to them

Originally Posted by kneehighspy

another factor in this equation is that most electronics factories had to switch to lead free solder. everyone knows lead free solder doesn't have the same holding characteristics as the older lead based solder and once lead free solder gets hot, it seems to not bind as well thus causing connections between components (bga and others) to fail. that's why designs have to be made with lead free in mind before production has begun.

the design of the 360 i believe was finalized before the ban on lead based solder being used by electronics manufacturers. i think alot of the 360's issues also stem from the lead free solder that is used throughout the system board and components. another factor was the faulty high speed gdram chips used in early 360 production. alot of faulty gdram chips were 'allowed' to ship in 360's even though the boxes 'passed' testing, knowing that down the road the boxes may fail.

sony was one of the first facilities that switched all their plants to lead free, so they had a head start on lead free designs. sony was sort of a pioneer on implementing lead free soldering into production.

But we're not seeing massive failure rates in other electronic goods. As a person who does solder on a regular basis with lead free solder, it's not that big of a deal unless you're lazy or stupid.