Buddy Smith wrote:
wrote:
Buddy Smith wrote:
: My xbox was damaged due to lightning. It appears that one capacitor
: was quite thoroughly fried.

I already did buy another one I'm just trying to see if I can repair
this one for the novelty of it.

Does it use an external power supply? If so I'd check that first to see
if it's putting out the correct voltages. If it has an internal power
supply, check the fuse that should be located somewhere near the line
cord input.

If the power supply seems OK, can you get the new Xbox apart? (You'll
void your warranty.) You might be able to determine the value of the
fried cap by looking at the same place in the new one. You can also make
voltage measurements at the same places in the new and broken ones to
see if there are other problems. Does the broken one even try to start
up (hard drive tries to spin up, power light blinks) or is it totally
dead?

: There is a picture he http://nullset.myphotos.cc/xbox/jpg
: (Look for C7G6 in the bottom right corner, next to the nice burn
: mark....)

Oops, that should be:
http://nullset.myphotos.cc/xbox.jpg

I agree that this part of the board looks like something to do with
power regulation. C7G6 looks like it _was_ a small ceramic? chip
capacitor, the same physical size as C7G7. The spot on the board looks
too small to be one of the larger chip capacitors like C7G8. It also
looks like that the traces that C7G6 was soldered to have evaporated
along with the capacitor. If up is north, I'm not sure what the trace
looked like on the south end, but on the north end, it looks like there
was a short trace from the capacitor to a via, which is a connection
between different layers of the circuit board. But it looks like
there's no metal there anymore to solder to. If you're lucky, the
metal is there and is just covered in soot. If the metal is all gone,
you might still luck out if this via went all the way through the board -
you'd have to take the board out and turn it over to know for sure. For
comparison, there is an undamaged via just north of the burn mark and
just south of the C7G10 label.

Another question is: what did this capacitor do? If it was just being
used to filter out high-frequency noise from a supply rail (which is
somewhat likely in a power supply), and nothing else is damaged, the
box may work reasonably well without it. But if it was in the control
circuit of a switching regulator, the box may not even start up without
it.

You might also ask in alt.games.video.xbox to see if anyone there has
fixed the same problem. There is a microsoft.public.xbox as well, but
I think the EULA lets the Redmond Hit Squad come after you if you
suggest opening up an Xbox. Googling for "xbox repair" also gives a few
sites that talk about common problems.

Matt Roberds