Finding a cure for the Red Ring Of Death in Bangkok

Preamble

A friend of mine passed me an XBox 360 Core to repair that was suffering the, well known, Red Ring Of Death (RROD).

“Well”, I thought, “we are in Bangkok, so this shouldn’t be too difficult to fix…”

XBox power connector

Synopsis

The DC power connection (plug) is a proprietry connector, that has lugs that prevent under powered power supplies being used with an incorrect XBox 360:

• A 203W power brick will work on all XBox 360 variants;
• A 175W power brick will only work with a 175W or 150W XBox 360;
• A 150W power brick will only connect to, and work with, a 150W XBox 360

Make an XBox Receiver – from a RROD XBox 360

Preamble

Following on from my article about using XBox Controllers with Arduinos, I wondered if it was possible to actually make an XBox receiver, rather than having to buy one.

XBOX controllers

Preamble

I was trying to save cash, whilst trying to design a robot, and I was reluctant to purchase a full-on R/C transmitter, as these can be rather expensive.

After considering the PS2 controller options, which include using:

• a custom PS2 receiver;
• a standard generic Bluetooth USB adapter, and;
• fooling the USB shield from wireless to wired (using the custom PS2 receiver).

For more information about these three options, see the PS2 controller blog.

However, I then thought that I would see if I could use an XBox controller. Again there are multiple options available to the hacker:

• Using a Microsoft wireless optical desktop receiver;
• Using a generic Chinese clone;
• Using the RF receiver from an XBox, and;
• Some other hardware solution.

This blog will investigate each of these options.