Exploding Xbox Redux

[AeronPrometheus]

*sigh*

I only posted the original thread cause I thought it was funny more than anything.

I thought that I could actually use my current Neowin account and maybe a few other members would get a kick out of the whole thing. Boy was I wrong. Allow me to clear up a few things from the original thread...

I'm not an attention ######, logically, all those who shouted for my punishment are.

I have been on Neowin off and on for over four years, this is simply a new name I picked out to reflect my nick on all the other boards I visit. No "n00b" here.

My opinion of the member base here has been falling since I started this thread, with a precious few that actually made intelligent posts. Thankfully I can still rely on the site staff to actually be level headed.

With that, I now have pictures for you idiots to gawk at. I shall attempt to describe the whole thing as it happened through my eyes.

(To recap)

I got a call from my mom a couple nights ago stating that while my brother was playing my Xbox in the living room of our house he heard an explosion, saw smoke and light emitting from the unit and quickly turned it off. He then decided to retrieve his game, powering the system back on. It still somehow worked. He removed the game, unplugged the system, and left the house (Poor guy).

I thought it was bloodly hilarious, so hilarious that I posted about it right here on Neowin.net. It was okay for a while, I promised to post pics (Oddly enough, I indicated that I wouldn't have them for a while as I was not near the house, instead staying at a friend's when I was called about the news), but as the course of about 12 hours elapsed the responses to my initial post became increasingly angered. Going so far as to say I should be banned for lying and being an attention ######. Luckily Neowin has competant people on its staff and one of those competant persons cleaned the thread up for me after I stated that yesterday my storage drive failed on my PC and I had been up the whole time restoring software while silently grieving the loss of 200 Gigabytes of irreplacable personal data. I was accused of lying about this as well.

(Fast forward to present)

I get home finally and the first thing I do is plug the Xbox back up. As I get within three feet of the unit I begin to smell smoke, the very smoke that was reported to me two nights ago. About 10 years ago I had a friend's house catch fire, they were all okay but the house was gutted by flames. Walking through the house afterwards there was an unmistakable odor about it, my Xbox had that same smell two whole days after the incident. Something, somehow burnt. I turn the unit on. It works, not only does it work, the controller ports work, the hard drive works, the disc tray works.

I immediantly violate my end user warranty and remove the undercarrage of the unit, nothing. There was no visible damage to the system just looking at it either. So I dig deeper, searching the house for tools that would at the very least hack through the star screws within the system. I remove the hard drive assembly, nothing. I remove the face plate of the Xbox and the cables within. It's not until I remove the DVD-ROM drive that I see exactly what had happened...

Underside of the DVD drive

It was about this time that my brother walks in, now I can get the story directly from him. Where over the phone I heard "explosion" and "sparks" I'm now hearing the same story being told with the words "gun shot" and "bang". Now this is starting to make more sense. The splash of suet (sp?) as seen on the drive was mostly blocked by a piece of plactic holding it in place. The actual origin of damage came from the motherboard itself.

Front of the motherboard directly behind the 1P & 2P controller ports.

See that black thing to the right? That's apparently a diode that liberated itself from the motherboard in a very violent manner. There's gray plactic shrapnel directly south of the black spot where it once stood (Near the larger diodes) and some kind of fiberish stuff. It's not spiderweb or anything of the like, if there was any kind of flame or smoldering (And there was) it would have been vaporized.

Anyone with more knowledge than me have any theories as to why this happened?

So there it is, the source of the "explosion" and yet there's still an unanswered question.

Why is my Xbox still working?

I put the system back together, minus the colonal's extra crispy, and plugged it back in. It still works. Not only does it still work it work as good as it did the last time I used it. I put in Halo 2, no change in graphics, sound, loading time (Which is still hella long), or anything! I played Cairo and nothing glitched or misbehaved.

The vote in the original thread for "demand it be replaced" won. But I'm not going to demand, as the poll was put together while I was still laughing. I'm going to call Microsoft, show them these pictures, and see about putting a warning out so that this doesn't happen to anyone else.

That wraps up this fiasco, hope those that cared enjoyed it, hope those that trolled will now shut up and sit down, I'll stay on for a while in case anyone has any questions.

[iverson0881]

Wow hehe. Interesting

I hope this doesn't happen to anyone else but yeah go call them and see. But you did just technically void your warranty.

[Doolop]

thanks

[WitCh-Fire]

Great pictures

Ive personally seen this happen once before.

As youve just shown....that area seems to be a common place for capacitators to blow up.

As to what causes it...im absolutely not sure.

Edited February 7, 2005 by WitCh-Fire

[Maxious]

good to hear you ignored the trolls in the other thread,

:o :0 !!!

weird that it still works... maybe you're on to some magical overclocking ablility like the vdimm mods for pc mobos (... every cloud has a silver lining...)

Edited February 7, 2005 by Maxious

[JorgeIvan]

Thanks!!! :)

[Argote]

whoa that freaky, BTW i missed the original therad :(

[12Iceman]

nice pictures, but i hope my xbox never does that.

[AeronPrometheus]

good to hear you ignored the trolls in the other thread,

:o :0 !!!

weird that it still works... maybe you're on to some magical overclocking ablility like the vdimm mods for pc mobos (... every cloud has a silver lining...)

585427123[/snapback]

That would be wierd... Shame i didn't check for the MoBo's model number. All I saw was the word Microsoft written on it (That alone made me groan).

whoa that freaky, BTW i missed the original therad :(

585427149[/snapback]

You missed nothing, I retold everything of importance in this thread.

[Veedems Veteran]

Thanks for posting the pictures after that crap you got in the other thread. Very interesting story.

[b0m8er]

looks like capasitor explosion :p

[zachman123]

Wow. Guess you were telling the truth, how awesome in my opinion :D

Hey, if it still works guess it's an interesting experience... I'm still wondering what could've caused it. Alcohol spill + Spark = Explosion maybe? Alcohol evaporates though, so the spill would have had to have been right before the explosion.

Hope you get your hard drive situation fixed. Know that sucks, I lost just the drive, no important data even and I'm bummed.

Too bad you weren't there to see the explosion (Or better yet with a video camera on!)

[Patrulz]

This also happend too me, luckly my "safty cord" cut the power, but you can still smell that something is burnt will open it up... Microsoft asking too much to repair it when the dont know what wrong 119$ Canadian... It still works but wouldnt run it for more then an hour. Too risky...

[Hyperbass]

My old xbox didnt exactly blow up but I hear nasty crackling when I

turn it on and shortly afterward a burning smell... Poor guy, I guess it was just his time to go.