The service was for a modchip install and an HDD install. The customer mentioned that they tried to do a hardmod and the console wouldn’t boot. An Aladdin modchip was being used. On inspection, the installation was not adequate and the first step was to cleanup and see what was happening with the pads.
The pads on the LPT port were fine, with just a bit of solder mask damaged. The D0 point however was ripped. I used a new set of pins for the port, and for the D0 point, I had to rebuild it first and the ground it (this is an alternative way to wire it to the Aladdin). The BT point in the Aladdin was also rebuilt as the customer seemed to have used solder thread instead of a wire.
The console now booted, so the next step was to partition the HDD that was sent with the console. Unfortunately the HDD was locked. The key provided by the customer didn’t work, but fortunately, booting the console with XblastOS allowed to use that to unlock the HDD.
I also removed the clock capacitor which was already leaking into the motherboard.
The BIOS included in the Aladdin modchip was old and would not recognise large partitions. So I flashed the modchip with the latest Cerbios (3.0 Beta) by taking the chip out and using a programmer. The default dashboard is EvoX. Xbox4Gamers and the stock MS dashboard are also installed. Cerbios.in controls which dashboard should boot.
Please note that the DVD drive doesn’t work properly. I didn’t make any attempt to look into it as that wasn’t part of the order. I recommend to open it up and clear it and see if it works better.
