element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!!

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by ajcc

ajcc — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 16:11:35 GMT

I'm confused, is the sign up notification broken or just a bug?
It takes me to the element14 present community page, same URL as the location, instead of another website (outside element14?) as the message states.

But the event is tagged twitch so I assumed it would be on the e14Community channel and the stream would be public?

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by ajcc

ajcc — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 10:31:10 GMT

The first gaming console I took apart was a PSone (the smaller and rounder Playstation 1), mostly because I wanted to see what was inside. I had heard all about the magical MIPS processor inside it and wanted to see it (my brother's friends had just started uni and I guess they've must have used MIPS as an example in class, this was before the PIC32 was a thing and I don't think you could just buy a small MIPS).

However the first thing I took apart to fix while documenting the process was an Apple Macintosh LC. This computer was a very common sigh in classrooms during the 90's and something that showed up on flea markets whenever a school cleared out a forgotten storage space. The first task was to make a cable so I could connect a VGA monitor to it and get a display, something that took a few tries to get right before it worked. The resistor legs were used for the ID pins, used by the Mac to know which monitor is connected.

Now that I finally have a picture on the VGA monitor the fan had decided to stop working altogether. Luckily I managed to find a matching fan in something else that was broken. Soldering the two wire ends together was no fun.

With a new fan installed and a display on the screen I thought that was it for getting the LC to work well... but it's not that easy. Notice something missing in the picture?

The original drive was completely dead, it didn't even spin up or blink. So the project was put on hold until I managed to find a new drive. Luckily an old 540 MB IBM SCSI hard drive turned up and it was working, so now I would be able get going with the LC again.

It's asking for a diskette, this is good! Nothing exploded or hung. However, this is the time I learned all about the little Apple icon on the old SCSI drive, it had a meaning after all.

This was a problem know by many and by asking about it on a vintage computer forum I got a lot of help. Writing the diskettes was made possible by a low-end PowerPC Macintosh I also had, which was one of the last generations that could read and write the 400k/800k format the LC used, while also being able to read FAT (MS DOS formatted) diskettes. This turned out to be a long and hard process because everything had to be encapsulated in a binhex or Stuffit archive to survive the multi-step transfer from Apple's FTP to the LC (that's how little I knew about Mac). I still don't know enough about HFS to tell you why this was, for me the files were fragile and seemed to have meta-files that got lost if unpacked in a FAT filesystem (there's a catch-22 here, how do you unpack the unpacking program?).

After all that work and finding a couple of 30-pin SIMMs that matched I now had a working LC with 10 MB of RAM, a 540 MB hard drive and System 6.0.8 freshly installed (at the time you could still get the last version of System 6 from Apple's FTP archive).

I hope this inspires someone to keep going on a repair that seem to go on forever, sometimes you just have to ask someone else about it.

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by blastosupreme

blastosupreme — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 16:05:43 GMT

The first thing I ever took apart was my dads vhs player in the early 90s. It wasn’t broken. I was just fascinated how it pulled in the tape and needed to know how it worked. Opened it with a screwdriver set I found in the basement. While it cost him a few hundred bucks, he wasn’t that mad. He even showed me how the motor spun when you touched the wires to a 9v battery.

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by jpnbino

jpnbino — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 17:32:28 GMT

MASTER SYSTEM III

Driven by curiosity and the thought that I needed to clean it inside to keep it always working in 1999 ( at the age of 8 ) I unscrewed my master system just to blow inside and remove dust. Also, I was a bit curious about what would happen if I touch the contact of the power plug leaving it half inserted in the power outlet ( sure I know now haha)

In case you don't know about it :

Master system III was developed and produced only for Brazil.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_System_III

Here I found a video in which I give the link at the right time to check the circuit (sorry but it is in Portuguese )

https://youtu.be/o0kE5JnGAMc?t=105

ps.: I think around the same time I was opening everything and I was so curious about the COB encapsulation ( for sure I didn't know what it was at the time )

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by alainlavanchy

alainlavanchy — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 19:12:49 GMT

That's a looong time ago. I was still at school (K-14, or so) and we had a teacher who really was into STEM teaching. We had some C64 and an Atari computer around and the floppy drive of the Atari didn't work. I already had taken apart some calculators and electronic typewriters my dad has taken home. I wasn't to bad to do some kind of reverse understanding of these machines. Our teacher wasn't able to fix it. He didn't want to open the computer as the school had paid quite some money to get them.

I was curious to see one of these machines from the inside. So I asked him if I could have a look at it. He somehow trusted me enough, but when I began unscrewing the drive, he got nervous. I needed some time, unscrewing different parts and the more screws I had lying around me on the floor the more nervious I also got.

After some while I was pretty much sure that a lose cable could be the reason. I detached and reattached it and was even successfull at closing the drive again in an order that seem correct to me. When I was sorting my tools back to the schools tool box I discoverd a screw that I had obviously forgotten to screw back in. I really was nervous when the teacher started up the computer, but hurray, I really was the cable the all went well.

Some years later I did change a floppy drive in a compaq pc from a friend of a friend of mine. So they didn't know me at all but somehow had no other ideas who could fix it. Or they didn't bother letting me fix it as they were quite wealthy. I had learned my lession from the school story and had some small plastic bags with me to sort the screws into the bags together with a note stating the place from where I had taken them out. BTW I have kept this habbit and it really saved my nerves. Anyway, I had removed the old drive and the most annoying part was to remove the cable from it's socket. I didn't think too much about it being hard to remove and had to twist it softly in different directions before finally being able to remove it.

The same happend to the new cable. After some while I really wasn't sure anymore if the new drive they had bought would fit at all. I tried this and that. Now it was me getting nervous. What would I do if I wasn't able to get it back running. I had told them I would have done that several times before and I would be sure what to do. It wasn't a lie at all, but also not the complete truth.

I almost wanted to give up when I had a look into the connector and saw one single pin, that looked into the wrong direction. I must have bent it when I tried to attach the new cable. Carefully I twisted it back into it's correct position. The rest was done easily and it went out well.

Still today I can remeber this as it have been some days ago and not years. I can see the small bedroom where we sat at the floor to do the repair. And I can feel the angst I had not being able to put it back together in a running computer.

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by DAB

DAB — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 19:20:07 GMT

The first device I took apart was an old TV we had junked.

It was very interesting as I had no idea about electronics at the time.

DAB

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by phoenixcomm

phoenixcomm — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 20:33:06 GMT

I cant get to the event the counter just hit 000!!

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by koudelad

koudelad — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 20:47:33 GMT

When I was 12 I got our home computer (Celeron 300 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 6 GB HDD) into my hands - only after parents bought a new PC. I disconnected all the PSU and IDE cables, cleaned the dust, rearranged HDD, CDROM, FDD etc. After powering it on, there was a strong blue flash from the inside. I later found out that the PSU had swapped 12 V and 5 V wires for one the FDD power cables. Obviously, who would notice this when the connector is keyed. The other FDD cable was OK, so the person who assembled years before had a good luck.

Unfortunately, the FDD never worked any more, however the rest of the PC served for a few more years to my experiments.

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by aeisharat

aeisharat — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 20:58:48 GMT

First console I took to part was as a teenager after a house fire - a very smoke damaged pokemon edition pikachu N64 I needed to fix, as it had been my first ever console. Only tools were a screwdriver set and some cleaning wipes, plus very little idea what I was doing. After removing the smoke damage off the outside I opened the case and found all that needed cleaning was the cartridge contacts and the various sockets, because apparently Nintendo built their consoles so well the smoke couldn't get in!

Went from a very dark and sooty pikachu to a less smokey edition over a few hours of cleaning and carefully putting back to . Plugged it in and distinctly remember it loading up a copy of Lylat Wars on the first go and it work fine.

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by meera_hussien

meera_hussien — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 21:26:17 GMT

The first appliance that I took apart is the sealer machine.

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the repair work. The problem with the machine was that the light was turning on when the machine is pressed but the heat is not there. After doing some diagnosis, I found that the problem was due to the transistor was not working. I managed to figure out that the transistor is not working by checking it with a multimeter. Moreover, it was quite easy because there were not many components as it was a simple machine.

After replacing the transistor the sealer works fine. This was the first machine that I repaired and it was done when I was 18 years old . Since then it has been fascinating to repair and troubleshoot electronic appliances. Each time when i repair electronic appliances, it has always been a new experience. There is always something new to learn. Sometimes i able to repair succesfully and sometimes i am not able to solve the issue. All these are part and parcell of the learning process. WIth the experience gained, the next time we encounter a problem with a similar sympton, we allready have a solution that can be implemented directly.

Thank you.

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by bobalexander

bobalexander — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 21:26:18 GMT

My first tear down was an old CRT TV that had been abandoned at the airport my dad was working at. luckily the caps had long since dissipated. I was probably 4 or 5 years old.

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by newgame+

newgame+ — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 21:43:58 GMT

While I can’t remember what the first thing I took apart was, the first thing I remember taking apart and successfully putting back together again was the Large Blocky Yellow Gameboy Brick.
Replaced the screen on my childhood Gameboy and it blew my mind seeing how little was in there. It’s not a crazy hard thing to do but doing that was kind of empowering, took away some of the mystery and made electronics seem more relatable and in reach.

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by davy.baker@lovethefactory.com

davy.baker@lovethefactory.com — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 22:14:25 GMT

Teardown of the atari 2600 was my first video game unscrewing effort.

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by phoenixcomm

phoenixcomm — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 23:50:37 GMT

my first fix I performed in the 7th grade HS electronics summer class (63-64?), We were building power supplies and using a Hickok oscilloscope to look at the outputs. So I had my right hand turning the power-intensity control on and my left hand was resting on the scope. Well, I got knocked off my feet. When I got back to my feet the instructor wanted to know what happened. When I told him I got shocked, he said you cant. I grabbed the meter with an HV probe while he held the ground to the case, I hit the screw in the knob, the needle jumped. He said that's it unsafe so we can use it. I said I know what was wrong and I could fix it the next day. The next day after the scope was discharged. I pulled out of my pocket a ceramic HV flex insulator. hacksaw and with a little luck it was fixed.

You see I was building 100watt rigs for the local hams to make some money for about 3 years.

~~Cris

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by beacon_dave

beacon_dave — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 13:36:04 GMT

I think most of my early tear downs were of ex-office equipment. Dictaphone recorders, data retrieval systems and the like.

One common occurrence was that the rubber drive belts on the recorders had decomposed and turned into a very sticky gooey substance that had dropped onto the circuit boards.

Another memory was finding an early opto-isolator device comprising of a small torch-style incandescent lamp and a LDR contained in a bakelite clamshell holder with spring clip. Serviceable components in those days !

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by cbohra00627

cbohra00627 — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 16:49:45 GMT

As far as I remember, those cheap video game consoles were very famous when I was a kid and I think I had three of them. I am attaching photos of two of them but the third one was not in condition of capturing photos... THANKS TO THE CURIOSITY OF A KID.

When I was a kid, I always wanted to open every device I encountered and look into it. I used to remove parts from them like LEDs, motors, wires, magnets, switches etc. from them and collect them. This was my fun hobby. But after 10th standard, I had to leave my home and live in hostel to prepare for college entrance exams also leaving that hobby behind. But, during this lockdown I got chance to continue that hobby and soon I found E14.

So, after 4 years and after watching this Xbox teardown, I decided to look into those consoles again, so I opened them and what I found was very disappointing. One of the console was not worth opening, it was kind of melted and sticky. The second console was missing, it was not there in the box. I am attaching the photos.

This is what I found in the second box. I believe I must have completely dismantled that console, removed its buttons/switches and wires and throwed the plastic case in the garbage at that time. I know this because I saw two switches in my treasure box which I took from the main console. These switches were below those big blue buttons as shown in the above image.

I remember playing games in that console. I remember it even today that when I inserted my first game cassette in it, it said that the cassette contains 999999 games (though I don't remember the exact number of 9s but I think it was 999999) and I was like, 'WOW! Now I can play new games every day forever' but soon I realized that most of the games were copies of the original ones. There were only about 20 original games in that cassette and the others were just their copies with minor modifications.

The first box contained the main console.

So, I decided to open it. Well, there was not much of electronics inside it as compared to modern consoles and computers. But seeing those green PCBs has always excited me.

At that time seeing these printed circuits was very fascinating, these seemed very complex. I always wondered about how can I make my own PCBs. I used to track the path of each circuit on the board and confirm its path. I collected even those small transistors, coils, capacitors, diodes, resistors etc.

But today, after seeing many more complex circuits, these seem very simple as compared to them. I am amazed how these simple electronics and simple circuits entertained us so much and made our childhood very memorable. But today, there is no need of any game console since we can play games on our smartphones itself (Well, exceptions are everywhere).

I believe that the journey of most of the engineers began when they opened their first device in their childhood whether for fixing it or just out of curiosity. I used to open things to collect their internals. Seeing that greenery was my favorite time pass.

I always liked those cassettes without their plastic cases.

I think I should keep these switches, they might be useful in my next project.

re: element14 Presents Live: Xbox Series X Teardown with Ben Heck and David Edwards!! by nathandumont

nathandumont — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 23:14:11 GMT

Not sure if it was my first I took apart, probably dismantled a radio or something when I was younger, but at Uni I hacked an original Xbox to run Linux. The hack was fairly well documented by that point, a friend had a game with the known vulnerability which he lent me and I managed to wire a standard USB socket into the motherboard then put a save image onto a USB memory stick and plugged it into the the socket and away it went. We used it in the kitchen for streaming media from the media PC we had in the lounge in our student house.

A few years ago I decided to dump it but did a teardown video myself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy0L7mNmeMU

I've still got the controller that I hacked with a USB A connector, planning on using it for a Raspberry Pi project soon.