Had this customers XBOX planned for quite some time, back when MakeMHZ was taking preorders on the latest batch/revision of the Stellar modchip and HD+ bundle. In this case, the customer asked if I would preorder and have the kits shipped to me and then pay for exact kit cost, as well as acquire all the necessary parts.
I do this sometimes if there are a lot of pieces a customer would need to gather like the aforementioned plus the 80-wire IDE cable, Startech adapter, etc. Customer had originally planned to install an SSD with a 2.5″ bracket but chose not to try and purchase until I received the MakeMHZ parts and was ready to XBOX to be sent in. This unfortunately led to the discovery of the insane SSD prices currently on the market (2TB drives I used to recommend for a few hundred are now at 600+) so they opted for a standard 7200 RPM HDD as the XBOX doesn’t really benefit from the SSD speeds anyways.
With the arrival of the XBOX and HDD, work could begin on the project!
Customer had selected the Full Service Cleaning so began with the complete teardown of all shell components and removal of all internals to access parts such as the HDD tray, DVD drive bracket, front panel, etc. All parts and both CPU and GPU heatsink were soaked and scrubbed, rinsed and dried to get everything nice and clean! The XBOX was already in nice shape but looked near mint when done!
First order of business after cleaning was ensuring stock operation after recap so started disassembling the 3 boards and got them quickly de-capped with a combination of my desoldering gun and hot tweezers. Once all 3 boards (PSU/Mainboard/DVD) were stripped down, deep cleaned all of them with ISO especially the mainboard in the vicinity of the old clock cap which is normal for these. Damage wasn’t bad on topside, but customer did mention the XBOX power on/off wasn’t working correctly so checked the underside and sure enough there was a bad trace which I quickly bypassed.
Got all new capacitors installed across the 3 boards from Console5, and with the power trace bypassed quickly hooked everything up without fully reassembly to confirm stock operation. XBOX powered on and off properly and unit fired right up, read discs, etc. so I knew I was good to proceed with modding.
First order of business was the Stellar chip. This is the easiest of the 2 by far only needing a 2×8 pin header soldered on (and this 1.4 doesn’t have the holes needing clearing either) and 2 flexes, one for the D0 grounding and the other is for all the new features including wireless (you get a custom flex for each revision). Once these were all soldered in place I tested continuity, then installed the Stellar chip topside in the header and secured with the mounting screw.
Next order of business is the more complicated HD+ mod, though no worse than any PixelFX RetroGEM kit. I made quick work of the AV port removal with my desoldering gun and then a light pry while focusing hot air on the bottom side (and board upside down) and it popped right off cleanly. 2 quick wire bodges later (so the HD+ thinks there is an HD cable inserted) and a QSB Install and we are ready to install the encoder flex!
This is the trickiest part of the install IMO, on the 1.4 you solder directly to the encoder on 3 sides, I find like the PixelFX Dreamcast install, its best to align each section of flex and tack on just the outer points for stability while making sure each section is aligned properly. I did this well but as I would discover a bit later, I accidentally soldered the right side flex 1 pin off, 11 from the bottom instead of 10! It was luckily a very easy fix but always double check your count, it’s easy to make that mistake even if you do this stuff all the time!
Once the flex was aligned properly, I introduced extra flux and ran my chisel tip up and down each side until satisfied with joints and amount of solder. Quick test with my multimeter to confirm no neighboring pins were bridged and cleaned it all up with some ISO and brush!
Last step of the HD+ is to solder 3 strands of provided wire to 5V, GND and SPDIF near the old AV port connection, mount the new board using a 3d printed riser and support and solder them to the QSB. The aforementioned flex from previous step then gently folds/curves upward and you lock into the connector.
Then I connected the cable between Stellar and HD+ and quickly routed the antenna out the side and attached to outer case frame as per instructions. I did not observe any Wi-Fi settings currently, but I believe this is coming in a FW update very soon!
With the HD+ installed I tested it and discovered the misalignment I mentioned earlier. Once discovered I fixed it, tested again and with a sharp image out the new HDMI port, began the re-assembly process!
Once the mainboard was fully screwed back in, front panel and controller ports all reinstalled I was also asked to replace the fan with a Nexus kit from PeacefulOutcome. It’s a great kit that makes a huge difference in audible noise, only modification I made is to snip and fuse the 3-wire harness for a much shorter run and cleaner install.
With the new fan installed, I applied some fresh Arctic MX paste to both GPU and CPU chips and then installed the cleaned up heatsinks!
Last order of business before final shell closure was DVD drive and HDD. HDD upgrade is easy, just screw in the new drive to caddy, attach the Startech Sata to IDE adapter and hook up the new 80 wire IDE ribbon from LaserBear. These are designed to be 1:1 replacements so no need to fold and bend up excess length and be left with a mess!
DVD drive was fully disassembled to recap so while open the Philips drive belt was replaced and fresh grease applied internally on all moving parts. Got that re-assembled and everything all connected and put a JRG sticker on the inside top shielding but left top unscrewed so we could do final testing.
This drive had been setup earlier by me using FatXplorer and a tool to format for Stellar use, including setting up C/E/F partitions and a custom dashboard of customers choice (in this case, UIX Lite as they wanted one that resembled the stock dash in appearance but with extra features!)
With the new drive installed it fired right up, I adjusted some Stellar settings and configured it to auto boot into UIX Lite which worked perfectly! I also tested ripping a game to the HDD temporarily to confirm drive operation and game playback
Customer stated they would be using this in direct video mode to a Morph upscaler so since I have a Morph4K I did the same. After some tinkering I settled on direct video (not framed) and scaler was capturing the feed perfectly auto cropped to fill vertical screen space and preserve 4:3!
Played around a bit with the settings but ultimately was very happy with the results and since I have added a gallery / zoom feature to the website you can now click on the below captures and get full screen examples!
Wiped the games off HDD and deleted temp save data, its ready to head back home and I think customer will be super excited to see this decked out XBOX in action
Another order complete!
