This has been documented elsewhere, but I thought I would bring it here for good measure.
I recently decided to figure out why my xbox would lose the system time immediately after being unplugged. I recalled that there is no clock battery, but instead some kind of 'super capacitor' or so they say. Turns out this 'super capacitor' or aerogel capacitor is not so super after all and was leaking its electrolyte inside my xbox (and most every other xbox in the world too).
I found some posts where folks said that their xbox started acting up because of it and few even shorted out and released the magic smoke because of the electrolyte on the board.
Fortunately neither of my two xboxes (both 1.0 version) had not suffered this fate yet. I ordered some replacement aerogel caps from digikey and fixed both of my xboxes at the same time. On the first one, I knocked off an SMD capacitor (C7G6) which was compromised and corroded by the electrolyte spill. Luckily, the machine still works without it. Does anyone have any idea on how to figure out what the value might have been? It appeared to be connected in parallel to the small 'lytic cap right next to it, I am thinking that means it didn't do much
The digikey part numbers that you can use for the aerogel cap are as follows:
283-2776-ND (1.0F 2.5V aerogel) [stock value]
283-2780-ND (3.3F 2.5V aerogel) I used these for a ludicrous amount of extra clock backup time.
My pictures of the damage didn't turn out so the first picture is shamelessly re-posted from another thread. The second pic is my recapped board with the missing SMD cap at C7G6
If you still enjoy your xbox, you should open it up and check for leakage. If nothing else, just remove the aerogel cap and clean up the mess. The xbox will work without it, there will just be no hope of the clock backup working. Amazingly enough, all the standard electrolytic capacitors on the board look just fine.
I recently decided to figure out why my xbox would lose the system time immediately after being unplugged. I recalled that there is no clock battery, but instead some kind of 'super capacitor' or so they say. Turns out this 'super capacitor' or aerogel capacitor is not so super after all and was leaking its electrolyte inside my xbox (and most every other xbox in the world too).
I found some posts where folks said that their xbox started acting up because of it and few even shorted out and released the magic smoke because of the electrolyte on the board.
Fortunately neither of my two xboxes (both 1.0 version) had not suffered this fate yet. I ordered some replacement aerogel caps from digikey and fixed both of my xboxes at the same time. On the first one, I knocked off an SMD capacitor (C7G6) which was compromised and corroded by the electrolyte spill. Luckily, the machine still works without it. Does anyone have any idea on how to figure out what the value might have been? It appeared to be connected in parallel to the small 'lytic cap right next to it, I am thinking that means it didn't do much
The digikey part numbers that you can use for the aerogel cap are as follows:
283-2776-ND (1.0F 2.5V aerogel) [stock value]
283-2780-ND (3.3F 2.5V aerogel) I used these for a ludicrous amount of extra clock backup time.
My pictures of the damage didn't turn out so the first picture is shamelessly re-posted from another thread. The second pic is my recapped board with the missing SMD cap at C7G6
If you still enjoy your xbox, you should open it up and check for leakage. If nothing else, just remove the aerogel cap and clean up the mess. The xbox will work without it, there will just be no hope of the clock backup working. Amazingly enough, all the standard electrolytic capacitors on the board look just fine.
Attached Files
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