[Numus]

Well average consumer electronics are designed with a life expectency of 7 years in mind. In case of the Xbox, I think it could at least do that except for the DVD-drive as most of them are crap (Philips/Thomson) and just fail after a while. Unless you're the lucky owner of a 1.1 Xbox ofc (which has Samsung) ;-)

The samsung drives still crap out... have replaced my 1.2 box with a samsung drive and it was gone within a year

[Bram77]

I've soft- and hardmodded about 20 XBOX for people I know, who all use it on a daily basis. Most of them never turn the XBOX off (including me). None of them has had any hardware problem yet. I've bought all of them second hand from the internet. The newest one is a 1.2. SO they're all pretty old.
I guess you can say it's one of the most stable and reliable media center solutions there is. One of the reasons why I help a lot of not-so-computer-minded people stay in tune with the latest multimedia techniques

[blittan]

I have modded at least over 400 boxes (lost count) and I have repaired about 10 of them, started modding when flashing was made public so it's been a while.

I would say except the faulty dvd-drives there isn't much problem with the xboxes.

A few PSU's and one soundchip, two networkchips. There has been only one I couldn't save, but they cooked the GPU in it and for that I have no tools to solder it.

[Baphomet]

Yep -- No messages on the screen... Completely blank.

My daughter uses it the most and plays a lot of games, but only uses the media center occasionally. That said, it stays on most of the time because she likes to pause her games and come back to them so it rarely gets turned off, if ever, unless I'm toolin' with the skinz.

I found one post over at xbox-scene indicating a lead might have de-soldered and might need a jump. When I take it apart, I'll check where Anon (I think that's who posted it) indicated... I bought a couple of used one's off Amazon yesterday (I have no idea what models they are as I don't have them yet) for 50$, so maybe I'll fix it if I can sometime down the road. I haven't gotten into TSOP flashing or chipping yet -- cash is tight right now. I'll look into it again, and if the price is right, maybe...

Thanks for the tips guys -- If I ever get around to rebuilding it, I'll post back with my results.

[kortina]

I have had mine for 5 years (softmod), running XBMC about 2 hours every day since then.


You can get some stats out of XBMC to show the number of times the HDD has been turned on. Last check mine was over 1600.

The DVD broke years ago, but I have streamed all of my content since day 1.

[Numus]

Yep -- No messages on the screen... Completely blank.

My daughter uses it the most and plays a lot of games, but only uses the media center occasionally. That said, it stays on most of the time because she likes to pause her games and come back to them so it rarely gets turned off, if ever, unless I'm toolin' with the skinz.

I found one post over at xbox-scene indicating a lead might have de-soldered and might need a jump. When I take it apart, I'll check where Anon (I think that's who posted it) indicated... I bought a couple of used one's off Amazon yesterday (I have no idea what models they are as I don't have them yet) for 50$, so maybe I'll fix it if I can sometime down the road. I haven't gotten into TSOP flashing or chipping yet -- cash is tight right now. I'll look into it again, and if the price is right, maybe...

Thanks for the tips guys -- If I ever get around to rebuilding it, I'll post back with my results.

TSOP flashing is cheap (minus the soldering iron and solder) and on most of the boxes it takes minor soldering skills (bridge 2 points that are litterally next to each other).. you can not TSOP flash a 1.6 box tho and a 1.0 (and possibly 1.1) require a little more soldering skill.. but not much...

[Baphomet]

Picked 'em both up today and they're both made in China. One in 2005 and the other in 04. Haven't yet opened them up to confirm the actual models yet, but based on my preliminary findings -- Is it even possible to TSOP a 1.5 or 1.6? I thought I read on xbox-scene that these models required softmodding and couldn't be flashed.

What's the best tut out there to follow since I'm a noob to flashing? I've already got the wire, solder and iron...Just not that confident in my precision skillz.

[arnova]

These questions belong on Xbox-Scene, not the XBMC forum...

FYI: 1.6 can't be flashed as it has a ROM BIOS. Not sure about 1.5

[nemo81]

Ahh.

Bought my xbox in 2001 or so and its still going strong.
Had some troubles last year with the graphics chip, the picture would start flickering on the top of the screen and color would vanish. Kinda like watching an old VHS movie with bad tracking

Anyways, after taking it apart and checking visible solders etc, i decided to try it on to see if i could locate any bad connections by flexing/pressing the print and the components , and well it just worked after i turned it on. Problem hasnt occured after i put it together again either so.

I think ive used XBMC since the beginning or just about. I never turn my xbox off and ive always just streamed from my serverbox/dumpbox.
However, a few days ago i got my new barebone for which i will run xbmc for linux (if i can get that damn thing to work) or windows.

Lack of juice in the old xbox making it unnable to run HD material was the thing that tipped me over the edge finally. That and the fact that i've had it for so long and not even thought about upgrading it until now.
I recon this new barebone will last me for ages aswell.

Now i gotta find a honourary (sp?) placement for my ol' xbox on a shelf.. Im gonna take care of that baby still..

(barebone consists of ASUS Pundit P4-P5N9300 with an Intel C2DE5200 and 4gb ram. Also put an old 320gb hdd in it, but will mainly use streaming on this one aswell i guess..)