Original Xbox
Power Switch PCB Repair
December 23, 2023
An original Xbox which would not power on made it's way to the bench recently. The system was in pretty rough shape on the exterior and it made me think that the insides could be suffering as well. When the system was plugged in there was no response for power-on or eject. After tearing down the system it became readily apparent that there was no way this system would be powering on without some attention.
This Xbox had a nice SmartXX modchip installed and so my guess is that whoever installed it must have cracked the PCB and then helpfully inserted a piece of cardboard to help hold the two cracked pieces together. Maybe it worked for a while but it was certainly time to try something else. Using a non-conductive epoxy I was able to join the two broken pieces of the PCB and get them back to flat again. Of course the break had completely severed all connections between the connector and the rest of the power PCB.
The next job was to jumper the broken connections to return the board to working order. I came across an post on a forum which referenced a picture from an old site, Modzone.dk which outlined the pinouts for the power switch PCB and following this it was simple to get things reconnected and working again.
Pinout for the Xbox Power Switch PCB
Jumper wires in place to reconnect points
With the repaired power switch PCB in place the system powered up properly, the power and eject buttons worked without issue and all of the status LEDs worked properly. With this hurdle cleared, I could move on to the next set of repairs for this system.