Red Dot of Death - Xbox 360 S Southbridge Reflow

In this video I repair the second Xbox 360 from my holiday haul. This one is a 4GB Slim, and cosmetically looks very well used. It appears as though the previous owner may have had to force eject the DVD tray at some point as there are screwdriver marks on the tray door, but the warranty seal is intact so the console hasn't been previously worked on.

When hooked up the console turns on and displays the red "dot" of death. There is no audio or video on the screen but the fan is spinning and the DVD drive responds to being ejected. Upon examining the secondary error code (by pressing Sync + Eject) the console displays an error code of 0-1-0-1. Research suggested that the USB ports are faulty (shorted or bridged).

Upon tearing the unit down and examining the system up close there was no evidence of the USB ports being shorted or bridged. Anecdotal posts on discussion forums suggested the culprit was a faulty Southbridge and reports of a reflow resolving the issue.

I decided to reflow the Southbridge using my tried and tested heat gun method. I don't own a hot air rework station and while there is some skepticism of using a heat gun for this purpose, my practice on junk boards has yielded great results. There are a few things I do to elevate the process like thoroughly pre-heating and post-heating the board (slow cooldown) as well as using high quality flux (and lots of it). My experimentation has shown that small improvements like this lead to a controlled reflow and a happily reseated chip.

I'm happy to have revived this otherwise junk console. I'll be updating this one for use on Xbox Live, unlike the "phat" I repaired last week which I plan to mod down the road and so want to keep on a low dashboard version.

🎵 Music
Sappheiros - Lights   / sappheirosmusic  
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/LightsSappheiros
Music promoted by Audio Library    • Lights – Sappheiros (No Copyright Music)  

Affiliated links below to some of the tools I use if you'd like to support the channel:

🖥 Composite and S-Video on my Mac
USB Capture Card: https://amzn.to/2YM4TT7
(Catalina 64-bit drivers can be found on the manufacturer's website)

🔧 Toolkit
Screwdriver Set: https://amzn.to/2X7s0Gj
Automatic Wire Stripper: https://amzn.to/30F5TJm

🖌 Soldering Essentials
TS100 Soldering Iron: https://amzn.to/2YIJZUR
No Clean Flux Syringe: https://amzn.to/2NFUZvQ
No Clean Solder: https://amzn.to/2NHEAqQ
Desoldering Braid: https://amzn.to/312Grws

🔍 Soldering Add-ons
Tip Tinner: https://amzn.to/31w2EF4
Helping Hands Soldering Aid: https://amzn.to/3ihgksP
Heat Shrink Tubing: https://amzn.to/31wGq4b
Heat Gun: https://amzn.to/3hsXKgi

🔥 Thermal Compounds
Arctic MX-4 Thermal Paste: https://amzn.to/2Ak2y8w
1.5MM Arctic Thermal Pads: https://amzn.to/2Vv1RQU