The system would not boot, it only falshed an orange light (aka Frag). The main issue was a broken trace that ran under a surface mount cap, followed by damaged pads on two capacitors (not sure if they where connected before or came off with heat). After fixing those the system worked fine. I removed the clock cap, did a full recap, added a Stellar modchip, added a 128mb ram upgrade (many sellers, example), added new fans (adapters here and here), and added a ssd (adapter and mount).
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Nice! I have an OG Xbox that was the kind you could install custom bios on with just a couple of solder blobs on the bottom of the motherboard. What are the killer features of the stellar mod chip in your estimation?
What I like about stellar:
- Easy updates: you boot into the stellar menu and check for updates via the Internet. If something goes wrong, there is a USB c recovery option.
- Modern HDD tools built in: you don’t need a separate PC utility to format an SSD. It has ftp built in so also simple to copy files
- No separate config files or utilities: everything from extended RAM support to Insignia is configured directly on the device.
- Future add-ons: this one is a little more up in the air but there are supposed to be additional add-ons coming for the chip (temp display, 128mb ram module, etc). Stellar also modifies the kernel itself, which allows for features like proper support for faster processor mods.
What I don’t like:
- Price: obviously $100 is pretty pricey when a quality Aladin chip can be had for $30 that can get you up and running games. The price consideration changes if you want to HDMI mod the system, since the only one on the market requires stellar and is an additional $60 ($160 for a quality HDMI mod and chip isn’t too bad considering price of something like the Pixelfx Gem on other systems)
- You still need to use an attach.xbe to launch iso games.