Hacking the Xbox

CHAPTER 5
Replacing a
Broken Power
Supply
In the unfortunate (and surprisingly common) event that an Xbox breaks
after its three month warranty period expires, the only official way to fix
it is to pay Microsoft for the repair bill. Even the simplest fixes can cost
over one hundred dollars, or about half the original purchase price of the
console. As a result, I have received numerous emails from people asking
how to fix broken power supplies and hard drives.
Unfortunately, replacing a broken hard drive requires defeating the Xbox
security system, since a unique key is used to lock Xbox motherboards to
a particular hard drive. Installing a new hard drive would require a
modchip that can reprogram or bypass the hard drive lock. Furthermore,
a copy of the factory-installed Xbox software is required, something
that is illegal to distribute or copy even for repair purposes.
Therefore, the topic of Xbox hard drive replacement is too dicey to be
discussed in this text. Readers are encouraged to search online for any of
the numerous FAQs about replacing hard drives.
On the other hand, the power supply used in the Xbox is very similar to
that used in a standard PC. There are many websites where you can
purchase exact replacement Xbox power supplies, such as Llama.com
(www.llama.com/xbox/Repairs/repairs.htm), XboxRepair.com
(www.xboxrepair.com), and Firefly-HK (www.firefly-hk.com), or you
can attempt to build one yourself out of a standard PC power supply!
Considering the frequency of power supply failures, I will show you how
to adapt a standard PC ATX power supply for the Xbox. The approach
described in this section requires no soldering, at the expense of having to
flip an extra switch to power on the Xbox. Appendix C, “Getting Into