travis' brain dump

well its off to texas for my 360. we will see how this works out. i’m working on another post that will follow this entire story from the beginning to end since it seems there are mixed reviews about the process. hopefully this will be a good story to tell, not a nightmare. we’ll see what happens and i’ll post up the history of this ordeal once its complete. 🙂

now i’ve just gotta fix my sound drivers on my vista machine so that i can play FFXI with sound. the beta drivers timed out and the latest release doesn’t work too great… so frustrating.

well… it happened to me… the dreaded XBOX 360 RRD (Red Ring of Death) …

Tried to get on to play FFXI the other night and my 360 locked up… this happened once before and I did the same thing I did last time, rebooted it… no biggie, it’s a computer right? Anyway… it hung on the boot-up. I pondered to myself and thought, this can’t be right. I restart one more time and there it is, staring me down… the RRD that everyone fears… 3 quadrants lit up and flashing right at you like a giant neon sign. 🙁

Well, being the “geek” I am, I log onto the internet and start lookin this bad boy up.  I found myself out on xbox-scene.com’s forums (http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=484726) (actual link to the thread) and I figured out the way to get the secondary post codes (when no error comes up)

I get code 0102 — thought to be the following as per the site:

0102 unknown error – literally means the console does not know what is wrong. possibly a short or cold solder joint somewhere. So far there is 1 major theory for what causes most of these errors is that the Ram, CPU, or GPU are not soldered properly to the mother board This can be solved by re-Heating the chips DO NOT attempt this if your console is still under warranty. If your console is still under warranty return it to the store where it was purchased or call MS to have it replaced.

Yay. The worst one on the list. haha Well, thinking this might not be the cause, I decided to play around some with the box and try to clear the thing up… I got the thing to come online and work well all night. Great, I fixed it… not at all. The next day it did the same thing during bootup and by now I’m thinking this is insane! So i leave the box running and call Xbox support. I go through their steps and such (remember box is still on when i’m not rebooting it) and nothing seems to work. Now I sit on the phone for about a half hour while i’m talking to them setting up to send it in for fix. I finish up with them and get it all setup for a servicing from MS and hang up the phone. I go back upstairs and for grins I reboot it again… TADA all working fine, ALL night. WTF!?

Well, tonight I did the same thing, except I let it sit running for about 20 minutes before I rebooted it. Amazing, it works fine. So, I come back to the internet post that talks about the error code I was getting and find that there is a “fix” by reheating the chips (i assume to make everything settle into place or something like that) and it clicks… what’s my 360 been doing while its been running while i’ve been waiting? heating up!

Now this doesn’t mean i’m going to crack open my 360 and start using a heat gun on it, but it just leaves me thinking… shouldn’t MS be doing something about this since it is obviously a manufacturing defect? Pretty lame if you ask me. However, I hear Sony isn’t doing so great either, lol. These new consoles just put out some friggin heat for sure! Guess on the box i get back from MS i’ll put that cooling system on it… rawr!

That’s my rant for the night. *shrug* At least I’ve got a PC version of FFXI. 🙂

well, so far so good…

got home wednesday and started taking the engine apart to put the new head gasket on. i got pretty far on it actually… thanks to mike for helping out those last couple of hours, it made a world of difference. within 5 hours i got everything pulled off the engine (intake, alternator, intercooler piping, turbo, manifold, fuel rail, injectors, wiring, cam shafts, etc) and got the head pulled. Mike and I decided it would be best to go ahead and replace the head gasket and the head that night so we went ahead and got that completed. thursday morning was pretty good… woke up at like 9 and got arwen and i some breakfast… i muddled around for an hour or so and finally went out to get the thing completed. it was a good thing i called up monkey wrench to find out what those ARP studs were supposed to be torqued to… mike and i did them to stock specs the night before and well… 36 ft-lbs is great for stock bolts, but terrible for ARP bolts. those were supposed to be at 60! o.O so at least that got done. started at about 11 and i seriously thought i’d never be done putting crap back on my car, lol. i think the longest time was getting the cams back in and timed up, but overall that was pretty easy. after everything was on the car, i wsa able to test crank it at 3. everything seemed ok, aside from one little bonehead move i made but we won’t talk about that… it was petty.. *cough* anyway i proceeded with the cooling system flush which took another hour or so.. yay fun for that. once i got it all flushed out i let the car run for about 20 minutes while i got the coolant added and all that good stuff. mark came over to watch arwen for me while i took back a torque wrench that i bought from sears the night before… oh yeah, that thing sucked! i set it for the stock torque setting for the cam-bearing bolts and the frackin thing broke two of em! WEAK! anyway, the test drive went well… got about 10 miles on it with no overheating so it looked pretty good. drove it to work today and all seems well. hopefully it will remain that way. lol

so i’m driving home from work wednesday… i notice my car is running a lil warm… ‘ odd,’ i think to myself… turn up my heater, temp goes down, yatta yatta…. so i think to myself, no biggie, this is just a thermostat issue. i get home, i pull apart my crap and drop in a new thermostat … the next day on the way to work… bam, i’m getting hot again… ‘ wtf!? ‘ so i head out of work early, get home about 2:30 and tear everything apart… 2.5 hour job. i replace the thermostat (again) the water pump and the thermostat housing temperature sensor (cranks up the fans). i take it for a drive up to get arwen from her day care and wouldn’t ya know it? overheating again… so, i think to myself, what’s the next logical thing to check? fans and hoses. so i check everything out… 3 hours later we’ve gone through the entire system. relays, wiring, switches, fuses you name it… the fans are working. the car is running great at idle, no heating issues.. ok this is good. so i go to work friday… while driving in…. heated up AGAIN! now i’m upset. so i drop my car off at Toyota and have my guy check it out… come back 6 hours later and the only explaination he can give me is that my head gasket has a leak. *sigh* wtf?! well, my thermostat (the new one with the cool locking mechanism in it) i think has locked itself open which meant my drive home my temp fluctuated but didnt get to the H. hopefully i can limp this thing for a week while i wait on parts to come in so that I can replace the head gasket next weekend. wow, talk about a crap weekend ahead. *sigh*

this weekend hasn’t been too bad. my bro Ivan came back from Iraq Thursday so we stayed up that night talkin and stuff. We threw a little gathering with the garage crew (minus Kris) last night. It was a good turnout for what we were shooting for… no way did it come close to last weeks insanity and i am so glad for that. i don’t think my house or myself for that matter could take that again. spent today cleaning and trying not to think about my car. I just wanna get it fixed, because while its screwed up i can limp it along to places, but going snowboarding is out of the question… rawr! oh well, maybe Thanksgiving weekend I’ll be able to do something! I hope so, my schedule is gonna be slammed after that due to stuff going on at work that I want to get all wrapped up before year end. I want to go into Christmas with a clear plate so that when the new year starts I’ve got new stuff to schedule out for the year.

Anyway, kitchen floor is dry so i need to go wrap up everything in there and get a load of clothes running. 🙂

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