You’ve got to love the community! I picked up an Xbox OG or three from Hex of ASSEMbler Games a few years back, while it was not busy being defunct, and from memory I think he threw in a bonus Xbox! Amazing guy! If you somehow see this, thanks Hex! I’ve got no idea where you are now!

One of those machines has made its way back onto the workbench, and there are a few interesting things going on inside. It’s got some aftermarket LEDs around the front, which look rather nice but make the usual Xbox status lights a little difficult to interpret. When everything decides to flash the same colour, it’s not particularly helpful for working out what the console is trying to tell me!

There also seemed to be an issue with the hard drive or optical drive, so I experimented with parts from another Xbox to see whether I could get it running. Fortunately, that got us somewhere useful, and the machine started behaving again. I’ve left it running for a while to see how it goes rather than immediately declaring the whole job finished.

The really interesting discovery was the original clock capacitor. This appears to be a revision 1.1 Xbox motherboard, and somehow its original clock capacitor was still fitted without the horrible visible leakage I’ve found on so many others. Amazing! That doesn’t mean it will remain healthy forever, of course, so I was planning to deal with it before it had the opportunity to make a mess.

With the console running through component video, the picture looked lovely and clear. It’s always nice seeing one of these machines behaving properly, particularly when I’ve already got a little collection of Xboxes taking up space. I might even put this one on the television in the front room, if I can work out which of the others I’m keeping!

I’ve also got the Kasumi Blue Xbox to think about. Some of these spare machines might end up donating components, including a power supply, to get that one into better condition. There’s only so much room for a pile of enormous black consoles, and posting them anywhere isn’t particularly appealing given how much they weigh.

For now, though, this one is working and I’ve got another Xbox to play around with. It’s rather nice having a machine that arrived through the retro-gaming community still doing its thing all these years later. Thanks again, Hex! Perhaps I’ll even have another go at TSOP flashing one of these eventually.