One fresh video hot off the press! We have a poke around in the Kasumi Xbox and look at the clock supercapacitor, usually just called the clock cap. Darned supercapacitor! Great for keeping the time briefly while unplugged, considerably less great when an ageing supercapacitor starts leaking across the motherboard.

This particular capacitor was marked 1 F and 2.5 V, and there was already some leakage spreading out from the solder pads. Thankfully nothing had turned green on the motherboard, which was a relief! The capacitor is now off the board, and the surrounding components survived the removal. Poor little guy, you’ll never leak on anyone ever again!

I’d also had a tiny surface-mount capacitor fall off another Xbox motherboard because it was so corroded. No idea what that one did, but having components fall off the board is generally not a good sign! I was already thinking about giving the Kasumi a full recap one day, although that was still a job for the future.

This is the same Kasumi Blue I had identified as containing a v1.0 motherboard, so it has the early leak-prone clock-cap arrangement. Pre-1.6 Xboxes can operate without the clock cap; the later 1.6 hardware is different and should not be treated the same way.

Sources