Noobero Uno

I recently bought a broken Guitar Hero X-Plorer guitar on Ebay for $23 hoping to be able to fix it. After plugging it in, the Xbox wouldn’t turn on. This scared me a great deal to say the least. I looked at the power supply and the light was red instead of the usual orange. It had detected a fault and was protecting the console.

Knowing it was a problem with the power, I narrowed the problem down to two things. Either the USB cable was broken internally or the previous owner spilled liquid on the controller. Lucky for me it was the USB cable, an extremely simple fix. The +5 (red) wire was broken right were it starts to come out of the guitar, most likely due to the previous owner wrapping the cable around the controller.

If your X-Plorer controller isn’t working there is a good chance this is the problem. If you want to be sure, test each end of the USB cable with a multimeter. If this is the problem, all you have to do is cut the bad part of the USB cable out and reconnect the two good parts. The bad part will most likely be the thick rubber part coming out of the guitar.

To connect the two good pieces of the cable back together, twist the wires together, solder them, then use heat shrink tubing to cover the exposed part of the wire (you can also use electrical tape, but heat shrink tubing would be best). You also need to twist the outer part of the two good pieces together and solder them. Use electrical tape to cover anything that is exposed (should only be the outer part of the cable at this point).  When finished, use zip-ties to make sure the electrical tape stays put and to keep the wire from moving around.

Bookmark to:

If your Xbox is not turning on at all, your power supply is most likely the problem. If you have a version 1.0-1.1 Xbox, you have a good chance of repairing it. If you have a version 1.2-1.6 Xbox, all you can do is check the fuse on the power supply. If the fuse is fine, you will have to buy a new power supply. A new power supply ranges from $20-$40 on eBay. If you don’t know what version your Xbox is, click here to find out.

V1.0-1.1 Instructions:

• 1. Open the Xbox
• 2. Unscrew, unplug, and remove the plastic hard drive piece with hard drive attached.
• 3. Unscrew, unplug, and remove the plastic DVD Rom piece with DVD Rom attached.
• 4. Unscrew, unplug, and remove the power supply from the case.
• 5. Look closely at the bottom of the power supply. If it there are cracks in the solder or burn marks where the solder should be (see picture below), you will most likely be able to repair it.
• Resolder the areas that are cracked and burnt and it should work perfectly.

This is a fairly easy repair and anyone can do it.

Bookmark to:

About six months ago, the HDMI port on my Samsung LCD stopped working. I noticed that it was missing the screws that keep the HDMI port secure when plugging or unplugging a cable.  Since it was out of warranty and the cost to repair it was insane, I ripped it apart hoping I could fix it. I was amazed at what I found: the whole HDMI connector was disconnected from the board!

If you are good with a soldering iron, you can reconnect it, but if there is any doubt you should probably take it to a professional. If you decide to do it yourself, make sure you use low heat and a lot of flux.

After resoldering it and making sure it was screwed in properly, it worked perfectly. Hopefully this will help somebody save some money.

Bookmark to: