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Comment by: thegrunt (Jul 06, 2007 23:02)

No as long as they didnt register the console you should be fine

Comment by: plazma247 (Jul 07, 2007 06:11)

hehe, it sounds to me that have tried meet the consumer half way, but is that far ENOUGH!

If they have agreed its a deisgn fault that only affects a small number of users is wrong, i can see that 30% rate increasing with time.

How is people are having like 3 - 4 faulty one in a row, wheres the odds in that.

In the UK they have extended the warwanty to THREE YEARS, but is anyone prepaired to keep on phoning microsoft of replacements for the next 3 years?

Instead of just offering a longer warwanty period for something that has such a high probability of going wrong, wouldnt it just make better sense to only offer 1 YEAR WARWANTY but instead fixing them ALL PROPERLY instead of just carry on swapping them out for the next two consecuative years.

Or is it something that microsoft knows that the rest of us dont, if its cheeper for them to offer 3 year warwanty instead of just a overall recall and re-fit all of them.

30% over 3 years is the same numbers as 90% in one year, which strangely doesn add up to 100%. A recall would require 100%, its close to but still more cost effective than a recall by 10%

If current public opinion has anything to do with it; 3 years warwanty isnt going to cut it people; just want boxes that work instead of having the ability to get it swapped over and over again.

Watch this space... if you ask me they still cant have a proper fix for it and maybe they cant, hence why its easier to to keep on swapping them out, last thing you want to do at this stage is to have to re-design the thing agin.

If i was mr Sony at this point i think i would be falling off my chair laughing, alas im not but he must currently be a very happy man.

Comment by: pmshah (Jul 07, 2007 10:21)

I am not a gamer but an engineer by profession. The first thing we learn is you DESIGN the quality into the product. If you do it right any decent manufacturing process will turn out quality product. You end up with a hell of a lot less disgruntled customers & save yourself a lot of heart burn.

What is happening with xBox is worse than Windows Vista. In an OS you are dealing with a jillion different combinations of motherboard, chisets, cpu, memory & addon cards. One reason why Apple have been so good with Macs & their OS is the entire hardware is under their total control. They can ensure perfect compatibility. You will hardly ever see any addons for them.

Why should there be a single failure whatsoever? Was this another one of Balmer's brainstorms to cut costs by outsourcing to a not so "hot" vendor & allow xBox to run hot? One really wonders what their priorities really are.

Perhaps they should move their test labs to non air conditioned warehouses in Las Vegas in summer.

Comment by: compu795 (Jul 07, 2007 10:49)

why is everyone so upset? i have been into computers since 1985 and every piece of software that microsoft comes out with has bugs in it. microsoft, as well as most other software developers, always send out their software without as much testing as is needed. they, meaning the developers, dont make any money unless the product is on the market. i am not defending microsoft or any other developer, its just a known fact that any new software is not and in reality cannot be tested for every scenario that may happen. the thing i have a problem with is when the developer does not stand by their product and have some kind of customer service. i bought a program called "locomania" a train simulator and it will not run and there is no customer support. the solution is to wait at least 6 to 8 months for the bugs to be fixed, then buy it.

Comment by: hughjars (Jul 07, 2007 11:39)

A 3 year warranty is never a bad thing.

It's just funny watching people try to spin this as if it was.

The really interesting thing will be watching to see if the rest even try to match this level of support for their products & their customers.

Some people already do operate nice long warranties (Seagate for instance or Mitsubishi).

This should be supported as something which should be the norm, not something to argue against.

Comment by: plazma247 (Jul 07, 2007 12:04)

Originally posted by hughjars:

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A 3 year warranty is never a bad thing.

It's just funny watching people try to spin this as if it was.

The really interesting thing will be watching to see if the rest even try to match this level of support for their products & their customers.

Some people already do operate nice long warranties (Seagate for instance or Mitsubishi).

This should be supported as something which should be the norm, not something to argue against.

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The big diffirence there is the fact seagate can do this is because the drives just dont fail, ive fitted 100's of seagate for people its all i will work with. I dont think ive ever had a single bad drive since they swapped to the new bearing design 3 - 4 years ago.

So when you get a 1 in say 1000 failur rate its not a problem to do a 3 year warwanty.

so if an xbox owner who has had a box one year and has two swaps in that year, you would guestimate that at a possible 6 swaps over 3 years.

Thats going to cost them a fortune.

Plus i dont know about anyone else but i wouldnt expect the DVD ROM to last that long, not when its heavily used.

Which could mean they are going to end up swapping say 60% of units for sure between the ring of death and possibility of drive failur.

Dont get me wrong 3 year warwanty is a good thing, but maybe the plan is to keep everyone going with swaps until the lower Nm Cpus out properly and then just give them one that doesnt cook so much.

Comment by: ChiknLitl (Jul 07, 2007 12:47)

Originally posted by hughjars:

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A 3 year warranty is never a bad thing.

It's just funny watching people try to spin this as if it was.

The really interesting thing will be watching to see if the rest even try to match this level of support for their products & their customers.

Some people already do operate nice long warranties (Seagate for instance or Mitsubishi).

This should be supported as something which should be the norm, not something to argue against.

---

Agreed! Most, not all, manufacturers of electronics, and formost game consoles, give you a standard 90 day warranty (including the Wii, which they so kindly will double for you if you register the console online). Then, after that you're on your own. Anything longer than 90 days is a plus. Three years covering the absolute failure of the console gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling in my nether regions!

Comment by: emugamer (Jul 07, 2007 16:20)

Originally posted by pmshah:

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I am not a gamer but an engineer by profession. The first thing we learn is you DESIGN the quality into the product. If you do it right any decent manufacturing process will turn out quality product. You end up with a hell of a lot less disgruntled customers & save yourself a lot of heart burn.

Why should there be a single failure whatsoever? Was this another one of Balmer's brainstorms to cut costs by outsourcing to a not so "hot" vendor & allow xBox to run hot? One really wonders what their priorities really are.

Perhaps they should move their test labs to non air conditioned warehouses in Las Vegas in summer.

---

Agreed. I happen to be a gamer and an Engineer by profession also. I can't imagine how something like the effects of heat on a processor can be overlooked. And for over 2 years. This console should have gone through rigorous testing. 24 to 48 hours of straight play. It should have been run into the ground, and then made better. And then repeat the process. In a non air conditioned room....in a triple digit weather environment...lol

Comment by: plazma247 (Jul 07, 2007 17:33)

I think the 90 day warwanty thing is only in america mate, in the UK we get a minimum of 12 months under the sales of goods act ;-)

Comment by: ZippyDSM (Jul 08, 2007 00:35)

pmshah/emugamer


their have been some rumors about the lowering of lead to meet RoHS requirements and that being the cause of the failings MS was to cheap to build them by the regoin or something.

my best guess is the testing units where made using a better manufacturing process and when they went to a cheaper or lead free setup they screwed up big time,this is all guessing of coarse its hard tot ell what went wrong,they obviously tried to cover it up and managed to to do so for a year or 2..

Comment by: ChiknLitl (Jul 08, 2007 11:03)

Originally posted by plazma247:

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I think the 90 day warwanty thing is only in america mate, in the UK we get a minimum of 12 months under the sales of goods act ;-)

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Good point! I believe it is an American-only phenomenon.

Comment by: ZippyDSM (Jul 08, 2007 11:31)

Quote:

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Originally posted by plazma247:

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I think the 90 day warwanty thing is only in america mate, in the UK we get a minimum of 12 months under the sales of goods act ;-)

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Good point! I believe it is an American-only phenomenon.

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Heil to the corporate machine >>

Comment by: pmshah (Jul 08, 2007 12:30)

Originally posted by ZIppyDSM:

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pmshah/emugamer


their have been some rumors about the lowering of lead to meet RoHS requirements and that being the cause of the failings MS was to cheap to build them by the regoin or something.

my best guess is the testing units where made using a better manufacturing process and when they went to a cheaper or lead free setup they screwed up big time,this is all guessing of coarse its hard tot ell what went wrong,they obviously tried to cover it up and managed to to do so for a year or 2..

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RoHS requirements essentially require you to change the composition of the wave soldering bath. As a matter of fact this solder contains no lead & more of silver which is a better electrical as well as thermal conductor to drain the heat away from the components along the tracks & dissipate faster,

It seems the same wise guy who was involved with the Win-ME release is running this show. Half baked products & there are people who will lap it up.

BTW when the entire product - hardware & software is completely under your control one should expect stability & performance similar to a Mac.

Comment by: ZippyDSM (Jul 08, 2007 12:45)

Quote:

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Originally posted by ZIppyDSM:

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pmshah/emugamer


their have been some rumors about the lowering of lead to meet RoHS requirements and that being the cause of the failings MS was to cheap to build them by the regoin or something.

my best guess is the testing units where made using a better manufacturing process and when they went to a cheaper or lead free setup they screwed up big time,this is all guessing of coarse its hard tot ell what went wrong,they obviously tried to cover it up and managed to to do so for a year or 2..

---

RoHS requirements essentially require you to change the composition of the wave soldering bath. As a matter of fact this solder contains no lead & more of silver which is a better electrical as well as thermal conductor to drain the heat away from the components along the tracks & dissipate faster,

It seems the same wise guy who was involved with the Win-ME release is running this show. Half baked products & there are people who will lap it up.

BTW when the entire product - hardware & software is completely under your control one should expect stability & performance similar to a
Mac.

---

silver is also incredibly brittle and at the right temp pops chips......

Comment by: plazma247 (Jul 08, 2007 17:19)

Umm, may also be due to the how much tortion the heat sinks connected using, im sure some of us remember the P4 478 Chip, i used to take those board out of machines after a few months and they would be warped like a banana. Hence one of the deciding factors for chaning over to 775 where the heat sink uses a little less tortion and the surrounding mounts are closer to the chip to reduce boardwarp.

Additionally the 4 pot hole the cpu heatsink sits in; normally is fairly eavenly spaced between 4 of the boards mounting screws, this reduces the amount of board warp, allowing for equal ammounts of contraction and expansion in all 4 directions.

Some manufactures of heat sink suppliers supplied cast back plats for the heatsink to pull onto, thus sandwiching the board understress so it couldnt warp.

Does the 360 have these?

However the 360 has two of these 4 pot heat sink mounts next to each other, i cant think of the stress diffirences in epansion this would cause.

Comment by: spydah (Jul 09, 2007 01:05)

Quote:

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Originally posted by DXR88:

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But one must also realize that microsoft Never indevored into hardware. as such there Software is there namesake

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Their software has just as many holes.

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Thats not true they have been making Gateway computes laptops and so forth for a while now. They just simply choose to ignore simply computer building rules. Especially since their goal was to make a super gaming media center which is suppose to be similar to a pc. A cooling unit is not rocket science but leave to M$ to fuznuck that up.

Comment by: pmshah (Jul 09, 2007 04:20)

Quote:

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silver is also incredibly brittle and at the right temp pops chips......

---

This is the first time I am hearing that silver is BRITTLE. It might be around absolute zero temperature or some thing close to that but at the operating temperatures encountered in electronics it certainly is not. If you look up a metallurgy book you will find it to be Ductile in stead. We use fine silver foil made by hammering it between 2 layers of leather for adorning our sweetmeats.

I have grown up eating out of pure silver plates. I have seen all kinds of dents out of misuse but never seen one POP.

In any case I have been using RoHS compliant motherboards in exactly the environment I am ralking about on 24/7 basis. Outside temperature hovering around 42 - 42 celsius, indoor temperatures around 37-38 celsius & the cpu temperature reaching nearly 60 degrees celsius. I am talking about the Real Indian Summer. No air conditioning either.

I haven't had any breakdowns!

Comment by: DXR88 (Jul 09, 2007 14:09)

You got a point there. Spydah

Comment by: plazma247 (Jul 09, 2007 15:26)

Hey pmshah, check this out... ;-)

http://mae.pennnet.com/articles/article_...DS=maccaig&p=32

I wouldnt argue with zippy he knows whats hes talking about ;-) well most of the time... hehe only jokin zippy.

And buddy eating your dinner off a silver plate at room temprature and dropping it on the floor and looking for dents is not a very concisive approach to heat stress testing silver based solder joints, well thats just my 2 penith worth ;-)

Comment by: brokensco (Jul 09, 2007 17:05)

Zippy you really shouldn't claim my random musing are a rumor. its just based on small things I hear from the folks up in productions and my friends in test engineering.

I work for a small company that builds small mobile computers designed for rugged environments. Our products are designed to deal with a temperature range that might run from 120F down to 20F. Ex A large freezer warehouse located in say downtown Vegas. The product could Ideally function up to 140, but they have bigger problems if its that hot. It also is designed to work in very humid environments as well.

On or computers we use BGA Ball Grid Array to attach chips to the mainboards. We began moving everything over for RoHS compliance in late 2005, at the same time we ramped up production of non RoHS compliant products so would could put them on inventory before the RoHS cut off date and have a surplus to sell while we worked out the major kinks in our new designs. Products claimed as inventory could be sold if produced before the RoHS cut off date. We officially stopped using Lead 2 weeks before July 1st 2006. We had enough product to supply us for 2 quarters at our current projected sales.

We had planned to start producing RoHS compliant products for all customers by early 2007. Were still working on that. Right now we can only ship to our light use optimum environment customers. Customers who don't need the ruggedness just the portability and are in a stable environment. However our defect rate has tripled because the silver alloy solder we use can't deal with the boards flexing and the chips are popping of our boards. This problem is compounded by the fact we use BGA because you have to X-RAY the mount to see where the failure occurred. The issue isn't the heat. Its the mechanical flexing and sheering of the board because the buttons on our devices are mounted on the main board. Temperature fluctuations would only add to this problem.

So half our customers are on back order while we try to get the same durability out of lead free solders across all temperature ranges. So far were not having a lot of luck. So now were redesigning our boards to be thicker, but the it is still not working. Were just not getting the right performance out of non leaded solders. This isn't the fault of the solder, its the fault of the applications and the constraints we build our products within.

The thing zippy is talking about is this. I know plenty of people who have launch and near launch boxes that work fine to this day. I know a lot of people with boxes that would need to be RoHS compliant that are breaking.

Now in theory MS could produce RoHS compliant boxes for europe and leave us Americans in blissful lead heaven. It just too damn expensive for a company that has been focused on software to produce hardware with different designs for different reasons. Its just much easier for a company to make all products Compliant with with all standards needed for sale anywhere then differentiating them with the software and the packaging. The most difference is PAL vs NTSC.

My random musing related to the fact that uneven heating, uneven exspansion, and the mechanical flexing that it can cause can cause chips, capacitors, resistors on the board to pop off. Pop being used as a general term for a components solder joint failing. I'm not just talking about the cpus and the GPU. There are alot of chips on the board anyone of them could break and anyone of them could brick the console.

@Pashma
So was your pure silver plates 2 layers of silver connected by another soldering agent? If not then your attempt at being a smart ass failed rather miserably and frankly only made you seem stupid, despite your otherwise intelligent comments.

As for your computer, how much space is there in the case? I'm willing to bet there is considerably more than there is inside a 360.

Not to mention the fact that the temperature range is more important a factor than a high temperature.



Please note, I'm one of the lucky ones who hasn't had there 360 crash even during nice marathon sessions of gaming. I also don't mean this as an excuse, I am only looking for an explanation as to what the actual defect is.

Though if by some wild chance I am mildly close as to what could be happening I will have a bit of sympathy for MSG.

Comment by: ZippyDSM (Jul 09, 2007 17:11)

brokensco

welcome aboard ^^
if you look at the link plazma247 gave us,it shows its not a simple rumor, army aero space and others are worried about the lack of lead in solder joints.


From extra stuff I dug up I think RoHS is reaching to hard, they need to focus on grants and subisties to have non lead stuff researched and give money to thos that wont use it,for some tech gadgets its not needed but for the most part its needed by the industry got non consumer products at the least.

Comment by: plazma247 (Jul 09, 2007 18:36)

Just found this:

http://www.precidip.com/data/files/pdf/p...chnology_en.pdf

Thinking about it maybe the answer is for them to use 5 - 10mm high tempratured plasic raisers for the cores and insulate the boards from the heat producing components.

Similary to the way a ziff socket works.

Additionally fit a dam heat sink restraing plate on the back of the board, less warp, less problems.

Comment by: plazma247 (Jul 09, 2007 19:17)

Originally posted by plazma247:

---

Just found this:

http://www.precidip.com/data/files/pdf/p...chnology_en.pdf

Thinking about it maybe the answer is for them to use 5 - 10mm high tempratured plasic raisers for the cores and insulate the boards from the heat producing components.

Similary to the way a ziff socket works.

Additionally fit a dam heat sink restraing plate on the back of the board, less warp, less problems.

---

Addition

...

ive just seen something called the XCLAMP mod which is suppose to address the board stress issue.

http://rbjtech.bulldoghome.com/pages/rbj..._com/XClamp.htm

and

http://rbjtech.bulldoghome.com/pages/rbj...com/Xbox360.htm

--- Also see its possible to take out the chips.

http://www.logictoys.co.uk/components/co...e55a352e813.jpg

Heres a nasty figure :(

http://www.360-gamer.com/news.asp?id=1143

Comment by: brokensco (Jul 09, 2007 20:15)

Its not just lead, its the fact that we have moved to a process where the solder is the only thing holding a component on the board. The military doesn't like that because well, frankly its fairly fragile.

Comment by: pmshah (Jul 10, 2007 00:06)

Originally posted by brokensco:

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Its not just lead, its the fact that we have moved to a process where the solder is the only thing holding a component on the board. The military doesn't like that because well, frankly its fairly fragile.

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I somehow have a feeling that more than likely it is the solder pads on the PCB itself which may not be able to sustain the stress & are losing adhesion to the glass/epoxy substrate. When that happens hairline tracks will break resulting in equipment failure. One reason I still stick with standard dip packages & ensuring thermal stress relief in other passive components by properly forming the leads. Makes life easier for the repair technician also in the rare event of a failure. Of course I am not into high tech product designing like multilayer motherboards but can't really afford failures in field.

With high level of miniaturization in smd components the pad size also are drastically reduced compounding the problem.