Graham Sutherland / PolynomialSep 5, 2024

thread in which I talk about why the "wrap your games console in a towel" or "reflow the bga" thing works to fix some consoles, and it's nothing to do with solder balls.

https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/113084336056277361

Graham Sutherland / Polynomial (@[email protected])

@[email protected] right. there are three main types of capacitors used in consumer electronics: aluminium electrolytics (and their fancy polymer cousins), solid polymer (tantalum), and ceramic (more specifically multi-layer ceramic, or MLCC). the aluminium electrolytics are the bigbois, lots of capacitance. good for bulk energy storage. bad at higher frequency stuff. the fancy alupoly ones are for higher ripple currents. tantalum are a middle ground. low voltage, high capacitance density.

chaos.social
Show threadMarc JacobsSep 5, 2024

@gsuberland AFAIK there was a materials problem with solder joint reliability that caused Red Ring of Death. Or, if it was a capacitor problem, the caps were on the BGA itself and not on the motherboard.

This is based what people were oddly quiet about, and who was quiet.

Show thread9namesSep 5, 2024
@trollball @gsuberland https://youtu.be/z2d6IMBS8oY?t=1148
this is publicly confirmed as the root cause for the high rate of RROD in early xbox360's
- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

Show threadMarc Jacobs

@9names @gsuberland They skim over that it was a temp cycle failure between the die and the BGA substrate, on a FCBGA. Not between the BGA substrate and the PCB.

The video makes it sound like temp cycling is an odd thing to cause failures.

Sep 5, 2024 at 1:27pmWeb