Discussion
chasil: It is interesting that IBM dominated this generation of consoles, and was vanquished in the next.The high failure rates of the Xbox 360 did not help.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems
vondur: I thought the design flaws of the Xbox 360 cooling system had more to do with Microsoft than any inherent design flaw by IBM. I assumed that switching to x86 processors let Microsoft leverage their native developer tools from Windows which helped developers.
chasil: The main issue was revealed to be solder."Microsoft did not reveal the cause of the issues publicly until 2021, when a 6-part documentary on the history of Xbox was released. The Red Ring issue was caused by the cracking of solder joints inside the GPU flip chip package, connecting the GPU to the substrate interposer, as a result of thermal stress from heating up and cooling back down when the system is power cycled."
thenthenthen: Sounds like the 2012(?) Macbook Pro after the switch to leadless solder (?). I had to cook my motherboard 3 times in the oven to revive it.
timw4mail: And there was the same problem with early PS3s, on Nvidia's GPU package...it was a fairly widespread problem at the time.
chasil: Funny!I've heard that flash memory can also be revived with heat, either long duration or high intensity.https://www.extremetech.com/science/142096-self-healing-self...
hbn: I don't have any solid numbers on me, but I believe early 360s failing wasn't just widespread; it was straight up most of them dying within the first couple years. It's honestly insane they more or less got away with that. And I guess also speaks to how much Microsoft was killing it in that era that people were willing to go through multiple console RMAs (which I heard was a terrible, slow, and unreliable process) to play 360 games. How far they've fallen.
TazeTSchnitzel: This article is from 2018.Previously:- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16094925- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27480448
thenthenthen: Some macbook hacks involved disabling sleepmode, running a benchmark and putting it in a pile of blankets for a few hours
