Bunnie explores dead Xbox 360, discovers non-fatal cracked solder balls

Andrew “Bunnie” Huang, known for visiting Microsoft to talk about hacking its console, did a test on a broken Xbox 360 to find out how bad its solder balls have become. The result? Cracks were found in the solder balls but weren’t necessarily the cause of the 360’s death. More details on this at the full article.

After someone who claims to be an insider discussed about what could be the truth behind the Microsoft Xbox 360’s dreaded “red ring of death,” Bunnie Studios’ Andrew “Bunnie” Huang who previously visited Microsoft himself to talk about hacking the console did a test to find out how broken solder balls of broken Xbox 360 units are.

As explained by Bunnie on his blog, a process called “dye and pry” was used. This method is done by flooding the motherboard with red ink which then flows into cracks in the solder balls. Looking at how much ink the balls absorb would reveal how damaged they actually are.

Bunnie went on to do the test on a broken Xbox 360 and came up with results that puzzled him. Apparently, the solder balls only have partial cracks – not something that would cause other electronic products to fail. Bunnie did note, however, that if the supposed insider was telling the truth about Microsoft cutting down on safety margins and design parameters, the 360 has enough reasons to experience the red ring of death.

The image on top, which can be found on Bunnie’s blog, shows how many of the solder balls had cracks. To conclude, Bunnie Huang explained:

It makes sense that the summation of many partial failures could lead to a total system failure — failures that have symptoms that vaguely cluster together but are difficult to point to any single root cause.

Via Bunnie Studios