u/Blazie151

[SOLVED]

So, I have been doing RGH mods for a LONG TIME now. But I had an oopsie moment. My X-Clamp tool (a precision flat head screwdriver) that I've been using for YEARS slipped, and I scratched the board. I had already used BadUpdate, gotten the NAND dump and CPU key, made the new glitched NAND, and flashed it via Simple NAND Flasher. I was removing the X-Clamp to do the RGH3 wires. Well, now I had 2 choices, revert and check, or keep going. Might as well keep going, I can't boot with a flashed image without RGH3 wires anyway!

The wire install went fine, but it booted to E73 off power, and Xell off eject. So it could be a bad flash, bad wiring, dead resistor, or any other number of things. So I decided to tinker with it for a while, trying to get it to work and ruling out things, and finally decided to try flashing the NAND again.

TWO DAYS of trying to get the PicoFlasher to read/write a 4GB NAND later, I had already soldered to the headers about 15 times, redid all my RGH3 wires 3x, soldered back and forth to the Pico a half dozen times, etc. WELL, it turns out, all I had to do was revert J-Runner to 3.4.0 R3. I had been pondering doing a 4gb to 16mb NAND swap and strapping and tried a lower version of J-Runner off of ONE Reddit post I stumbled on accidentally. BUT, the second I ran that version, the PicoFlasher was working properly, and I was able to flash another RGH3 image, and still got E73. So I flashed stock, got E73. Removed all wires, still got E73.

Now, I know the most likely culprit in all of this was the board scratch, obviously, but now I need test points so I can test my work while repairing these TINY ASS TRACES that I buggered up. IF that's even the problem!!! After getting the conformal coating out of the way, I don't see any breaks, and a quick test shows continuity on all of them, I THINK. The traces are so small and so close that it's hard to tell if I'm getting good readings or not. So, I need to know alt test points and potential alt solder points for wire bridging to repair all these if they are indeed the problem. I also need ideas here of what else it could be, because I'm not sure that the scratch was deep enough to actually cut the affected traces.

HELP PLEASE!!!

EDIT: Update - I tested from FT7P3 through FT7P8 and there are no shorts or open circuits on any of the traces. I ran over it with some solder and cleaned it up, tested it again, and no breaks or bridges. Somehow, the E73 error and board damage are unrelated, so now I'm even more confused. What would cause an E73 error after a NAND flash via Simple NAND Flasher and RGH3 wiring? Especially after the RGH3 wires are removed and the stock NAND is on it again? I have a hard time believing in coincidences. When I FIRST got this board, before the RGH attempt, it would go straight to a red dot with the fan going full speed. I touched up the resistors in the line to the APU and it started working properly. Maybe there are some more cold solder joints somewhere? Anyone got any ideas?

EDIT 2: SOLVED - A component was missing off the board and I hadn't noticed it because I wasn't working that near it. I guess it got damaged or fell off while being moved around, which could have only happened if it was already loose / cold solder joints, which has been an issue on this board already. For anyone curious, it was fb5r2

The board was corroded, and the on/off button is gone. I got power flowing through the board, but I've never repaired these style buttons before. I have the idea of scraping the solder mask and wiring up magnet wire to the traces/vias. But I'd like some opinions.

I found an old 360 slim laying around, that must have been sitting for the majority of a decade. I needed a faceplate and figured I'd grab it from there. Before grabbing it, I decided to power it on and test it, and I got a red dot. Figuring it was an old trash console I forgot about, I proceeded to take it apart. Once I had the shell mostly off, I saw it had a Coolrunner and NAND-X headers installed. I plugged it in to test the faceplate and ribbon cables again, and to my surprise, it booted into the Dashboard. It was on 14719, with a Coolrunner chip installed, with NAND-X headers still (sloppily) installed on the board. It must have been a console I modded forever ago and couldn't get it to boot with the top case installed, so I gave up. I booted using the eject AND the power button several times, and it never booted to Xell, so I figured it was stock firmware. I dumped the NAND, created Xell for RGH3, removed the Coolrunner, and installed the RGH3 wiring. Now, it was flashing green then either powering off instantly or going to a red dot. I flashed back the "stock" NAND, and I'm getting the same thing. I don't know where to go from here. I stupidly didn't take any detailed before photos because it was disgustingly dirty. The job wasn't terrible (except for sloppy headers), and my soldering skills aren't bad. But now I don't know what to do. I tried a few different resistors for the RGH3 Xell image and none of them worked. I even tried no resistor just for a boot, and same issue. I'm guessing this was an RGH1.2 and it should be converted to stock before doing an RGH3, but I don't have the CPU Key, and Xell wasn't loading with the Coolrunner installed anyway. I'm guessing at this point, I can probably clean up the Coolrunner, reinstall it, and attempt to get it to boot again, but if it wasn't booting into Xell with the eject button, wouldn't it have been a stock NAND and therefore boot without the Coolrunner wiring?

I'm uploading photos, and I'm going to point out places where I see a potential problem...

C3B8 - Tinned pads but possible missing component.

C3B10 - Left pad damaged, possible missing component. The pads here were pretty rough, so I tinned them again to clean them up.

C5R11 - Pads had a lot of tin on them, but no component. I used a braid here to clean them up.

FT4R2 & surrounding area - A lot of stuff was going on here. a Coax wire, a blue wire, and a second blue wire, all in the same area. The pad on FT4R2 is missing, but the via is still barely intact enough to tin it.

So, what do you all suggest from here?