Growing up I was a PlayStation person and didn’t really pay attention to XBox consoles or games. Wandering through the car boot sale this Sunday I came across a very dirty and sorry looking XBox 360 with a pile of games and 2 controllers for £20. I didn’t expect much and thought it could be spares at a later date.
Getting it home, I found that the console started but both controller were broken.
Fixing the controllers
Examining the wired controller, it immediately became obvious that the USB cord had been partially cut through – that wasn’t going to work then. With a little dismantling I found that the cable terminates in a connector soldered to the board. Looking online, you can get replacement cables that include the connector – I didn’t have time to wait for a new cable – I had games I wanted to play.
I decided to cut the cable above the break and solder it directly to the PCB. This didn’t start well with one of the pads lifting when removing the connector. Connecting the cable to the PCB was easy, but patching the lifted pad was quite tricky and I forgot to take photos.
The other controller was wireless, it was quickly obvious that batteries has leaked and corroded the connectors. This was easily removed with a fibre
Reusing the cable strain relief tip
One of the tricks that I have learnt is how to reuse the strain relief on a cable (shown in the picture above). Using a sharp knife cut along the back of the plastic strain relief section, just enough to go through to the cable. You can usually then pull the cable out as it is only lightly heat sealed into the plastic. The strain relief can then be put back around the new section of cable. A couple of drop of super glue will reseal it back onto the new section of table
Cleaning
The rest of the job was a deep clean of the console and the controllers.
I completely disassembled every component and gave them a good scrub, resulting in a console that looks almost new 🙂
