Welcome to Joe’s Xbox Xecuter 3 Upgrade Preparation Guide!
I made this update guide for several reasons:
1) I am extremely bored
2) I am excited for the X3 to come out
3) All the hardware pictures posted on Team Xecuter's site have me salivating
4) I love taking things apart and after fixing an old car stereo I'm out of projects.
If you want to understand some backgruond before reading this guide, you should see the initial guide I wrote for installing the Xecuter 2.3b lite here. So, the main differences with the new chip and the old chip are that the new pin header uses all of the holes whereas the old chip left 4 empty, there are 2 solder points on the motherboard to enable HDD and LAN activity LED's, and there are 2 solder points to control the reset on eject feature which can get annoying if you've ever run across it.
In regards to the tutorial I made before, one obvious problem is that the d0 wire comes through one of the open pin header holes (Hereby to be referred to LPC holes, which is the technical term for BIOS connecter) While it was valid, it was a great way to arrange the wire, but now that we need those holes, we'll have to figure something else out.
As you can see here, this is what the wire looked like for the X2 mod.
So, now you can see the back of the board, where the d0 is connected. We need to pull the d0 wire out of the hole, so first we need to (on the front) separate the wire I installed from the one coming out of the chip (by lightly touching the soldering iron to the joint and pulling the wires apart) Once done, we'll concentrate on the back.
Once the tape is removed, you need to pull the grey wire out. This can be tricky, since you don't want to pull the solder joint off. What I did is press firlmy against the part of grey wire about 1/4 inch away from the solder joint, and used a pair of pliers to pull the grey wire through the hole.
You can see that I left the grey wire really long when I did the initial mod. This paid off, since now I need to re-route it outside the edge of the board.
After the wire is out, you want to tape it down pretty quick. This is so you don't accidentally yank it and separate the d0 point, and so that it doesn't flop around and get tangled everywhere.
Finally, flip the board back over and tape down the wire on the top. Leave enough room so that you'll be able to attach it to the d0 wire coming out of the port on the chip, which is about what I have left in the picture.
Next is the LPC expander. Rather than de-solder the old pin assembly, I took a spare I had around and made something to fill the 4 empty holes. Here's the spare.
I removed the 4 pins on an end of it with some needle-nose pliers.
I then snapped off the black part for the 4 empty holes. It was easy to grip with the pliers and snapped right apart.
Finally, I put the 4 pins back in the black thing and had a finished pin expander.
Using the same procedure as I did in the original mod chip installation guide I soldered the new pin assembly into the 4 empty holes. Just to make sure they were straight enough, I put the X2 chip on the new pins and the they fit into the holes.
Next are 2 points on the back of the motherboard which will be linked to the LAN and HDD activity LED's. The area of the board I am focusing on is right under the corner nearest the IDE connecter (long and black with about 40 pins) and the LAN port in the back. Find the 2 spots pointed to in the image (Sorry it's so blurry, check the team Xecuter X3 guide for better pics, and mask around them with electrical tape, so you don't accidentally hit anything.
Because I am doing this with the intention of one day soldering it to a completed X3 chip, I left a lot of extra wire (about 18 inches) and I recommend you do the same, since you can always cut it to accommodate your mod. I soldered the wires so they were facing the edge of the board for easy wrap around to the front, much like the d0 wire. I labled them with some masking tape flags, and taped them down for now.
The other 2 wires needed are for the reset and eject fixes which the new chip can control. To do this, you need wires coming out of the button controls to connect to the chip. In the image, I have highlighted which wires coming out of the yellow connector towards the front of the xbox need connections. This was the trickiest part of this project, but what I recommend is taking some long, multi-strand wire, stripping 1/4 of an inch, flattening it out, tinning it with some solder (applying some solder to it so it's more solid than free wires) then trimming it with some scissors so it fits alongside the metal casing in the white plug. Once it fits, slip it in and just apply some solder to the wire, it should take (travel on its own as a liquid to the connection point) and make your wires complete.
It's hard to see here, but I used electrical tape to fasten the blue wire and its associated yellow wire together. This not only shields it, but makes sure neither wire will be pulled out. I labeled them with masking tape flags and tucked them over where the chip will be installed.
So that's that. I just put the motherboard back in the box, screwed everything in, and put my X2 back in where it belongs. You'll notice if you try it that the X2 won't go all the way on since the d0 connecter gets int he way of the new pins, but it still makes a connection so don't worry. When it's time for X3, it should be a quick, simple process to open the board up, trim and solder the 4 wires, and pop on the pin header. Please feel free to ask me any questions about my guide at my e-mail. Thanks a lot for reading, happy modding!