Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

Unless it's a scam. "You're console can't play new games, but you won't know it because current games all work fine. But new games, they won't work. So just send us your credit card details and we'll send a new Xbox that'll play new games."

Edit: reading the details, if they've sent the credit then it must be from MS and legit. The $500 is only for an express exchange.

 

What???? HD failure? Are they trying to enable two extra CUs? That's so weird, it must be a fake.

I mean... if your optical disc drive is broken it's an user thing to ask for a replacement, afaik.

 

Yea thought about that as well. The person followed in thread here: http://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/2lleva/got_a_strange_email_from_xbox_tech_support_your/

The email address and support line is a legitimate to Xbox services. So it would be weird if this was a scam that directed you to the real call centre because you'd have to scam the call centre as well to get the credit card info.

But since the evidence is continually looking more legitimate I'm surprised that MS can tell ahead of time what's wrong with your console (a) and that there is a system to replace it before the user even knows it's a problem.

 

Does the XB1 have eFuses like the 360? Maybe they got all blown on an update?

Tommy McClain

 

Looks to me like Xbox Ones with failures are reporting error codes back to Microsoft if they're online, and Microsoft is pre-emptively asking people to send them in for replacement, rather than waiting for the customer to experience a failure. If legit, this is actually really cool.

 

Maybe there were bad blocks in the 8GB flash, which is used by the OS, or the flash device has depleted it's available spare blocks. This would be easy to detect and could be part of the diagnostic data sent to MS when there's a crash or when an update fails. In any case this is cool.

 

Update...

http://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/com...nge_email_from_xbox_tech_support_your/clvvxms

Tommy McClain

 

It's an interesting failure that can somehow block updates but still run everything. Perhaps the drive's logic is failing an internal signature check that would cause a future update to consider the console insecure.

 

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I agree, or its failing to update to the next version or MS blocks the update from happening by performing a pre-check; and since the software is going to be related to a specific version and the person is no longer receiving updates their system can no longer use newer software.

 

Could it not refer to attempts to include the 360 CPU in the Xbox one design as shown in the PDF leaked years ago?

 

This may seem like a random question but does anybody know if the fan inside the console itself stops in Instant On mode? I know the brick doesn't, but I'm wondering about the actual console. I can barely hear anything when it's on, let alone off. In the dead of night I think I can hear something but it's so faint I might be imagining it. I ask beause it's very dusty around here, and I'd rather just turn the console off completely if the fan runs non stop, even if it's slowly.

 

Considering mucking about with the optical drive firmware was the principal attack vector for hacking 360 consoles, that's plausible.

Cheers

 

Well two friends have their One drive broken and need to send to MS their One, so maybe some Blu-ray have default, There also some PS4 with blu-ray problems.

 

Optical and HDD failures are par for the course unfortunately. But given both new gen consoles only use drives for movie playback and installing, I can well imagine both companies bought cheaper drives than they would have had games run from disc as they did mostly last gen.

 

https://i.imgur.com/zcmZfXs.jpg

MS using new VRMs it seems.

 

I'm not awesome at looking at physical boards here, but you're going to have to help me spot what makes it new.
I'm guessing left side is 8 capacitors, though I don't know what the big square blocks are (chokes?), followed by 4 mosfets? without a heat sink?

edit: just checked now but interestingly that one massive X1 heatsink supplies cooling for the VRMS and the SoC.edit: nope I was wrong. The heatsink only directly touches the SoC. The air will pass through the heat sink and touch the VRMS though.

Third edit, didn't spot the Caps to the right, so it's doing it twice? 8 and 8? So 8+2 I think?

 

The SoC is a new revision (-002)

I can't see very well but DRM/Mosfet area seems to be the same design as before. The changes are that there's one less phase for the GPU, and it's using cheaper coils.

It's all probably just normal cost cutting, and it's eerily similar to the PS4 revision (new SoC, one less phase).

But I'm still wondering about why the launch revision had something like 120 caps on the backside, it looks like the new revision still needs them (hard to say, maybe not? The vias are there, it doesn't mean they are used). A picture of the backside would be cool.

 

Got an interesting email from Microsoft today, saying that I needed to accept new terms to stay in the preview program. Within those new terms, it said (paraphrasing) that if a preview update ended up breaking my console, they would replace it free, even past the warranty date.

Thought it was interesting, don't want to read too much into it, what do you guys think? Just a standard 'terms & conditions' update or will they be tinkering with things a bit more than they have been?

 

I think they are just covering their bases, but it does open it up to potentially allow them to do more riskier things. Perhaps it's in preparation for any possible OS and DX12 changes in 2015.
edit: Also, are you sure that wasn't in the original TOS?

 

Yeah, the email came today and when I went to accept the terms (aka Beta test in the future ) it was listed as a new condition.