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Forums - Microsoft - 5 mistakes Microsoft won't want to make again with Xbox next gen

sethnintendo on 23 July 2012
slowmo said:

They did several revisions but the Jasper did resolve the issues for the old motherboard layout and of course the Slim maintained this reliability with the new layout.  You can of course still get RROD with a Jasper board but the actual RROD is a general fault code for the 360 and only the secondary code can tell you if it is the old favourite "0102". 

I think Microsoft did consider increasing the board thickness in the 360 but realised it would cause possible issues with timing so they decided to reduce the heat through die shrinks to the CPU and GPU to stop the board warping through heat exchange.  They obviously also tried the quick and dirty fixes of gluing chips to the board and changing the xclamp tension so as not to provide as much pressure on the board.  I believe the Falcon HDMI chassis altered the board fixing heights to minimize board flex, it also introduced improved heatsinks.  They literally tried everything to make up for the systemic fault introduced by the fact their design spec was finalized before the lead free solder legislation.  I honestly don't think they knew exactly what the issue was until 12 months after release and then they were firefighting looking for a resolution.

 

People ask if Microsoft could have been handled RROD better, in my opinion once they knew the scale of the problem they delayed until they knew precisely the ramifications of what they'd done and that they could finance the cost of the mistake.  I think they handled it as well as can be expected given it was unprecedented.  This of course is no excuse and people who were out of pocket thanks to Microsoft, have every right to be angry and I would probably have taken legal action under the Sales of Goods act in the UK had I been affected.

Just going back to your statement about lead free solder.  You are right that lead free solder was pretty bad to work with back in the early / mid 2000s.  To my knowledge they have been tweaking with lead free solder for awhile considering that it doesn't flow as well and takes more heat than lead solder.  Lead free solder was a pain in the ass is the only thing I can remember back when I used to solder (mainly just solder with lead).  Now, I am just an ICT tech (basic tests on components of boards that were just built) but we still run into problems sometimes when doing lead free boards.  It seems that they are more failures / problems when the line is producing lead free boards (not always case but for certain server boards).



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slowmo on 23 July 2012
sethnintendo said:

Just going back to your statement about lead free solder.  You are right that lead free solder was pretty bad to work with back in the early / mid 2000s.  To my knowledge they have been tweaking with lead free solder for awhile considering that it doesn't flow as well and takes more heat than lead solder.  Lead free solder was a pain in the ass is the only thing I can remember back when I used to solder (mainly just solder with lead).  Now, I am just an ICT tech (basic tests on components of boards that were just built) but we still run into problems sometimes when doing lead free boards.  It seems that they are more failures / problems when the line is producing lead free boards (not always case but for certain server boards).


I think one of the biggest issues is the melting point as you alluded to personally.  With "lead" solder the melting point is around 180 degrees Celsius where as "lead free" it's close to 230 degrees Celsius.  As you get to 230 degrees Celsius you are at risk of damaging the silicon of the BGA chip so you cannot risk applying the heat for as long to the board and you will likely be taking the temperature up to that point and down quicker which is all bad for creating a solid solder joint.  In the case of "lead" solder the temperature is safer for the silicon inside the chip so you can be slower and less aggressive in your heating profile which makes it a lot easier to get strong joints.  People say "lead"solder flows better but in my opinion a good quality lead free solder flows just as well when the joint is heated correctly, it's just a lot harder to apply the extra heat without damaging the board and components (It's a lot easier to lift pads now than ever before).

Like you say, even now they still haven't resolved all the issues with the move to lead free solder and I think it's responsible for the unreliability of so many modern electronic appliances now.  I guess there is no replacing the decades of experience and knowledge acquired with using "lead" solder so it was always going to be a slow process to perfect working with a new product.