Inside Microsoft's Xbox 360
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Kristopher Kubicki & Tuan Nguyen on November 16, 2005 5:09 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Removing the Outer Shell
The first step is to remove the outer plastic shell that conceals the innards of the system. To do this, you must start by removing the face plate. Take a look at the front of the Xbox 360 and insert your thumb into the door that covers the two USB ports on the right of the unit. With your other hand squeezing the upper and lower sides of the face plate, pull out the face plate with your thumb. With not much force, the face plate should pop right off.
After the face plate has been pulled off you will see a silver Microsoft sticker covering a gap; remove this. You will also see four small clips locking the top half of the plastic shell to the bottom half. Do not attempt to wedge the clips out at this point.
With some care, gently bend outwards, the right gray ventilation shield on the right side of the unit so that you can see a bit inside. You will notice that the gray side piece attaches to both the bottom and top white chassis. Now look through the holes on top of the unit to locate the areas where the gray side pieces attaches to the white body. What you need to do is take the long but thin metal stick and push down, through the white holes (located on both the top and bottom of the Xbox 360) where the clips of the gray side pieces connect. Slowly pull out the gray pieces away from the unit while unlocking the clips and eventually the gray piece will release itself.
To remove the left gray piece, you must first remove the hard drive unit by pressing the button located on the unit itself. Then apply the same procedure used to remove the right gray ventilation piece -- except when you reach the bottom clip of the piece, you most remove the rubber feet located directly below, to reveal a hole where you can insert the metal stick.
Once you have both side gray pieces removed, you have essentially removed the main locking mechanism that holds the top and bottom shells together. At this point, return to the front of the unit and turn the entire unit upside down. Using a flat head screw driver or wedge, gently pry up the 4 clips holding the top shell to the bottom. Once the clips are unlatched, slowly lift up the front of the bottom shell about an inch.
The last step to removing the bottom shell cover is to insert a thin and small plastic stick into the thin rectangular holes on the rear. The reason the front of the bottom shell needs to be lifted is to prevent the rear latches from reattaching themselves. Slowly insert the stick into each rectangular opening. You should hear a click sound for each clamp you unlatch. Once complete, you may lift off the bottom shell covering.
Looking inside the unit, you will notice that there are 14 silver screws (6 of which are long) and 8 black screws. Using your torx screw drivers, remove the silver screws using a size T12 screw driver and the black ones using a size T7. Once you have all the screws removed, flip the Xbox 360 right side up and lift up the top plastic shell. You should now be greeted with the internals of the Xbox 360.
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yacoub - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Considering they were corrected by someone else in a previous article about "dies/dice" and are still making the same mistake, it's important to make sure they fix it this time before it becomes a permanent fixture of this site.And yes, that's really all I thought was worthy of mentioning. The review is pretty cool.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
According to Microsoft and Intel, the plural of 'die' when referring to a CPU die, is 'dice'.Microsoft's internal documentation talking about the Xbox 360 also refers to the ATI Xenos GPU as having two dice.
I am waiting for responses on other chip makers to make sure that the correct form of the word is dice.
Take care,
Anand
gamigin - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Anand,Do you have any evidence to back up the following quote in spite of game developers claiming otherwise?
"game developers shouldn't run into capacity limitations on Xbox 360 discs anytime soon"
BTW, the plural of a manufacturing die is dies. If Microsoft or Intel said dice, then they are just wrong.
Phantronius - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Who are you, my fucking English teacher?yacoub - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Very interesting! Thanks for taking the time to respond, Anand.I wouldn't be surprised if it simply slipped through marketing department editing, considering dictionary.com is saying it should be "dies". "Dice" is normally only ever for the six-sided tools of chance/gambling.
If they're creating a new use for the term, that in itself would be pretty noteworthy as well.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Well the term dice is what the CPU architects use, so I don't think it's a marketing/PR mishap.Take care,
Anand
gamigin - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Most CPU architects certainly do not use the term "dice" as the plural to a manufacturing die.It's probably the same Microsoft guys who standardized the non-word "canonicalize"
Kilim - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Ah dude, are you saying that "normal" dice are only for six sided dice? Ohhhh, someone is trying to get the D&D guys to start flaming him, lol. =p.linuxOwnzIfUrLeet - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
I lost the link to the mod chip can someone post?LoneWolf15 - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
1) If I buy the cheaper XBox360, how easy is it to add my own notebook hard disk later if I want it? Would have been very useful to know, and wasn't made clear.2) Media playback compatibility info --I'm sure the unit can play DVD's, and probably MP3's, but can it play DivX content? Xvid? MPEG-4 or HD WMV? These would be good things to know. A video game console has moderate usefulness to me; a video game console with broad media playback capabilities far more so.
Finally, a comment to Microsoft: If the Xbox360 had Media Center compatibility (read: PVR), I'd have bought it in a heartbeat without having to think about it. It would be the perfect home theater convergence device. It's really too bad this wasn't an option.