Instead, a fancy high-value capacitor was used, allowing the clock to be maintained for a few hours away from AC power. Due to the RTC hardware being included in the bigger NVIDA MCPX X3 sound chip, the current draw on standby was too high to use a standard coin cell as a backup battery. The original Xbox does include a real-time clock, however, it doesn’t rely on a battery. Leaving this in the console would inevitably cause major damage. Despite looking okay from above, the capacitor inside the Xbox had already started leaking underneath.

has explored the issue on Microsoft’s original Xbox, built from 2001 to 2009. Of course, time rolls on, and new generations of machines are now prone to this risk. A common cause is leaking electrolytic capacitors, with RTC batteries being an even more vicious scourge when it comes to corrosion that destroys motherboards. Fans of retro computers from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras will be well aware of the green death that eats these machines from the inside out.

Original xbox laser cleaning