Xbox 360 jasper models: Identifying a Jasper — Jasper Is Here: A Look at the New Xbox 360

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IndexIdentifying a JasperConfirming Your JasperJasper DissectionPower Consumption and Final Words

Identifying a Jasper

Unlike the Falcon transition, the move to Jasper isn’t very clean cut. You can’t rely on a lot number or manufacturing date to tell you whether or not you’ve got a Jasper, there are some hints and only one sure-fire way to determine if you’re holding a box with a Jasper inside without actually opening the packaging.

The hints are pretty basic: the Xbox 360 Arcade bundles appear to be the best chance at getting a Jasper right now, although there have been reports of some Xbox 360 Pro systems featuring Jasper. As of now there haven’t been any confirmed Elites that have the Jasper boards in them. Remember that Jasper is not only a potential fix for the RRoD, but is also a cost reduction for Microsoft — the GPU die is smaller and the power supply is less powerful, which means lower overall costs — something that makes the most sense in the most price constrained of the three Xbox 360s available today: the $199 Arcade.

Xbox 360 Arcade	Things to Look For	Likelihood that You’ve Got a Jasper
Lot #	0842X or newer	Maybe
Xbox 360 Arcade Sticker Markings	XGX-00019	Probably a Guarantee
Xbox 360 Arcade Sticker Markings	Value Bundle 2008 E	Probably a Guarantee
Current Rating on 12V Rail	12. 1A	Guaranteed

The first thing you’ll want to do is look at the sticker on the outside of the box, this will have the lot number, team and some other potentially useful information. The lot numbers you’re looking for are 0842X or newer, although unlike Falcon-hunting, the lot number won’t guarantee you a Jasper. The lot number refers to the year and week that the console was built, 08 being the year, 42 being the 42nd week of the year. The X is there for, well, good luck I guess. The team isn’t as important as it was in the Falcon days either, Xbox 360 Arcade bundles marked lot 0842X from team CSON and FDOU have been both Jasper or Falcons.

If you can’t rely on the lot number and manufacturing team, then what can you? The sticker on the side of the box holds the first clues, while you can find the lot number here that’s just a quick way of determining the likelihood of you having found a Jasper (e. g. if your lot number is really old, like 0830 then it’s not a Jasper). There are two lines that right now appear to be good indications that you may have found a Jasper, I’ve highlighted them in the picture below:

If you see this XGX-00019 line below the top barcode, chances are that you’ve got a Jasper. And if you see this Xbox 360 Arcade System Value Bundle 2008 E line (exactly like that, note that this only applies to Arcade units) then you most likely have a Jasper as well. If you want full confirmation though you’ll need to look at the current rating on the 12V rail which, believe it or not, you can do without ever opening the box.

Microsoft cut out a little window in the Xbox 360 packaging to allow the barcode/serial number to be scanned. Looking through this window the information you want is most likely obstructed by the cardboard cutout and it’s to the left of the opening. The least destructive way to get access to this information is to push down on the Xbox 360 itself through the window on the right side, which will hopefully reveal the information you’re looking for. A quicker, easier and potentially get-you-kicked-out-of-the-store way is to push the cardboard itself to the left a bit, possibly even tearing it slightly, to reveal the text you’re interested in. The line you’re looking for is this:

12.1A on the 12V rail nets you a Jasper

The important text is the current rating on the 12V line, which is immediately to the left of the current rating on the 5V rail. The three options here are 16,5A, 14,2A and 12,1A. All that really matters is the last digit, if you see a 5 then you’ve got a Zephyr, if you see a 2 you’ve got a Falcon (most likely) or if you see a 1 you’ve got a Jasper (take it and run).

Now some Jaspers have been mislabeled as 14,2A, but no Zephyr or Falcon has been mislabeled as 12,1A. The explanation is simple, this rating indicates what sort of power supply you’ll need to use with the machine. Zephyr and Falcon boxes can’t run with only 12.1A on the 12V rail, you’d end up with a box that either crashed a lot, rebooted or had other undesirable behavior (assuming it would even start, assuming you could even find a power supply that you could plug into it). There’s only one Xbox 360 power supply that can deliver a max of 12.1A on the 12V rail, that is the 150W power supply that is keyed to only work on Jaspers. Find a machine with 12,1A written on the back of it and you’ve got yourself a Jasper.

Sneaky Microsoft: Still Shipping Zephyrs

In my Jasper hunting I came across a strange beast, I found an Xbox 360 Pro with lot number 0843X. I figured it was new enough that it could be a Jasper, but looking at the 12V current rating I found that it was a 16.5A unit. I thought perhaps it was mislabeled and I’d heard about some newer systems having a 16.5A 12V rating, so I thought I’d buy it and take a closer look.

Once I got it home I confirmed: the machine was a Zephyr, that’s the original Xbox 360 hardware with HDMI support, meaning a 90nm CPU, 90nm GPU and 90nm eDRAM — the very configuration most likely to Red Ring. I’m guessing it’s a reworked Xbox 360 that never made it out of the factory in the first place due to an instant failure; something Microsoft fixed and sent out at a much later date.

Even if you don’t care about getting a Jasper, it may be worth looking into what it is you are getting to make sure that you’re not stuck with a box that’s more likely to fail.

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Confirming Your Jasper
IndexIdentifying a JasperConfirming Your JasperJasper DissectionPower Consumption and Final Words

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Microsoft finally addresses Red Ring of Death with Jasper-based Xbox 360 consoles

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The long-awaited Jasper-based versions of the Xbox 360 have finally emerged on the market. These new consoles have a redesigned motherboard with the new 65-nanometer version of the ATI (now AMD) graphics chip that doesn’t run as hot as previous versions. There are other changes that improve the reliability and usability of the system as well.

With the new design, Microsoft has a chance to rise above the problems associated with the Red Ring of Death, as chronicled in VentureBeat’s six-part series on the subject. We’ll see if the systems prove reliable. But logically, they should be a lot better. The graphics chip will likely consume less power than previous versions, allowing it to fit snugly into its motherboard socket. That should lead to fewer system failures due to the graphics chips coming loose.

The new graphics chip will also be smaller and cost less to make. These changes and others lower the overall system costs. That’s why Microsoft was able to cut its price on all of its Xbox 360 models in September. These new Jasper models come with 256 megabytes of internal flash memory, which is used to store all of the New Xbox Experience dashboard. The NXE doesn’t have to be stored on a hard drive or external memory unit and can thus work with even the Xbox 360 Arcade model without a hard drive. You can also use this internal memory to store Xbox Live Arcade saved games.

Older models had just 16 megabytes. Also, they have a 150-watt power supply, less than the earlier versions with 175 watts. These power supplies have a different plug so that you won’t confuse them with older versions and plug the wrong one into a machine.

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The previous versions of the Xbox 360 had a 90-nanometer graphics chip that proved unreliable due to overheating issues. Those models were still in inventory in warehouses and at retail. So it has taken several months to flush those out of the system. Still, it’s not clear yet how you can distinguish the Jasper models from the older Falcon-based machines, but I assume it will have something to do with serial numbers listed on the boxes.

What exactly was wrong with the older 90-nanometer graphics chips and the boards that came with them? I’ve gotten some new information on that. The main failure cause was “thermal fatigue” of the leaded C4 connections between the graphics chip die and its organic carrier. The underfill had too low a glass-transition temperature for the amount of heat generated. That caused cracking over time, resulting in graphics chips coming loose.

In previous versions, Microsoft addressed this with better heat sinks. The temperature sense diode was off in a corner and didn’t reflect the true temperature in the core regions. Jasper has shifted to a material with a significantly higher transition temperature. Coming up with this fix took time, since the new material had to be identified and tested. The smaller 65nm chip die also helps since the stresses that cause the thermal fatigue are related to size.

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Xbox 360 | Xbox360 Wiki

The Xbox 360 is Microsoft’s second game console to follow the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii as the seventh generation gaming system. Some of the main features of the Xbox 360 are represented by the Xbox Live service, which allows you to play online, as well as download a variety of content — video games, demos, trailers, music, TV shows, and more.

The

Xbox 360 was officially announced on MTV on May 12, 2005, and more details about the console were revealed later that month at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). All consoles available at the time of release were successfully sold in every country except Japan. As of June 2010, there are 41.7 million Xbox 360s worldwide.

At a presentation held at E3 on June 14, 2010, Microsoft announced the new Xbox 360 model, which went on sale the same day. The redesigned Xbox 360 was thinner than the previous model and featured built-in 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, TOSLINK S/PDIF optical audio output, five USB 2.0 ports (compared to three on the old console), and a dedicated AUX port. The sale of old Xbox 360 models has been stopped from now on. The first box in this series has a 250 GB hard drive, while the later and economical version comes with a 4 GB memory card.

At the time of the announcement of the said Xbox 360 S, Microsoft stated that their console was only halfway through its life cycle and that it would continue until 2015. , hitting the list of 25 positions.

Contents

• 1 History of
• 2 Specifications
• 3 Operating system
• 4 Accessories
• 5 Kinect (Project Natal)
• 6 New Xbox Experience (NXE)
• 7 Copy protection and tampering
• 8 Technical problems
• 9 Xbox 360 revisions
• 10 Application Development

History[]

thumb|300px|right|XBOX360 Advertisement

Game console codenamed Xenon , Xbox 2 , Xbox FS , Xbox Next and NextBox was conceived in early 2003. In February, under the leadership of Vice President Jay Allard, the planning process began, with a conference held in Bellevue, which was attended by more than 400 developers. At the same time, Peter Moore (former president of Sega Americas) joined the company. On August 12, 2003, ATI signed a deal to supply a GPU for the new console, which was announced two days later.

Specifications[]

• IBM Xenon processor (PowerPC architecture), contains 3 symmetrical cores (two hardware threads each) running at a total clock frequency of 3.2 GHz. 1 megabyte shared L2 cache.
• ATI’s Xenos graphics chip, 10MB eDRAM, 500Mpo/s.
• 512 MB RAM (used in both CPU and GPU).
• Claimed total system performance — 1 TFLOPS (CPU performance — 115 Gflops)
• Resolution support: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratio. Some HDTV-Ready TVs have incompatibilities. The problem was promised to be fixed in future updates.
• 20/60/120 GB removable hard drive (optional)
• DVD-ROM drive.

The set-top box comes in three versions — Arcade, Pro and Elite. The Arcade and Pro variants are replacements for the earlier Core and Premium versions. Updated versions are equipped with new motherboards: Falcon or Jasper. Both motherboards have an improved cooling system and an HDMI output. Falcon motherboards, unlike Zephyr, are equipped with a 65-nm central processor, which has reduced system heat and power consumption. Consoles based on the Falcon motherboard began to be equipped with a power supply with an output power of 175 watts, as opposed to 203 watts on previous revisions of the console.
The basic (Arcade) package includes a wireless game controller, a 256 MB memory card for saving games, a cable for connecting to a TV via a composite input or a SCART interface, and several «arcade» games on a DVD. This option is more of a “family” option, but it also suits hardcore players. In the future, you can purchase the necessary devices (hard disk, HDTV video cable, HDMI video cable, remote control, etc.) as needed.
After the start of deliveries, some shortcomings in the hardware of the set-top box became known: for example, if you try to change the position of the console from vertical to horizontal (or vice versa), a disk inserted into the console’s optical drive (Hitachi-LG GDR-3120L) will most likely be damaged.

As of April 6, 2010, the Xbox 360 supports USB drives up to 16 gigabytes in size as removable hard drives.

Operating system[]

The Xbox 360 runs an operating system written specifically for this console. This operating system, called by analysts Xbox 360 OS, is a 90% rewrite of the operating system for the first Xbox (the so-called Xbox OS), which, in turn, is a 90% rewrite of Windows 2000. Thus, in the operating system , which runs the Xbox 360, is slightly less than a percent of the code from Windows 2000, and everything else is specially written replacements and additions.
However, it is worth noting that we are talking about the first firmware. In subsequent firmware, the kernel is being modified in parallel with the desktop versions of Windows, but with an emphasis on hardware. The latest firmware version has layered loading (like in Windows 7) and a kernel similar to MinWin. Support for ZuneHD and Zune services has also been added.

Accessories[]

Many accessories are available for the console, such as

wired and wireless controllers (joysticks), interchangeable front panels, headsets (wireless and wired) and a camera for live calls, Messenger Kit keyboard for chat, memory cards with a capacity of 128, 256, 512 megabytes, hard drives (250, 120, 60 and 20 gigabytes) and a lot more things stylized as Xbox 360.

• Wireless Headset — wireless headset, operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency range up to 9meters from the console. The built-in battery lasts for 8 hours of operation. Charging is carried out using the device that comes with the kit.
• Wireless + PC AN08 is a wireless PC headset that operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency range up to 9 meters from the controller powered by USB from a PC. Includes two AA batteries. Compatible with Xbox 360.
• Messenger Kit is a joystick keyboard for quick messaging. Backlit keyboard allows you to type in the dark.
• Hard Drive — removable hard drive. There are options for 20, 60, 120 and 250 GB.
• HD-DVD Player is an external optical drive for reading HD-DVD discs. The release is currently discontinued.
• Headset is a wired headset for voice communication.
• Play & Charge Kit — Gives you extra time to play when the controller’s batteries are about to run out. Without recharging, you can play for about 30 hours. The charge level is shown by a special indicator.
• Quick Charge Kit is a charger for charging two batteries.
• Universal Media Remote is a multimedia remote control for the console. It has a backlight for working in the dark.
• Wireless Networking Adapter — WiFi adapter.
• Wireless Racing Wheel
• Live Vision is a video chat and game camera with motion detection.
• Special Edition Faceplates — removable faceplates.

Kinect (Project Natal)[]

Kinect (previously Project Natal ) is a «controllerless control» project (Template:Lang-en) developed by Microsoft,

which allows the user to interact with the console without gamepad or any other manipulators using gestures, voice commands, body movements. Natal is a peripheral device connected to the set-top box. The device has two high-quality video cameras capable of scanning three-dimensional space, and voice recognition sensors. Microsoft says the device will be compatible with all existing Xbox 360 models.

Natal is expected to be usable both in games and in the next generation of Xbox 360 apps, including NXE.

New Xbox Experience (NXE)[]

During the Microsoft press conference at E³ 2008, a new shell was announced —

«The New Xbox Experience». The menu itself will become three-dimensional, and players will be able to create their own avatars that look like Mii — avatars of Nintendo Wii owners. In addition to the new design, several new features will be added. It will be possible to fully install games on a hard drive to reduce in-game load times and console noise levels, but the drive will be needed to check for legality and run the game. The ability to create «parties» will be added (Parties) — a kind of chats or conferences among friends, during which you can exchange messages, photos and videos, in particular, you will be able to jointly view movies and TV shows purchased in Xbox Live . In addition, a Primetime section will be added in which Xbox Live users will be able to participate in interactive 3D versions of TV shows. The first such program was announced. NXE was officially released on November 19, 2008. But on November 1, 2008, a stripped-down version of NXE (without the Avatars feature) appeared on Western torrents, most Xbox 360 owners have already tried this version and many liked it.