Tutorial written by : Jive
Last edited: April 30, 2004

This Tutorial will show you how you can fix broken traces with ABSOLUTELY no SOLDER. It is fairly easy and like all mods needs patience and for you to be careful. I will not be responsible for any damage you might cause your own xbox, so only proceed with this if you understand the risks

What you will need:

* Conductive paint (Defogger repair kits available from your local auto store)
* a needle, sharp knife, or thin flathead screwdriver to carve into the mobo with
* electric tape, or if you have masking tape (we are going to be painting baby!)
* qtips and thoothpicks
* rubbing alcohol
* Multimeter to check your work (not necessary but HIGHLY recommended)
* also magnifying glass (but i didnt use one as I still have pretty good eye site)

All righty, so what we are going to do is repair broken traces, i recently received this board from a customer who totally messed up his install. He was trying to install the X2.3b Pro chip via the wire install, but obviously didnt really know what he was doing. He wound up removing both the Top and the bottom D0 traces, and even some of the surrounding ones. Here are some pictures:

Broken bottom D0

Broken top D0

As you can see, he totally demolished the traces, needless to say, when trying to power on, all he got was fragging. Ok so on to fixing it. First step is to prep the mobo and its traces. What I mean by this is to CAREFULLY make small carvings into the mobo of where the traces should be. with his top D0 point, it was much more difficult because he and tried to prep the d0 point and this exposed alot of the surrounding traces. Also remember you want to expose the copper on the two ends your are trying to connect, this way the paint can touch both ends of the copper and have a complete connection. anyways, here are my pictures of the mobo prepped:

Bottom Prep

Top Prep

As you can see in the above pictures what I did was clean up the broken traces then used the pin/exacto knife/thin flatheads edge to carve out tiny pieces of the mobo as to where the traces are going to run (we are doing this so that the conductive paint has "tracks" to fall into so in essence form its own trace). This will create the tiny grooves necessary for the paint to stick into. ok now clean up the job, you can simply brush away what ever residue is there, blast it with the compressed air, or use a tip with rubbing alcohol to clean it up. doesnt matter, just clean it.

Ok next step is to mask up the traces. This is sorta the difficult part as it is VERY hard to get a good mask down. I tried using two different types of tape, on the bottom D0 i tried using packaging tape with electric tape (not good, do not use packaging tape as it doesnt make a good seal) and on the top I used all electric tape. here are pics of my masking:

Mask of Bottom D0

Mask of top D0

Ok here comes the fun part, if you have ever tried painting then this will be fun and be a breeze. Open up your conductive paint package, it should have a small brush and a bottle with the paint, you wont need the included stencil. Shake up the bottle real well (like the instructions tell you to) then dab the brush in and start applying the paint to the mask. the tape should be tightly pressed to the mobo so no paint can seep underneath it. It wont be devastating if it does so dont worry. Ok, get a nice small dab of the paint on the brush and apply it, make sure your paint is falling into the grooves we made in the beginning. wait a min or so and then apply another coating. then wait another 2 mins and remove the tape. If you have done the masking job perfect and you applied the coats correctly, you should now have new PERFECT traces. you can then take you multimeter and check to make sure you have fixed traces and once you do your done =).

here is a pick of the paint being applied on top of the mask:

Apply Top D0

Ok, but what about if there is a bad masking job or if the paint splattered everywhere? dont worry, as the paint comes off REAL easily once it is wet with alcohol. I had this happen to me and thought Oh shit, the paint is dry and now i have to scratch it off, BUT DONT, cause all you need to do is wet one tip of a qtip, then rub it along the WHOLE spot, and then use the other end to clean it up. if you do this correctly you should be able to wipe up all the excess paint, yet still leave the necessary paint in the grooves that we made. you will be cleaning just the surface which is where all the excess paint is. you can also use the toothpick or needle to help you draw in the lines. after you feel you did a good job, let everything dry and then test with your multimeter. remember you are not only testing for continuity, you are also testing the surrounding areas for bridges. The bottom D0 took me only one try to get right, but the top took me about 4 times, this of course takes some getting use to and the good thing about the conductive paint is if you really need to you can always just remove it and start again. The top was more difficult for me because as you can see, the guy exposed a lot of copper on the surrounding traces, and also broke one, so in essence i was fixing two traces and trying to avoid bridges with 5 others. Here are my pictures of FIXED traces and d0 points:

Fixed Bot D0

Fixed Top D0

you might think the top d0 looks messy, well it kinda is, because the paint accentuates all the scratches the guy made before me, but i was able to fix the traces. I have plugged this mobo in and it boots fine now =)

Hope this helps anyone out there that needs it
Jive

PS: thank you to everyone who has ever contributed to Xbox-Scene, as I have learned everything from all you guys. Using conductive paint is not something new, and I DIDNT THINK of it, I am just trying to write down a tutorial about it. Either way, I am just trying to contribute to the community as I believe this will help out a lot of people. Thanks X-S for hosting this =)

Things to do:

* Fix traces with conductive paint (DONE)
* apply a clear coat to protect the paint <-- not tested yet
* get feedback on tutorial <-- tell me what you think, hit me up on IRC or the forums (Jive)

ALL pictures are property of Jive and Xbox-Scene. Please don't copy them and make them your own, give credit where credit is due.

Tutorial written by : Jive