Xbox 360 automatically resets with HDMI switches - Page 3

Ryan, I believe what fanerman means is that he didn't want to destroy his official MS component cables, so he bought the ones from monoprice to modify them and use them for the optical out.

does the monoprice cable fit the hdmi without modifying it. and if so are you having the same reset issue.

Just modified my own cables right now in less than 2 minutes. All you have to do is pry open the casing with a flathead screwdriver and you will see the wires exposed. Cut off the black wire that loops onto itself (as seen in the previous post) and then replace the casing. Make sure you're in TV mode and you'll have optical audio with HDMI switching without restarting

My console won't fully turn on and recognize a controller until I change the input on my TV to the correct HDMI port. It doesn't turn off though if it's already on and I change the input (to another HDMI port; I don't have anything plugged in component) to my cable box.

I'm sure it's some HDCP thing...

I've seen the reports here that if you mod a component cable to fit next to the HDMI cable, you need to snip a certain wire on the back of the connector. Now, does this also apply to the VGA cable? From examining the pinout of the connector, I could understand snipping the black wire, though there doesn't seem to be any documentation here as to what pins the black wire is connected. From examing the pinout docs posted elsewhere, it would appear that the connections/jumpers apply:

pins 18-20 jumpered = VGA mode
pins 22-24 jumpered = Composite mode
pins 26-28 jumpered = Component mode
pins 22-24 and 26-28 jumpered = RGB SCART mode

Now, if the cable being discussed in this thread is a combo Composite/Component cable with a switch to select, it does not make any sense to snip a jumper wire here. I would've expect that the switch was a DPDT that shorted pins 22-24 when in the TV position and pins 26-28 in the HDTV position. So, it doesn't make sense that there would be a jumper wire between 2 pins that should be cut. All 4 pins should be connected to the switch. This is all well and good and I'm not arguing that it's not working for you guys, just trying to understand how to mod a VGA cable to give optical out with an HDMI cable connected.

Anybody?

P.J.

Same here, chalk another up to the success category. Thanks for all your help people!

Valence01, not sure what to make of your situation. Sorry, wish I could help.

I sold my original component cables and purchased the vga cables. I just purchased an Arcade w/HDMI.

I am yet to try it as I am doing heat shroud extension/divider mods to improve airflow to GPU and CPU, aswell will be painting the case.

I will be using HDMI cable with old VGA cable for optical( or that is the plan...might just stick with VGA as I have tweaked the service menu some(sammy hls-5687) and loose picture to overscan). I will post my findings on this "reset issue"

What pinout docs are you using? Looking at this pinout:

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.en...dget_howto.jpg

It seems that a jumper from pins 26-28 wouldn't do anything, since 26 is ground and 28 isn't connected to anything.

According to this guy on the chadledford site, that's where the jumper is connected and cutting it worked. I'm wondering if the pinout diagram above is wrong, since if there is a jumper between 26 and 28 then pin 28 has to be used for something.

# Keimei wrote:

Speedy,
I was on a mission tonight, I had to get this to work!

Look at this:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/14/h...-vga-cable-fo/

go down to the connector pin out photo.

This is the end with the wires of the connector in the shell of the component cable.

Cut the black wire jumper between 26&28
25, 27, & 29 must be connected for the toslink to work
All the wires going to the RCA connectors side of the cable are of no concern (cut them off or leave them, but disconnected from other equipment).
There is also red, black, & white colored wires from 20, 22, & 24. My white wire broke off during testing. So I don't know if you need to cut it or not. You need the red and / or black wire.
Put the switch in TV position and it works fine here.
HDMI & Toslink, beautiful! and no $50 charge!
Good luck if you want to try the same.
Later
Posted 02 Dec 2007 at 4:54 am ¶

One more question, so if you take off the grey plastic connector and cut the black jumper wire, does this break any of the functionality of the connector (meaning, does composite and component still work)? I don't really plan on using composite or component connectors but I'd like to know that they still work just in case.

Yes, I've seen that, but the doc I'm using came from:

http://dwl.xbox-scene.com/tutorial/X...HandC-V1_4.pdf

I've also seen elsewhere it mentioned that pins 18, 22 and 26 are all ground. A wire from pins 26-28 grounds pin 28, telling the XBOX HDTV (from the quoted doc), but that makes no sense for it to be hardwired.

In any case, my VGA cable has no connections to either pin 26 or 28. All it has, is a single jumper from pin 18 to 20. That is consistent with the doc to which I referred above. Even with just pin 18-20 jumpered, I still have the reset issue. I suppose I could cut that jumper and connect 22 to 24 and that would emulate what you guys have done with your component cables. 22 to 24 jumpered is the equivalent of the TV switch position on you guys' component cables.

I did ohm out an actual component cable to see how it's wired and what I found, raised more questions than it answered. Apparently not all component cables are wired the same, as the one I examined had the following connections:

pin 20 jumpered to 24 permanently regardles of switch selector.
pin 20, 22 and 24 connected when switch is in TV position.
pin 26 and pin 28 connected when switch is in HDTV position.

P.J.

An update here. I disassembled the VGA cable and removed the jumper between pins 18 and 20. Then I brought out pins 18, 20, 22, 24, 26 and 28 to a 3 slot dip switch, so that I could try any and all combinations. Pins 18 and 20 were connected to slot 1, while 22 and 24 went to slot 2 and 26 and 28 to slot 3. Connected the cable to the 360 with all 3 switches in the open position and it worked perfectly! Switching the TV between different inputs and then back to the 360HDMI, it does not reboot. I didn't bother to see what other combinations would work. Obviously if I want to use it as a VGA cable, I can just close switch 1 and leave the others in the open position.

P.J.

Thanks for the update Valence01. So do you know exactly why cutting the jumper cable seems to work? Were you cable to verify exactly what the pins it connects actually do? It'd be more reassuring to me to know what I might potentially break on my cable by cutting the jumper wire before I actually do it.

Well, in the case of my VGA cable, cutting the jumper between pins 18 and 20, tells the 360 that this is NOT a VGA cable. The fact that neither of the other 2 possibilites is jumpered, tells the 360 that it isn't a composite, HDTV, or SCART connection either. Various combinations of the 3 possible jumpers, are for those. It isn't clear to me, in the case of the component cables described by others here, exactly how the TV/HDTV switch is wired to the pins, since the component cable that I examined is wired differently.

The worst thing that would happen if you cut any jumper on any of the pins 18 thru 28, is that the cable won't function correctly for the original use of the cable. That is, if it was an HDTV/TV cable, it may not work for that anymore. Since most people in this thread, are just trying to use the cable as a substitute for the "audio only" dongle, that shouldn't matter much, but if you still want the original function of the cable too, you may need to provide some means to reconnect the jumper.

As for the various combinations of jumpers and what they mean to the 360, there is some difference of opinion among the sources out there. Here's what I think, based on some testing and reports from others:

18-20 22-24 26-28
---------------------
-yes----yes----yes-----composite
-yes----yes----no------composite, no reboot
-yes----no-----yes-----???????
-yes----no-----no------VGA
-no-----yes----yes-----SCART (euro TV)
-no-----yes----no------composite
-no-----no-----yes-----HDTV (component)
-no-----no-----no------no audio, no reboot

The only one that I know works for sure to avoid the reset when switching TV input, is the one in the table labeled "Composite, no reboot". Well, the last one with no jumpers doesn't reboot either, but there's no optical audio in that case. That makes sense, as that's what you get with no cable attached at all (save for the HDMI).

So, if you have a component/composite cable, then removing the jumper between 26 and 28 is absolutely correct. I went back and double checked the component cable and there IS a jumper between 26 and 28, just like everyone else reported here. If you have a VGA cable, in addition to the jumper already present between pins 18 and 20, you need to put a jumper between 22 and 24. Could put a switch there, if you wanted to still be able to use it as a VGA cable sometimes.


P.J.

Just like to thank all the previous posters for providing lots of insight into getting up the courage to mod my component cable to output optical only. Especially ryansdad for the pics ...Works great so far no issues.Hdmi for video,optical for audio (no hdmi input on my amp)In case it matters to someone falcon board benq drive 203w ps

Rotel is HDMI 1.1. Might be one reason.

Do you know if the composite/component connections still work on the cable with the mod done?

Sorry I gutted my componet/composite cable all thats left is the optical.So I can't answer that question.

After you mod the cable by cutting the jumper between pins 26 and 28, it will no longer function as a component or composite cable, unless you reconnect the jumper.

P.J.

Last night I finally got around to opening up my cable and turns out the wiring is different on my component cable. There is no black wire looping back to the connector, instead it appears that there are multiple wires connected to ground coming out from the plug. I am going to play around with it more tonight and see if I can figure out how its wired.

My Xbox 360 is a pretty new model, manufacture date is Oct 2007 I believe.

Bear in mind that pins 18, 22 and 26 are connected to ground on the 360 m'board. Pins 20, 24 and 28 are the ones that get connected to ground or nothing, depending on switch position. Any working component cable has a connection from pin 28 to ground. In the case of most cables seen so far, that connection is made with a small black jumper wire between pins 26 and 28. A connection from pin 28 to ANY ground will work just as well. It is this connection that must be disconnected in order to prevent the reboot issue when changing input on the TV away from HDMI input and then back to HDMI. That connection must be in place in order for the component outputs to work. So, if you want to use component and HDMI separately you need to find a way to switch the pin 28 to gnd connection depending if you are using component or HDMI.

P.J.

Thanks again. I had some more time to look at it tonight and you are right, the key is disconnecting pin 26-28. On my cable, there was no jumper wire exposed. The two pins were simply connected by a little dab of solder. This made it a little more tricky to disconnect, and unfortunately made it pretty difficult to wire up a switch which is what I was intending to do.

I ended up just putting out pins 26 and 28 and cutting all the non-optical out wires going to the main cable. I would have liked to maintain the use of the component/composite outputs but since I pulled out the pins I figured it was a lost cause at that point. Oh well, I can buy a generic cable on EBay for $10. Too bad there aren't any generic HDMI w/optical out cables yet. Until then I guess this is better than shelling out the $50 to Microsoft.

When I tried it with no jumpers at all, HDMI worked fine but there was no optical audio output. I had to jumper pins 20 and 24 to gnd, in order to get optical audio out and not reboot when switching away and back to HDMI input on the TV. There are plenty of combinations of jumpers that will have optical audio out with HDMI, but only one that prevents the reboot problem AND has optical out. If I read what you've done correctly, you may not get optical audio out.

P.J.

No, everything seems to work fine actually. HDMI and optical audio out both work with no reboot problem. Basically all I did was break the connection from 26 to 28 by pulling out the pins and cut all of the wires going to the RCA connections off. Strange that it would behave differently for you. You are using an Xbox premium with the component cable right?

So, you did not disconnect the wires going to pins 20 and 24? These are normally connected to the TV/HDTV switch and get grounded when the switch is in the TV position. If you left these in place, then optical audio would work. If you removed them, then I'm at a loss to explain why it's working, since I've done the mod on 2 different cables now, one component and one VGA and with no connection from pins 20 and 24 to gnd, either through the switch or jumper wires, then I get the reboot problem. With nothing connected to pins 20, 24, 26, then I get no optical audio, though HDMI audio and video do work.

P.J.

All I can say is my component cable looks exactly like ryansdads in post #48...The switch is in the tv position and the optical out works great with hdmi video...Now all I need is an optical switch to hook up the old xbox as I don't have enough connections on the amp..

So you did leave the switch and wires in place. It was this statement you made:

"I ended up just putting out pins 26 and 28 and cutting all the non-optical out wires going to the main cable"

that led me to believe that you had gutted all the connections save for the 3 wires to the optical connector. Since you left the switch and it's wires in place, that's why it works. You do need to keep the switch in the TV position, else you'll get the rebooting issue on HDMI switching.

BTW, you can take 2 of the 3 wires that go to the optical connector and run those to an RCA connector and then to your amp's SPDIF coax input. That way you don't need an optical switch. The 360 connected via SPDIF coax and the old xbox via optical.

P.J.

I'm starting to get confused All I'm saying is that mine looks exactly like the picture in post #48 the main cable is sitting on the floor under my desk all I left was the optical connections minus the looped black wire.I placed the switch in the tv position ,not sure if it matters but Ryansdad said it had to be left there so I did,and it works

I'm confused too. It seems that I may have mixed up two different posters here. The one named mliew and the one named accat. If this is 2 different people, then you guys fooled me. I was responding to the statement made by mliew that he removed everything but the wires going to the optical connector. There are more wires than just the one between pins 26 and 28. For instance, the wires going to the TV/HDTV switch on the circuit board. My response was to mliew that if he hadn't left the wires that connect to the switch, then there would be no optical audio out and he'd get the reboot issue also. The crappy picture in post #48 shows more than just the 3 wires going to the optical connector on the circuit board. Also seen there, are the wires that go to the switch on the circuit board. I'm not going to belabor this point anymore. Either or both mliew and accat have it working. So, I'm done.

P.J.

LOL me 2

This is an interesting thread.

I too did not feel like ponying up $50 for the MS cable, actually just the optical audio adapter is what I need. I did however find a MadCatz Universal Component cable for the 360, Wii, and PS2/PS3 ($10 on Amazon) and using it in conjunction with HDMI on my 360 Premium works great except, you guess it, the reboot issue on switching TV inputs.

I was determined to fix this so I pried open the casing on the MadCatz cable but as I feared I wasn't able to identify what I needed to cut or desolder. Here are some photos I took in hopes someone can figure this out.




I don't mind ruining the rest of the cable, I just want to use it as an optical audio dongle. But whatever works is what I'm after (to solve the reboot issue).