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Condition & GradingThe Original Xbox Clock Capacitor Is Eating Your ConsoleEvery unserviced original Xbox from the early production runs is carrying a small time bomb on its motherboard. It's called the clock capacitor – a stubby little component whose only job is to keep the system clock ticking while the console is unplugged – and on revision 1.0 through 1.5 boards it has a well-earned reputation for leaking electrolyte as it ages. That fluid is corrosive. It creeps out from under the capacitor, eats the copper traces around it, and does all of this silently while th
Condition & GradingHow to Grade a PS1 Disc Before You Buy or SellHold the disc under a lamp and tilt it. If the underside glows that deep, smoky black, you're holding the real thing – Sony pressed original PlayStation discs with black-tinted polycarbonate on the read side, and nearly thirty years on it's still the fastest authentication check in retro collecting. If it's silver, put it down. Everything else about grading a PS1 copy comes down to two honest questions: will it still play, and is it actually complete? Sellers blur both all the time. Here's how
xboxThe Original Xbox, the Duke, and the Capacitor Time BombSomewhere inside almost every early original Xbox, a capacitor the size of a fingernail is quietly deciding whether that console lives or dies. If yours has been sitting in a loft since the Halo 2 days, the decision may already have been made – and you won't know until you crack the case open. We'll get to that. First, some respect for the most gloriously excessive console of its generation. Microsoft crashed the console war with a PC in a trench coat When the Xbox landed in November 2001, So