Old Colony junior rebuilds father’s first generation Xbox 360

ROCHESTER — Tyler Moskos hit a “gold mine” when he found his fathers first generation Xbox 360 tucked away in the family basement alongside multiple games for the console. 

Moskos’ father bought the console in 2005 and played it for four years before it broke. The device had a defect making it fail consistently, and it sat in the family’s basement for 15 years before Moskos discovered it. 

An electronics engineer at Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School, he brought it to school to fix. 

“This was just a real shot in the dark, basically, to fix this,” Moskos said. 

With help from his classmates and two instructors, Rick Durta and Kevin Thompson, Moskos fixed the Xbox 360 in two months and continues to play videogames on it. 

Moskos said fixing the machine wasn’t straightforward, but it only took him around 20 hours to get it working. 

His biggest challenge was with the capacitors, which are like batteries that power the console. He had to methodically remove and replace around 20 of the 50 capacitors in the console which ended up being the longest step in the project. 

Another issue was a misaligned computer chip that fell out of place when the Xbox 360 heated up. 

Moskos was able to put the chip back in place, but it still moves out of place when he games. Moskos said he and his father play the Marvel Ultimate Alliance superhero game on it despite this flaw. 

When he started the console up, Moskos said he even found an old account from when his father used to play with his own friends.

“My godfather's account is still on the Xbox 360 from when [Moskos’ father and godfather] played on it before I was born,” Moskos said. 

Students in the electronics engineering technology class fix devices brought in by the community, staff or students. When they are done with class work, they are free to work on any projects they want. 

One student is making an animatronic head, and the whole class and other Old Colony classes are working together to make a fully operational R2-D2 robot from “Star Wars.” 

For Moskos, that personal project has been the Xbox. 

He did most of the research himself, watching YouTube videos and reading about how to fix common errors. His teachers assisted where they could, but let Moskos lead the project. 

Rick Durta, the electronics engineering technology instructor, has worked at Old Colony for 24 years. He said it was hard to watch Moskos struggle through the repairs, but it was all worth it when the console finally turned on, which no one expected. 

“The cheers when it turned on, nothing was even close to that. That was awesome,” Durta said. 

Kevin Thompson, Durta’s teaching aid, said he was ecstatic when Moskos came to him with the idea. Thompson told Moskos it was like a kid finding their father’s car in the junkyard, fixing it up and giving it back to their father as a gift.   

Like Dutra, Thompson’s favorite part was seeing Moskos succeed. 

“Seeing the look on his face the first time the thing powered up, it looked like a five-year-old on Christmas morning right when they come down the stairs and there's more presents than tree,” Thompson said.

Thompson and Moskos said they are unsure how long the Xbox will operate, but will continue to work and play on it.

“If I wanted to be funny, I'd say tomorrow. But if you want to be realistic today,” Moskos said about its lifespan. “Its probably give or take maybe two months if you're feeling optimistic.”