A few weeks ago I was at, where else, the outlet store, when I found an Xbox 360 controller. I quickly chucked it into my bag and kept on hunting through the bins. Upon later inspection the thumb sticks were absolutely fucked, someone had carved their name into the side and the controller was no longer white, but a deep nicotine yellow. Needless to say I decided against buying it.
Immediately after I tossed the controller back into a bin I noticed that it had a rechargeable battery pack on the back. On closer inspection it turned out to be a Nyko battery pack, which sent chills down my spine. Even so, this time I was quite confident because I had a secret weapon on my side, the official Microsoft battery pack charging base!
A few months prior I had bought an official battery pack charger because it was at the outlet store and I already owned an official Microsoft Xbox 360 rechargeable controller pack. The controller pack had been nothing but fussy when trying to recharge it through the cable that connects to the console, so I decided maybe this would help the battery pack.
Much to my surprise the battery pack seemed to take a long charge, lasted much longer than it ever had before, and seemed to hold a charge for weeks without even being used, where it would previously discharge rather quickly without being used. Could this charger help me revive a Nyko brand Xbox 360 battery pack? Well, maybe.
At first the battery pack didn't seem to have any life left it in; all signs of life were gone. I plugged it into the charging base and got nothing. I plugged it into the console with the recharging cable and also got nothing. It soon dawned on me that Nyko put their own special charging ports on the back of the battery pack, which was the key to a successful revival.
After working out the polarity I simply put some electricity through the positive and negative terminals on the back of the battery pack and once it was outputting roughly 1 volt I slapped it back into the Microsoft charging base. Would this work? Well, yes! Yes it did.
The official charging base turned red, meaning it was charging, and charged the battery for quite some time before turning green. I quickly put the Nyko battery back into my controller to test for life, and there it was... the green lights lit up, the controller synced and everything was right with the world.
So far the Nyko battery pack seems to work quite well with the official 360 charging base. The battery also seems to have quite a good life span. It's odd that Nyko made a product I'm actually half way proud to own, even if I had to bring it back to life by myself.
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