360 power brick--2 different ones? WTF??
 

OK, so I bought a second 360 last week (from a friend) for my kids to play Halo (mainly) on, which frees up our main TV for watching movies or playing games. Sunday night, there was a massive windstorm that knocked the power out for over 4,000 local homes, including mine. When the power came back on, 9 hours later, our original 360 (Halo 3 model) wouldn't turn on. The new one that I bought, also a Halo 3 model, was working fine. I switched power bricks and sure enough, that was the problem.

Seeing that the bricks were going for $55 on Ebay (shipped), I decided to call Walmart to see if I could exchange bricks. They said I would have to switch the entire system. No problem, so I saved everything on to a memory card and headed to Walmart. The only systems they had in stock were the white ones. They said that I could exchange systems if I wanted, or wait until they received some H3 ones in a week or so.

Then they said that they would open the white one and just let me exchange the power bricks. Well, that sounded like a winner to me. I wouldn't have to lose any data, or redownload anything, etc... When I got home, the freakin' brick wouldn't plug into the back of the H3 360. Upon examining the cord, there are 2 rows of 3 'plugs' that slide into the 360. On the white 360's cord, there is a 'stopper' between the 2 rows, thus not allowing it to plug into the 360.

My question is, why would they do this? If I would've bought one on Ebay, I'm sure no one would take one back if I told them it didn't fit into my 360. Has anyone else noticed this problem? Also, I wanted this to be a heads-up for anyone that needs to replace their H3 brick.

~S2K

The new falcon chip uses less power and has a different power supply, but they should be backwards compatible with each other. This is the first i've heard of where one does not fit the other.

The Falcon power supplies will not fit the old 360's, but the old 360's power supplies will fit the new Falcons. Also, the Falcons cannot use the intercoolers.......

Well, isn't the Halo 3 360 a Falcon? The cord from the 'white' 360 wouldn't fit.

No the H3 is not a Falcon and that's why it won't fit. My friend ran into this problem not too long ago.

There are new models of the Intercoolers (Intercooler EX, I believe) that have fixed this problem.