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TechTV Cracks Open The Xbox
Kevin writes: "TechTV has posted some pictures of the inside of the Xbox ... Interesting stuff, I believe Patrick Norton from The Screen Savers is working on overclocking it." Warning: doing this might reduce your eBay resale value.
Warning:
By opening, you might let out the intel!
surprise, surprise
Too bad I don't have a few hundred to spend on a new computer to crack open and look at. Oh wait...I can easily make my own video game console system, can't I?
I wish there was more to this article, because then there might be more to my response to it.
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
How upgradable are these things? Does the socket type adhere to an intel standard? I should hope so, considering people have been saying that Halo gets 5fps at some times. Snort.
Of course, MS almost certainly has used a proprietary filesystem to thwart such an effort. And reverse engineering such surely violates the DMCA.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Who wants to place bets on how long it will be until someone hacks a way to play X-BOX games on your PC? (And who wants to bet that they'll run better on a non-staticly configured home system with the latest and greatest hardware?)
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
1) The components look awfully cramped. But that's not really surprising considering that it's essentially a PC crammed into a console box - size matters.
2) While it should work at standard operating parameters (i.e. not overclocked), I think the lack of proper ventilation (as a result of pt. 1, see above) could halt any overclocking efforts.
3) I wonder how much noise the box will make after 3 months woth of dust and use... TWO fans (if not 3?) is awfully muich for a console - in my experience.
4) It's Microsoft... ewww. Yes, that's my blanat bias.
- Peter
Now that we can get our hands on the parts and see what they are has anyone summed up their street value and compared that to the unit price. Next time I put a system together would it be worth it to pick up an Xbox strictly for cannibal purposes?
Doesn't that look like a normal DVD-ROM and a normal harddisk? That leaves a lot of possibilities.
You can upgrade the DVD-ROM drive and make load times faster.
You can upgrade the harddisk drive when it gets full.
Whatever copy-protection mechanism the XBox has can be broken easier since it uses standard PC parts.
The possibilites go on and on...
Looks like a hacker's picnic to me. =) Also, look how much room is in that thing. They could of at least added a PCMCIA slot or something.
I wasn't suprised by this article. I don't understand how Microsoft can think that it is a good idea to have "normal" PC hardware in the Xbox. I think there must be millions of people out there who have in-depth knowledge about the PC hardware. This means that it is not going to take long before we start seeing hacked versions of the Xbox and hardware that can be connected to it that is not released by Microsoft.
I don't know what the copy protection looks like on the Xbox (if anyone knows anything about it... please post it), but I think it will be bypassed very shortly.
I remember the playstation, it took almost a year to get the first chip. The reason was that this was the first console where you needed to do a hardware modification in order to play pirated games combined with the fact that it was NOT standard PC hardware inside it.
With the Xbox, one don't have to worry about any of these things
On the box it said supported operating systems was Windows 95 or better... I therefore asumed Linux was supported
"Whoaaa, your new ultra-fast shoot'em up game really kicks ass !"
"Well, er, actually it's a port of Super Mario Bros I"
Thomas Miconi
I don't meant to be your usual cynical "What's this story doing here?" flame, but half the pictures are a guy with a screwdriver. And the pictures that are of something I want to look at are just too small to be informative. It appears to be a PC in a console cabinet, for what its worth. There are some chips, but you can't read the writing. There isn't even commentary except for useless captions like "Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey" So...
What's this story doing here?
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
So MSFT's big killer app truns out to be a stripped-down PC. What a letdown. The PS2 is a superior console, since it was designed (hardware-wise) specifically as a gaming system. It's not just a computational device hacked up to turn it into a console. Plus it runs Linux (Somebody should port Linux to the Xbox. That would be a 1337 hack).
Also I was wondering, does that GeForce3 have a standard VGA-out, or only television? I mean, if this this is hackable or even if you would be able to run some Windows verions(Hey Bill: release "Windows XBox", killer sale!) on it (or Linux, even better) it would have great potential for budget PC-replacement. Some people just don't have the dough to pay a budget-PC (no kidding, I recently helped someone still using his 286), or it represents two paychecks.
For the rest the components are really tightly fitted together. Fan on the CPU (graphic chip?) and behinde the huge heatsink. I'd just fear for overheating. It think it shoudn't be put close to the VCR and DVD player but somewhere well aerated.
Well as for disassembling these things: I admire the people who do this. I couldn't shell out that amount of money to disassembe it and have the risk that I can't put it back togehter. On old hardware okay, but on new it would break my heart.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
and it's bad to say "cool beans" about anything MS, but cool beans man!
It looks just like a PC inside! The power connector is old school AMP connectors from the pre ATX days.
The CPU isn't socketed.. Boo MS boo, PGA connectors are only an extra 20 bucks man. I do like the fan design however, that is a big honkin fan blowing over some nice thin fins.
Bad thing about the pics is I can't read any of the writing on the chips. I wanna know what kind of glue chips this thing is using. Is it the new NV motherboard chipset or an intel? I'm guessing the hard drive is a seagate, they're OK but for tinkering purposes I would replace it with my preffered brand.
300 bucks is not a bad price for this toy. All dvd players can read CDroms, would be cool to use it as a base for a car MP3 player. Has a built in RF converter so I can hook it up to my TV without a special monitor. Woah nellie.
Sorta reminds me of the 8-bit days for some reason.
I've seen there are two fans in XBox/10Box. So, the question is : Is the XBox/10Box more noisy than my Dell PowerEdge 1400 ?
Most people would want to overclock a system for higher framerates, but it's pointless on Xbox, because the framerate is tied to the refresh rate of the display. This is why you will get a constant 60 or 30 frames per second on most games, rather than massively varying framerates like in PC games.
The reason to lock the framerate is that this frees up processing time for other threads in your application to do things like physics simulation, collision detection, etc.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Why would anyone overclock the XBox, unless they first managed to figure out how to run a standardish OS on it?
The only benefit would be extremely increased system instability on a system already known to have heating issues when not very-well ventilated....
Virtually all console games are frame-locked to 30 or 60 fps, so its not like you're going to get any performance increase out of your games.
Sounds like a waste of time.
To me it looks to me that if you want to port, let's say Linux, to it you would have to define the address range you want to use for graphics displaying and the rest for the system. "Just" separate them in software, you know the amount of RAM anyway for the hardware. Not that I could do it, but it probably is a quite simple exerice for someone with the right experience.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
On Byte.com dated April 11, 2001.
So yes, AGP sort-of does some of this stuff. But there is still the issue of going on different busses to get to the CPU and RAM from the card, instead of a direct physical link between them. As far as the Xbox is concerned, the GPU is another CPU but is only sent instructions for doing graphics. I guess you could say it's kinda like SMP.
Didn't Connectix reverse engineer the Playstation so the games could be played on a Mac? (I forget what the name of the product was). They were sued, but won. So what's to prevent this company from doing the same thing with the xbox.
Also, is MS going to have games released [b]only[/b] on the xbox, and NOT on Windows xxxx?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Consoles are sold with a loss, and the money is made from selling the software.
It has got a harddisk (10Gb), a not so bad CPU (PIII 733), 64Mb of Memory , network ports and is built with commodity PC hardware...
So taking the X-Box, finding an easy way to format and re-install Linux + beowulf software and you get a cheap way to build clusters.
With it's GeForce 2 and good soundcard, you could even make it a decent PC (a bit short on memory though).
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
... ISP..
I wonder who will be the first to release a 1U rack mount case for use with the XBOX internals?
At 1/3 the cost of a Cobalt RAQ, and technically superior, this seems a pretty good candidate..
Does anyone know of any restrictions in place on the XBOX that could stop it's use as a webserver or other similar device? I've not heard of any.
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
Here're some direct links to the pictures, without having to jump through hoops. (TechTV's not particulary standards-compliant site that crashed Konq on me once; the dreadful JS that is used for *everything*; the pop-ups required to get to the pictures; the slowness of the site)
Please no Karma claims; I'm at the cap - it's just a much more convenient way to get to the actual images.
Xbox screws
Warning
Pat sizes thing up
Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey
Just a couple more to go
Under the hood
Hard Drive
The motherboard
These hands have killed Athlons
CPU central
Intel inside
The 'silly' link titles are TechTV's, not mine. You may have to copy/paste the shortcuts into your URL bar in case TechTV's site plays nasty with image linking from other sites. (I don't think it does, though)
Alex T-B
St Andrews
All dvd players can read CDroms....MP3 player
Wrong. Not all dvd drives can read cd-r cd roms. This has to do something with the color of the laser. Since a mp3 cd would be self made (I think you want to burn your own). this might nog be the solution you want.
just look on mp3.com for your own mp3 car radio.
If any other company in the world released a console as easy to hack as the xbox looks to be everyone on slashdot would be foaming at the mouth to port linux to it. What the hell is the point? I mean seriously I have netBSD for my DreamCast but who gives a shit. All the support for the PS2 on slashdot is kinda hypocritical considering Sony is damn near a monopoly on everything in japan. I wish I had gotten mod today just so I could mod down as many fuckwits and laggots as possible!
Remember,democracy never lasts long.It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. John Adams (1814)
A PC like machine is easy to upgrade, but everybody knows that upgrades in the game console world are not a very good idea.
SEGA MegaCD and 32X Megadrive upgrades were a waste of time and effort.
What is going to happen with something as easy as change a 10Gb HD with a 80Gb?
Is going Microsoft to be caught by the temptation of the upgrades?
I don't think so. Microsoft is very kind with the history and changes of the markets where wants a monoply.
And X-Box II is sure under development.
-= If you fight Dragons long enough, you will become a Dragon =-
pics are small and hard to read, but if I'm seeing things right, there's what looks to be a standard TSOP packaged FLASH ROM in there. Very desolderable and readable...too bad all the stores around here are sold out of XBOXes. I'm supposing someone's already done it, but if not, as soon as I can get my hands on one I'd be glad to provide the ROM contents to interested parties.
FYI, the gamecube ROM appears to be merged into the DRAM chip, so good luck hacking. There are five chips (basically) in the GC: PPC core, ATI "flipper" chip, 2 MoSys SSRAMs, and the "ARAM" part. No ROM on the list...however, when the disc unit is removed, system still boots okay, so there has to be a ROM on that board somewhere. I guess it's in the ARAM because it's the only chip that is cheap enough/simple enough to accomodate a mask ROM as part of its contents. Perhaps it is a stacked RAM-ROM package or a multi-die on lead frame package...gotta get another gamecube and bust out the sulfuric acid on the package...
having seen these pictures of the inside of the x-box and the inside of the gamecube first-hand, though, I'll have to say that the gamecube wins hands down for elegance of design. The 14-month design cycle of the x-box is painfully evident. Look at the size of the x-box motherboard! The gamecube motherboard looks to be the footprint of the processor heatsink on the x-box. :-P agh, and that ugly power supply....and all those empty spots on the motherboard. Future upgrade potential, maybe...And *two* fans!!! no surprise M$ is losing $100+ per box. I'm not sure about Gamecube, but at $100 cheaper than X-box, they could still be making money on the console with its clean design and small parts count...
of course, good hardware is only half the formula for success of the console. Games are important too...
And so the final big question is: what do you do when 50% of the units shipped have failed hard drives after 3 years? Those can't be "quality" hard drives in the x-boxes, and they probably aren't working in the friendliest of conditions...
All of the comments remind me of the movie Meet the Parents:
"I have nipples, could you milk me?"
Only here it's:
"It has a hard drive, can we install Linux?"
My sig of choice is Marlboro
Since he is trying to figure ou thow it works, is he breaking the DMCA or something like that?
Well, at least we know why the XBox shouldn't be moved without a forklift - the damn hard drive is taking up more than a quarter of the space. Since no other console has it, I think it's fair to say that without the hard drive the XBox would be more on par in terms of size. The controllers though, are still bigger than Australia.
Makes you wonder how badly they wanted the hard drive though. It certainly would have cut down on cost and size had they not included it, but they obviously didn't care too much about size or else they would have fixed the controllers. I personally think the hard drive is a dumb idea, but then, I think console games and PC games should remain forever separate (case in point: my friend tonight asked me if he should buy a USB mouse, keyboard, and $50 PS2 copy of Deus Ex, or just buy the $20 PC version of the game). I dunno, does anyone feel that the hard drive will really be a help to the console? I'd assume it goes along with their whole vision of it being MyDigitalEntertainmentX-Hub(tm). And we all know how people are wetting themselves for one of those!
Come back with a better form factor, a good price point, and some cool titles and I'll buy one. Right now though, I'm thinking Game Cube.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
...please, screwdivers have feelings too you know. Think next time, ok?
Warning: doing this might reduce your eBay resale value.
:)
Only if you conisder selling yourself.
Come to think of, I thought slavery was abolished looong time ago. Hmmm...
....it's called 'snowballing'... Nice of you to let us know you're a wannabe.
If you people are going to take the shock-value smut route, at least lend some authenticity, please....
You, of course, haven't been in the same room with real sex since your parents concieved you thru a bedsheet, which is where the vast majority of the DNA required for original thought still remains.
Is that an uncased switch mode powersupply I can see in one of the pictures. If so I wouldn't go near it with a barge poll.
Anybody got any saftey tops when handling SM-PSU's
Is it just me? Or does it seem as if the X-Box will be very easy to "hack"? How easy would it be to make an X-Box emulator, since its gfx card isnt even the best on the market. Someone with a GForce3ti would have a pretty large advantage over the X-Box. Plus, it didnt take very long for "hackers" to figure out a way to play coppies of games on the PS2, which has its very own processor that was designed just for it, so I dont think it will take very long for there to be a way to play coppies of X-Box games.. plus.. its a Microsoft product people!!! it will no doubtly crash on a daily basis!! I mean c'mon.. its just common sense!
Lame: Websters defines 'lame' as crippled or otherwise incapable.
It seems clear ST, that you have been given the gift of intelligence. Please let us know when you take it out of the box.
Microsoft had a significant promo spot on Just Shoot Me last night. Looks like they're really trying hard to sell this thing to the 12 year olds.
I wonder how much they had to pay for it. Anyone know?
I notice that the Xbox has a fan... How much noise does this box generate? What is the impact of this noise in a living room?
I am looking a way to reduce noise on my home computer. Downclocking the CPU and such so I can remove fans. Does anybody know of an external powersupply with no fan on it (bigger foot print for dissipating heat)? A bit like the C64 power supply?
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
You can have PC knowledge but that means we can be arrested as soon as you enter the US. Is that the risk worth hacking a gamebox?
..
:o))
Being on a blacklist until you come in the US so feds can crawl up your body to cuff and hold you for x(xx) days?
naaaah
I wish to be "free" to enter any country without those pesky rules of reverse engineering etc.., and, btw a criminal record of "hacking a gamebox" looks bad on your cv
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
A software like plex86 could solve these problems. It scans the code before it is executed and can virtualize even ring0 code. AGP gets faster every day and could be used to emulate the shared ram of the xbox. I'm sure that it is possible to run X-Box games on a pc without full emulation.
But on the other hand I think it will much easier to run pc software on the xbox. The only thing missing is a real pc standard bios. A VGA mode is maybe missing but that shouldn't be a large problem. I think it will take less than a month before we will see the first screenshots of linux running on the xbox. Or it will never happend because kernel hackers don't want to touch anything made by microsoft.
Jan
CAn you copy the system to a normal pc?
Then you could make your own
X in console format??
.. snortsnort....
Some info:
1) XBox will only boot from layer 2 of a DVD
2) The bios is held encrypted in the nv2a
3) IIRC the dvd drive isn't a normal one.
4) There is meant to be all sorts of encryption built into the hardware.
5) I think there are monitering routines to detect code tampering at run time.
6) The network stack is encrypted.
7) There is a custom disk format i.e. not fat32.
etc...
It will probably be cracked eventually, but I doubt we will be seeing linux on it any time soon...
Like Sony is going to for the Playstation? (and did in Japan already)
:-)"we have 50 Million Xbox's in living rooms now make some games for it":-)
BTW, anyone know when the Harddrive/Broadband adaptor will be available in the US?
See MS can't do a Linux Kit for Xbox because although it's just a gaming console, it is produced by the Evil Empire who has alterior motives relating to trying to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!! everything they make has some hint of that evil plan in it, it all makes me feel so sick.
Even if you'd like to get an Xbox to hack because you know it is sold at a loss, you become a barganing chip to entice support for the XboX known as installed userbase. MS would never let it be known that 50% of Xbox'es ended up running Linux and being used as PC's, they's just say
Evil evil evil....don't buy into the evil empire.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Instead of going all this trouble to crack open an Xbox, the should just ship it via UPS...
Especially since no direct hardware access is alowed, according to MS coding standards. (seems they are covering themselves for future upgrades).
Al hardware access is done with an API, so things like the shared memory model are only a performance issue, not a portability issue.
(It has to be an API, since its running a streamlined 2K kernel anyway).
But looking at these pics, i think the other way around will be much more fun.
Trying to make it run non Xbox x86 code.
The main problem will be any copyright/freakers protection they must have put in the system to prevent this.
I couldnt see any socketed ROMs in the picture, so the ultra easy way is off. Is there any way to 'listen in' to the data dat is being transferred from the DVD to the MoBo (with split cables etc etc)?
I'm not aware of this kind of tool, but if i can think it up, somebody must have made it.
There must be some sort of handshake going on to determine if its a bootable program in there, that is made for Xbox. If that could be cracked, sky would be the limit for messing around with the Xbox.
Ofcourse you could save yourself the trouble and just get an second hand PC for half the price of an Xbox to play with.
Sentry23
-no brain, no pain
I wonder how long it will take for people to start hacking the crap out of their XBoxen, and then start bitching and moaning about how much MS sucks because all their games start crashing.
At home I have Next Generation magazine's console gaming timeline, from the early 70's Telstars up to the last gen (N64 et al). :) to somebody who was whining about new consoles not coming out all the time that 90% of the time, console generations last 5 years. As well they should: it gives developers enough time to get used to the hardware and develop sequels. Look at the last batch of Playstation games compared to what came out with the console: the difference is *incredible*
I pointed out earlier, on a different thread, (and not at work
you've all overlooked the obvious.
WHO IS WORKING ON THE NETBSD PORT?
X-Box - Direct3D
GameCube - OpenGL
PlayStation 2 - Proprietary
Get a GameCube as it's the only one supporting open standards.
According to the Washington Post the xbox failed to sell out completely like other consoles have. Seems many people were waiting for the GameCube instead.
Really cheap PCs have a shared memory architecture, also. The video ram is shared with the main system ram.
Many PCs do work like that and it is simply a cheap way of doing things, not a significat difference at all.
Juln
I'm disappointed! It took a whole DAY for someone to disassemble an XBOX, and post pictures on the web for everyone to see? What took so long?!?
At this slow pace, it might take over a MONTH to get a custom Linux distribution running on it!
Come on guys, hurry up! I had my heart set on building an XBOX web server running Apache before Christmas.
Ha, they (TECHTV) can probably be sued under the DMCA now....
If this is a tech site, why the hell are all the images javascript popups instead of links. That is so annoying. You think they'd know better.
You're right that you couldn't build a PC with XBox specifications for less than the cost of an XBox, but that's not likely to be the goal for most of us. The more likely target is to answer the question, "what PC hardware do I need at a minimum so that I can run an XBox emulator and play XBox games without buying an XBox?"
Virg
...I mean, I can build a cheap PC with all that crap for less than the asking price of an Xbox.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
This from good 'ol News.com
Software maker Trilogy Studios said it plans to release a home "censorware" product that will cut scenes and language from DVDs to create PG versions of R-rated movies.
The company, which launched a new Web site last week, said it plans to unveil its Movie Mask DVD player by the first quarter of 2002. The software works on PCs and Microsoft's Xbox game console, telling the device to skip over specific frames in the film that portray violence, profanity or nudity. The company said the DVD remains unaffected, since the censorship instructions reside in the video playback device.
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Including a hacked version of the user level linux kernel.....
Most games avoid OS services anyway to gain speed (and lets face it directx is just a way to do this in a controlled manner.) so games and operating system kernels have much in common :-)
I think the Xbox could become what CD32 and CDI were trying to become.
Oh, and the Pippin. Way to innovate from another failed Apple product, Bill.
--saint
Meanwhile the Paper Street Software Company has recently announced plans for the Tyler Durdan DVD player which will randomly insert single frames of pronography into family films...
Anyone seen other reports that XBox is having hardware problems?
This report at The Inquirer suggests that the XBox launch could be more of a self-destruct.
In the future perhaps Microsoft will include one of their illegal EULAs and prevent the return/refund of the XBox.
A friend of mine who works at Target has already had to remove power from the XBox to get it to reset after it froze up.
- Pimp
I like computers, women and computers... in that order...
Warning: This site requires Javascript
Although I'm probably more of an "HTML Nazi" than most Slashdotters, I wish people wouldn't flame websites for their browsers crashing. Regardless of how bad their HTML is, calling it "nonstandard" pales in comparison to the nonstandardness of the web browser itself. Because, you see, one of the most basic standards of all software is: a program shouldn't crash when it is given bad input.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you really wanted a duplicate of this machine, you would need a motherboard based on nVidia's nForce chipset (I know it only supports AMD). Then you'd want to use DDR Ram (I'm sure the XBox isn't using SDR, maybe rambus?), and a GeForce3 (just to have the same gfx hardware). You wouldn't need a sound card, just use the sound on the nForce board, same with the network card.
- sig? who is this sig of which you speak?
I am shocked and appalled. Patrick Norton is so *not* fat. But I could be biased, since I watch the Screensavers religiously, and he is my god.
For a home system, with linux this is really good. Just add a little USB keyboard and you get yourself a very cheap system with a good 3D card, excellent sound, DVD...
Even the Beowulf argument makes sense if you compare the price you would have to get the boxes from DELL. Remeber, the stuff that goes in there is cheap but you still have to assemble it. And look at how little place the stuff takes.
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
OMG...that is absolutely horrible. SHARED RAM POOL!!! Have you ever had to deal with shared video? It's usually a Very Bad Idea (tm). I have had to deal with Intel 810 shared video, and it is slow, sluggish...UGH!
How does M$ think it's going to be able to compete with game boxes that give their video subsystems dedicated RAM?
I'd like to have a little pinch of what Gates et al are smoking...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
...a CD-ROM, a mobo, a CPU AND an HD?? why, I've never seen anything like it! ;)
sic transit gloria mundi
From what i can tell by looking at the pics, the wiring for the connecters are bassackwords (only the wiring/connecters look standard for the Hdd tho)
Looks like it has a VIA or other non-intel chipset and a Seagate Hdd.
Looks like an easy hack tho.
Given these facts:
CPU: PIII 733 MHz
GPU: nVidia 250 MHz (XGPU custom chip!)
RAM: 64 MB DDR
HDD: 10 Gb
Audio: ?
I/O: HDD-interface + 4x USB
http://gear.ign.com/articles/306618p1.html
It will managage Divx video. Question is if that GPU is supported by Xfree86?, or how difficult it would be to make it work.
Also any expansion possibilities besides USB?, Hidden PCI interface somewhere..?,
Wonder if that HDD interface is IDE or SCSI.. well I suspect IDE but you never know =)
You do know that there are other countries than the US where people do have PC knowledge. The DMCA does not apply to these countries. Also, how many reverse-engineer projects do you think has been discontinued or never started due to the DMCA??
I'm guessing zero!!
Yeah, I'll give you that much it can be shown that they can never come to visit U.S. soil without fear of prosecution.
The older Sony Vaios do it.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Xbox is a virus, which seems can infect anything, even subway turnstiles...
..from Redmond.
If you are for linux then do not rationalize buying
an X Box.
Microsoft has addressed the problem of constant and continuous freezing. As can be noted in the illustrated disection of the XBox, you will see multiple fans placed within the chassis. You will also notice that there appears to be a heat-related device placed upon one of the chips on the main board.
Given that the machine's outter chassis doesn't lend itself easily to the free flow of air through the chassis, then surely, the fans are used to distribute the air within the chassis itself. If that is the case, which I believe is true, then the air passing over the heat-related device affixed to one of the system's chips is then warmed and distributed within the chassis.
This would give the effect of evenly distributed warming within the chassis of the XBox device and thereby ambiguously warming any device within the XBox that is otherwise prone to freezing.
I have heard that if the problem perisists that Microsoft will supply a service-pack module (for $150) that strangely resembles a George Foreman grill. You are expected to mount the XBox within the service-pack module. The service-pack module is to be pre-heated a minimum of two minutes prior to game play.
At first note, it might appear to be objectionable that a user would have to wait such a long time for "pre-heating." However, Microsoft recommends hand-stretching exercises during this time period to help reduce the adverse effects of using their game controller.
So you see, it all comes together rather harmoniously in the end.
Long live XBox!
I found this scan of a motherboard pic through google images. funxbox.com no longer has the picture referenced on their page (let me guess why, oh, maybe blatent ripoff from some magazine), but the image is still there.
Interesting: this older picture shows all of the ram populated, no seperate fan on the graphics chip (I guess they added it due to overheating problems or paranoia), and only 1/2 of the flash populated. The new pictures don't show the second flash site, so I can't tell if its still the same.
This older picture has a small key showing what's what on the board. Does anyone know which magazine it came from?
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
So how long till someone cuts windows in the case with neon lights, installs water cooling, overclocks it, and installs linux? =)
Just a thought. It would be interesting to see if an agp-part hack in Linux using the intel i810 chipset would be possible. Doesn't the i810 carve off a peice of system memory for use as graphics buffer exclusive to the graphics controller. Might an enterprising hacker find a way to manipulate this memory with the cpu.
I don't know much about the i810 other than it sucks. But similar integrated chipsets may also provide for interesting play if this is possible.
Just a thought.
Karma whorin' since 1999
Microsoft and Co. are trying to tell you that this is beneficial to the X-Box somehow. For some reason, this seems vaguely similar to the N-Force hardware.
Hmm... Molex connectors, IDE cables, standard computer PSU unit. A very standard-looking CPU. Thank you Mr. Patrick Norton. You just gave me all of the answers that I wanted. That is why I like your show.
http://www.unl.edu/lfsf/xbox-xsux.jpg
--
"I have also mastered pomposity, even if I do say so myself." -Kryten
It baffles me how some people on slashdot hate Microsoft for stifling competion and then hates them when they try to promote it. How can more competition in the game console market be bad? It will likely only shorten console life cycles and lead to more companies putting lots of time and energy in high quality games and accesories. How can this be bad for the consumer? Frankly, I'm glad someone has lit a fire under Sony's ass and it's up to them to make the next move.
One thing I found humourous as I flipped through the TechTV photos was the warning on the outside of the box about opening it, and then once they did open it, the number of stickers insode with warnings and information that "technically" shouldn't be required if end users paid any attention to the outer sticker...
The1Genius - Littera Scripta Manet
Wow, that's pretty amazing. You couldn't have just hit the mute button on the TV and played them on your stereo instead? And you could have saved money overall by buying a couple of fat memory cards rather than paying for the hard drive.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
If this is all you can think about, how to port linux over to the Xbox, your parent's toaster or the family cat, sounds like you seriously need to get a life.
I've been curious about this. I often hear the argument from overclockers that even though getting Q3 to run at 170fps doesn't make any real difference than running it at 80fps, the difference comes when things get busy and your framerate gets cut in half. If you're running at 80fps, then you could get dropped to 30 or 40 momentarily, while if you're running at 170, you may get dropped down to 80 or so and it would still be quite playable. Now I'm wondering if this is actually true, or if there is more going on than that, what actual difference would it make?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I took these yesterday morning and just found out about this site today. Here is my contribution to the hacking effort:
www.techtransit.com/xbox
username:Xbox
passwd:granteD2
If anyone gets any info on the HD format or Hooking it up to your pc via a crossover let me know.
wow. that sucked.
not only did i get to see about fifty million pictures of some dude with a screwdriver, but the pictures of the box were totally worthless.
i got more from the wired article about it 5 months ago.
suck.
Why worry about the resale value of the console when you can just sell the box!
---- Just another spud server.
It baffles me how some people on slashdot hate Microsoft for stifling competion and then hates them when they try to promote it. How can more competition in the game console market be bad? It will likely only shorten console life cycles and lead to more companies putting lots of time and energy in high quality games and accesories. How can this be bad for the consumer? Frankly, I'm glad someone has lit a fire under Sony's ass and it's up to them to make the next move.
Didn't know it was Msftie Paul Allen's venture, untill I read this.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I know someone on the Xbox team, and here are some basics. EVERYTHING in the software is encrypted. Everything - the OS, the BIOS, the games,etc. The drivers in the hardware (disk, video, sound, etc) are not standard and have a crypto handshake procedure with the game software so that they don't run unless the game that is running talks to them correctly. The CD drive is this way too, and it looks for surface peculiarites on the ROM, including jitter. This box is not going to be impossible to hack, but my source said it would take him a long time to hack it, and he knew all the hardware internals. So good luck guys, you'll need it. But it will probably happen, it will just take a while.
Are you sure it's journaling? For something so simple as saved games and prefs, it may not need it. Does anyone know any real facts about the file system?
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
This is a question which seems to have gone unanswered. The Xbox faithful seem to ramble on about the technical specs of this thing, claim it's nifty to play DVD's on it, and gab about the hard drive. The Microsoft haters seem to have adopted the, "Micro$oft sucks! I hate them!" philosophy toward the machine.
Now, Microsoft has a slight reputational problem when it comes to the reliability of their software (that's putting it mildly, of course). Does this Xbox actually work as advertised, or is it a crashing, buggy mess like Windows?
Seems to be a rather simple question...
AGP memory usage can be read here
Okay, so if I'm wrong, please explain me why my Pentium Pro 200, 128Meg EDO RAM and a VooDoo2 card with 16Meg onboard (PCI, I don't think those come in AGP) kicks the hell out of my P-III 800, 128Meg SD-Ram and NVidia GeForce MX2 with 32Meg onboard (Aperture set to 64Meg, as set by default in my BIOS). Both systems ran under a stock Windows 2000 install, after bootup ideling at about 55Meg Memory used as reported by the taskmanager. Both had the latest available drivers installed. The game in occurence is Half-Life, which has good support for both graphic cards: Glide for the VooDoo and Direct3D for the NVidia. Why did the P-III suddenly used about 196Meg Ram instead of 128Meg on the PPro. Both games were set to 800x600x16bit and maximum details. The only plausible explanation I found was that the P-III reserved a huge amount of memory for graphics data in main memory and the machine got low on memory and had to swap. Proof to my theory (for me) was that adding 128Meg (more now) to the P-III fixed the problem.
I'm not a big gamer, but I was really astonished by those results.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
You would think with the supposed intelligence of the /. crowd, you guys would be a little more sensitive than this Nigger shit!
Ehm....take X-box disk out, insert disk in real PC, then ghost (or dd if=/dev/hdx of=/dev/hdy). Doesn't sound hard to me.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
A lot of you folks out there may not remember the 'original' version of Pong; but I had one....it's what I grew up on (my first video game as a matter of fact). At that time, we were just excited to HAVE a video game console; not whether or not it supports USB, can be hacked, can support TiVO, can download email messages or if the hard drive is too big (granted all of these options were not available anyway at the time). JESUS...it's a GAME SYSTEM! Why does everyone have to dissect a game system to search for its vulnerabilitis or its capabilities? Why not just see it for what it is: A GAMING SYSTEM!!!!!!!! Just enjoy the games people! If you don't like it because it's MS, then don't buy it (ie..Dreamcast). But then again, knowing THIS crowd, if I buy one NOW, my email will be sent to China via a server in Taiwan by means of a government unlock code that will get me arrested in 2 days. Just relax people and remember: IT'S JUST A GAME!!!!!!!!!!!
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
the xbox the technology behind the box is being brought to the computer. what i am talking about is the nforce set of motherboards from nvidia. the motherboards are very iintresting because it has on board video, sound and lan card intergration has become popular and the other manufactures will notice. the xbox seems a midpoint of two technologies. the computer and the console. it has the power of an computer infastrutre but has a static shelf life of a console. from this point on, the things that sperated the consoles from the computer will begin to rapidly merge to be one uniform product. will the xbox be sucessful in trying to sell us a all in one machine. is it trying to infilitrate the living rooms of america and spread the wide arms of microsoft across all parts of your life. will microsoft stragety of sell an all inclusive console work? will it bring up a new trend of intergration of internet and hard drive in to the console. we already seen sony having to bring out the ps3 sooner to match the force that microsoft has brung.
Me and lunchbox here are going to kick your ass.
A) Qualified as a technician, and therefore don't need the warnings, or
B) Think you're smart enough not to need warnings anyway.
So why two warnings, what a waste of money.
X-Box into a linuX-Box.
Let the hacking begin!
"... That is, there is no video card RAM on the Xbox, there is no system RAM on the Xbox, there is just 'RAM' on the Xbox. The GPU and CPU both have equal access to it. The PC, as you surely know, does not work like that."
The second part is incorrect. All of the newer 3DLabs Oxygen based graphics cards used a shared memory architecture which makes a certain amount of system memory directly available to the GPU. The GPU is a PCI "master" and thus can request the memory at its discretion.
I.e., this kind of architecture (where the GPU has no local-memory) is a very small step from that. From a pure hardware architecture point of view, the nForce can also do this (though the memory is partitioned.)
How many people stopped using their pirated version of windows when software piracy started to be considered ilegal?
How many people stopped smoking marihuana since it became iligal?
I think people started sharing and downloading MP3 on the internet more and more since Napster became so popular because of metallica. And now that Napster almost dissappeared there are more people sharing any type of files (audio, video, software) out there. And since that "violates" the DMCA (which, of course, violates people's rights), I haven't heard of people getting jailed for downloading an MP3, or using a "pirated" Windows, or posting a microsoft "trade-secret" on Slashdot.
I think the DMCA is just something for the people who call themselves "creators" of some things to shut their fucked kapitalist assholes off, while we all still being able of downloading what our balls sing.
You bet that they couldn't fit the X-box OS, and the game in RAM at the same time! I bet you that they needed the hard disk so virtual memory could save the day.
Who's gonna be the one to hack it and put linux on the hard drive?
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.