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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.
Basically, what it comes down to is the Xbox has the shared memory architecture, and the PC does not. 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.
Then there's the fact that the Xbox games are all designed to run at Ring0 in the kernel, too...
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)
I don't think it will take much hacking. Nvidia chip set, Intel CPU, Segate HD. If CD Boot isn't disabled you can probably take the HD out, put your own in and install linux. I'm half tempted to buy one just so I can see....but I vowed I would never own on, so I'll have to let somone else try it.
It is NOT a regular PC. CPU, chipset and GeForce3 are modified for console purposes, first and foremost they share the entire 64 megs memory of the box. So, no AGP etc. necessary.
As for copy protection, it's a DVD-9 drive, which consumer-level DVD writers can't do (yet).
Have you even read any reviews of for example Halo? When the going gets tough, the xbox drops its framerate considerably. Perhaps it will alleviate this problem..
The framerate is not in fact fixed on any system. Consoles run programs just like any other computer system, and those programs can do whatever they want with their processor time. They can spend all their time pushing scene detail to the GPU (even through only 30 fps makes the cut), doing physics calculations, etc. I'm sure any intelligent game programmer won't try to push for 100 fps on a 29.97 NTSC output, but you never know and it's still a possibility.
You also neglected to mention that the PC framerates of 172 are also not viewable because there aren't many people running their monitors with a VSYNC of 180 Hz (or similar, not that many monitors support refresh rates this high). So it's just wasted, which just reaffirms the fact the crazy watercooling overclockin' gamers are really crazy...
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
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
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...
The DMCA. If you reverse engineer it and try to profit off that information, you've violated federal law today. The code inside is copyright MS, you broke the code, you sold it, you go to jail.
:-/
Isn't the land of the free wonderful?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Well, I don't think you can really duplicate this system exactly, since some parts of the system are custom jobs (ie, an Intel CPU with an nVidia chipset). However, if you wanted to make a comparable system:
Case: $30 (cheapo mATX) to $100 (Antec ATX)
Motherboard: $50 (cheap mATX) to $150 (Asus ATX)
750MHz CPU: $40 (OEM) to $65 (Retail)
128MB RAM: $10 (OEM) to $25 (Retail)
Good AGP card: $75 (Radeon LE) to $350 (GeForce3)
20GB hard drive: $60 (OEM) to $100 (Retail)
DVD-ROM: $50 (OEM) to $100 (Retail)
Sound Card: $35 (OEM) to $100 (Retail)
Cables, floppy, keyboard, mouse, and other misc components would add another $50 if you didn't already have them.
Altogether, probably $400-500 with OEM parts. IMHO, this would kick the ass of the X-Box, but you'd have to spend more money for it.
Yup MS have lots of nasty cryptographic tricks; the BIOS and system components are all encrypted and there is proprietary hardware on the mobo to decrypt the data.
It ain't gonna be easy to crack, that's for sure.
GodboltBlog
Can't say much (under NDA here) but the copy protection system is several steps above and beyond anything currently out there, drawing from various hardware facilities and strong cryptography with all code and data on the DVD and HD being signed/crypted.
If I were a betting man I'd bet against the protection being broken in the next year or so - it really is that much of a leap above the usual PS-style damaged block/weak crypto system.
GodboltBlog
That simply isn't true - the CPU has no direct access to the RAM on a graphics card. Period. Instead it must use memory mapped IO to set up DMA transfers to and from the graphics card's RAM, or poke each byte individually over the bus - very unlike the direct cache-line level access it has to its own RAM chips.
Xbox on the other hand has all of the RAM available to both devices; they share access to the same physical RAM - PCs have two physically distinct RAM banks; one on the graphics card and one on the motherboard.
Of course there is AGP but this is a way for the graphics card to read and write to a limited subset of the mainboard's RAM - and very slowly at that, causing all sorts of contention issues. At no point can the processor or its MMU access the memory on the graphics card directly.
GodboltBlog
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...
No, it is not noisy, nor is it very hot, even after a long game of Halo. My PS2 is noiser and hotter than my XBox. My Dreamcast is noiser than either of those two.
On another note, it's nice to go into the memory settings and see "50,000+ blocks free" rather than something like "15/128 blocks free". Thats with a saved game from each of my 3 launch titles, too. =)
Its pretty darn silent. I think this could be classified as a "silent pc". Can't really hear the fan (the dreamcast is much louder than this thing). Sometimes I can hear the hard drive purring.
And BTW this thing is dang cool. Played Halo for 7 hours straight last night (this morning?). Totally awesome game. For those that are complaining about load times its about 10 seconds for Halo which I think is pretty good. Some may disagree. On the whole I am glad I got the console. Can't wait till I save up enough for Project Gotham. Now that looks cool.
I think it had something to do with the power going thru the usb ports, I THINK it was juiced up you could say, to provide better support for force feedback joysticks or something like that.
It was a while ago I was reading about it though so it may have just been a fragment of info from something else I was thinking of.
Im curious to know if you can use a keyboard/mouse with this, one that is made for a pc (similar to how you can use them on ps2), or if you are going to have to buy XBOX(TM) only stuff. From what I can remember, the usb ports on the front for the controllers were a little bit different size then a standard usb port, but only someone who has one is going to be able to tell us.
I myself am going to wait for the gamecube. For only 199 bucks, its quite a bargain, and nintendo usually has very solid 1rst party games, and with the change to a cd type of format, I hope more 3rd party developers jump on board, I hear that one of the main things they tried to do when making the gamecube was to make it easy on developers when making games.
But.. halo is looking mighty tempting =)
That's just plain untrue; developers have full access to the components that matter (i.e. the graphics and sound processors). Those that aren't time-critical, such as the HD and network card are driven by the kernel in BIOS. So MS can upgrade them to cheaper components as time goes by without breaking games. There is no plan for 'future upgrades'.
Xbox runs in RING0 all the time, so game code can poke the hardware as much as it likes...the 'API' you mention is as thin as possible and can be bypassed directly.
Yup; but you'll be lucky to get past the crypotographically signed data going back and forth; you'd have to sign all the data with Microsoft's key first...good luck there.
Where the heck are you getting your 'information' from - you don't appear to have a clue what you're talking about.
GodboltBlog
Thanks- it looks like it's from this this wired 9.05 story. The web version doesn't include the picture.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
True, but having seen what MS can do to an entire industry, people are a little nervous.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nice pics. Could you put up a nice hires pic of the motherboard? What are the chip numbers on the memory chips? Just curious. It's strange that they have places for 4 memory chips but only have 2 on there.
Regarding the HD; if you've got an extra >8GB drive lying around, you might try sector-copying the Xbox drive to the larger drive and see if the Xbox will recognize the larger drive and its larger space.