Slashdot Mirror
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...
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).
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.
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
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. =)
True, but having seen what MS can do to an entire industry, people are a little nervous.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on