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.

Comments

Hmmm...

[Wavicle]

Rather light on information, even for slashdot... Still, it looks like a hackable box. Since consoles are generally sold at a loss, the Xbox could find itself a popular distributed computing node. We'll probably have to do an old TiVo trick and make a hard drive image backup before plugging in the unit... Then let the hacking begin.

Of course, MS almost certainly has used a proprietary filesystem to thwart such an effort. And reverse engineering such surely violates the DMCA.

Re:Hmmm...

[muffen]

And reverse engineering such surely violates the DMCA
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!!

Wow... looky here.

[SynKKnyS]

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.

Pictures, eh?

[KILNA]

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?

Re:Who wants to place bets

[ConsumedByTV]

Unless microsoft does some sort of hardware checking when each game starts as part of the SDK...

Re:Who wants to place bets

[Glonk]

Actually, that'd be basically impossible to do without some serious emulation.

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...

Is XBox noisy ?

[n-tone]

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 ?

What's the point of OC?

[Shaheen]

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.

Re:What's the point of OC?

[hyrdra]

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...

Re:... and the it all begins

[Elbereth]

You're talking like a PC and an X-Box are two different things. The X-Box is simply a custom PC motherboard with a custom PC chipset. Does this make it any less of a PC? I think not, but this is just my opinion.

Why not just put together your own "X-Box"? Get a standard MicroATX or FlexATX motherboard (1 to 3 PCI slots, 0 to 1 AGP slots, 1 to 3 DIMM slots), stick in a 2.5" laptop EIDE hard drive and 2.5" slimline DVD-ROM, and you're mostly set. You need to figure out how to get decent graphics out of a motherboard that probably has an integrated graphics chip (S3 Savage4, SiS 5xx or 6xx, ATI Mach64 or Mach128, or generic crapola)... but consider this: the most popular games right now are not first person shooters. The most popular games right now are Diablo II, The Sims, Civ III, etc. These games do NOT require anything better than a crappy ATI Mach64 chip (ie, Rage Pro).

Once you've got something running at 900 MHz (have you seen anything slower sold online lately?), a 20GB hard drive (again.. ever seen anything smaller sold online?), and an adequate graphics card (or even a next-gen graphics card like the GeForce3 or new Radeon All-In-Wonder), you can laugh at that silly X-Box.

Advantages of the Flex-ATX system

1. I'm using a standard chipset, probably from Intel, SiS, or AMD (no, not VIA, because VIA sucks). My chipset is well-supported and proven.
   
2. I'm using quality components and not skimping on the power supply, RAM, or CPU fan. Again, my Flex-ATX system is more stable.
   
3. I know the hardware and diagnose problems easily. I know everything about Asus motherboards by now, after using them for so long. Most importantly, I know their quirks.
   

Disadvantages of the Flex-ATX system

1. It does suffer from using "random", commodity PC hardware, rather than a uniform system (but, then again, I hate every Compaq I see because of their uniformity in suckitude).
   
2. It costs a little more to build
   
3. There's no billion dollar ad campaign behind the F-Box.
   
4. It's not exciting to hack.
   

I know, I know... I'm a spoilsport, too cynical, I "just don't get it", etc. I've heard all the flames before, but I haven't heard a good, rational argument that would change my mind.

The actual pictures are here...

[at-b]

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

hmmmm....

[bunnie]

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...

Re:*Yawn*

[Wavicle]

The 'stripped down PC' uses a shared memory architecture that you won't find on a modern PC.

In this case that's a function of the operating system kernel.

Also runs all code at Ring0.

Also a function of the kernel.

And I think it's quite clear that the Xbox was designed (hardware-wise) specifically as a gaming system.

I disagree. Games don't need a hard drive, a dvd drive, USB port, or ethernet port. Although it is marketed as just a games box, it's pretty clear that it is also intended to serve tasks such as a DVD player, broadband WebTV (and all that goes with it), Personal Info Manager (Outlook Xbox), etc.. Microsoft hinted that they would discourage xbox usb peripherals from being developed... I'm betting within 18 months you'll see an internet access pack for the Xbox that includes a usb hub, usb keyboard and usb mouse.

I think the Xbox could become what CD32 and CDI were trying to become.

Like a Buick

[krmt]

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.

Re:so what does the price tally to

[Elbereth]

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.

XBOX harder to hack than you think

[voronoi]

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...