Slashdot Mirror
Another Xbox Anatomy Lesson
Keith writes: "Icrontic.com has taken apart, examined, and modified an Xbox. In their latest article, they point out some debugging leads on the Xbox, and a possible USB hack. The Xbox is looking more and more like a PC." A lot of the investigation here is incomplete; watch this space, because it won't be long until Xbox surgery is commonplace.
Could this be used as a (relativly) cheap X Terminal?
Look at it! the hard drive even has a red to one IDE cable for gosh sakes, its a PC that looks like a console, what a clever company though, get a pc, package it as a console and call it the most advanced console ever (altho they did ignore the diffirence between RISC and CISC chips)
smart company, shitty product
Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
HardOCP have also ripped the guts outta the xbox, and their server seems to be a bit more responsive as well.
Plus I trust the hardocp guys a bit more than the average "look maw!Ii'm on the interweb!" reviewer
So if the XBOX is just a PC what are the chances of hacking it so it can use bleem to play playstation (PSX) games.
:)
It'd be fun to see microsoft embroiled in a copyright dispute from the other side
In other console news, Hong Kong has hacked the gamecube into playing pirated games burned onto MINI-DVD or CD-R formats. They have developed a CD/DVD addon and use the Gamecube's expansion ports to implement it.
Pretty quick if you ask me.
That's Funny.
From the other Slashdot link to techtv , the innards of the Xbox show a Seagate hard drive. This one, however is a WD. Different brands of HD in different Xboxes?
I would think that kind of odd - wouldn't it be cheaper to just use one brand?
Never. It's common information that MS is selling the box cheap to get more cash on the games. If you're buying the box but are not going to buy the games, why should MS give a rat's ass about you? Actually it's kind of ironic - microsoft is selling the xbox so cheap that the cruelest thing a microsoft-hater could do to microsoft is to go out and buy the box and use it just for cd's, dvd's and stuff like that. That would mean no profits to microsoft.
I'll wait for the emulator. I figure if a PC is running it, it won't be hard to make MY PC run it
You really need the pictures to do it justice, but here's the text:
:).
The Guts
[picture of xbox w/ cover open]
Here's what awaits you under the hood. If you've come this far, you have now voided your warranty, congratulations. After this, just take out the hard drive and DVD-ROM and you're in.
[pictures of two IDE hard drives]
Microsoft is actually using two different kind of hard drives in the Xbox. One is a Seagate ST310211A U Series 5 10GB hard drive. That's right - 10GB, not 8GB like Microsoft claims. The second kind, which is the kind we got, is the Western Digital Protege WD80EB, which is a 5400RPM 8GB drive. The Western Digital drive is not listed on Western Digital's website. It appears some people are getting the 8GB Western Digital drive, while others are getting the 10GB Seagate drive. We tried plugging the hard drive into a normal computer. No operating system will recognize it. No surprise there, it's probably a proprietary filesystem. This will be pretty easily circumvented, however, and you should be able to hook the Xbox hard drive into your computer and get files off of it. I'm working on a program to do this.
[pictures of motherboard]
Microsoft is nicely silk-screened on the motherboard. How cute. Also note how there is a silk-screen for additional memory. There are two more silk-screens on the back of the motherboard as well. Apparently Microsoft sent out development kits, which had 128MB of memory instead of the 64MB of memory that comes with the retail kit. That's what these silk-screens are for. Perhaps Microsoft will release a future version of the Xbox with more memory. If you're a very skilled solderer you could actually solder additional memory chips onto the motherboard. I was also surprised to find that there was no shielding on the power supply unit, and no active fan on the CPU.
[next page]
Motherboard Features
[pictures]
Here's the little riser card the controller ports plug into. Chances are you can modify this to connect some kind of USB hub to it. We're still working on it.
[picture of circuit board]
Notice the "DEBUG" silk-screen? I wonder if shorting that lead lets you enter the BIOS. We still have to test this.
[pictures of power cables]
The Xbox has an AT power cable.
[next page]
Onboard Chips
[pictures of chips]
The nVidia MCPX3 Southbridge and a Samsung DDR memory module (specsheet located here). The nForce uses AMD's Hypertransport technology.
[picture of chip]
This is the Conexant video encoder chip, which performs DVD video decoding.
[pictures of heatsink and GPU]
Underneath the heatsink lies the nVidia XGPU, the video GPU of the Xbox.
[picture of Celeron]
Intel has their BGA mobile Celeron 733MHz with a 133MHz FSB on the Xbox. It's impossible to take out without some serious modification.
[picture of thermal paste on motherboard]
We took off the thermal pad that was on both the GPU and the CPU and put some nice thermal paste. Now it's ready to be overclocked
[next page]
Back of The Motherboard & Conclusion
[pictures of back of motherboard]
Here's the back of the motherboard after we took it out. Note the two silk-screens for additional memory.
[picture of tape]
These little pieces of tape are on the back to prevent the board from getting scratched by the metal casing.
[picture of ATA100 cable]
And last but not least, we tried to substitute an ATA100 cable in for the Xbox's ATA33 cable. Unfortunately, this did not work. The Xbox would not even show an error message after we did this. The motherboard can support ATA100, but Microsoft must have the motherboard programmed to only allow the hard disk to run at a certain transfer setting. Too bad.
That's where we are right now. There is a lot of potential here for hacking this machine. It can be done. I think the debug trace will open up a lot of options once we learn how to use it. This COMPUTER does have a BIOS, and there must be some way to get to it. It's also possible to wire in a USB hub into the controller riser card. We're still working out the wiring for this, and once we get it to work we will share the process with you.
I think it's definitely possible to upgrade the hard drive. I'm planning on ghosting the data to another drive. I'm sure someone has already tried this, and if you have please email me and tell me if it worked or not. What we're also going to try is upgrading the DVD-ROM. We're going to put a computer DVD-ROM in the unit, plug the ATX power connector into a running computer, and plug the IDE cable into the DVD-ROM. Hopefully it will accept the new drive. Chances are it won't, though.
Microsoft appears to have hard locked what kind of hardware is allowed on this machine. That doesn't mean it can't be hacked or tricked to allow upgrading. It's only a matter of time before someone figures it out. The Xbox IS modifiable, we just need to figure out how.
If you're interested in modifying your Xbox, or if you would just like to chat about your Xbox, please check out our Xbox forum. I will be monitoring it and giving advice and tips to help you modify your Xbox. Please share what you've done so we can figure this thing out!
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
...slashdot sure seems to have blown its collective load several times over since the XBox's release.
- 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?"
Could MS have made a mistake here? Basically, they are putting a (stipped down) PC into a console package. With the console selling less than WinXP (depending on, well a lot of stuff) what is to prevent everyone from re-tooling the Box into a cheap-ass PC? Not to hard even for novices at this point, I'd think.
Perhaps more is not better this time?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
$300 Xbox
-----------
$300 733MHz P3 + 10mbit ethernet
$100 1.33GHz T-Bird
$100 Motherboard
$70 20G HD
$50 case + 300W PSU
$30 Linksys 100mbit ethernet
-----------
$350 1.33 GHz Athlon + 100mbit ethernet
Xboxes are cheap, but not that cheap. My numbers are my guess of pricewatch * 1.5, which is what I usually end up paying. With the Xbox you're also paying for an NVidia chipset close to a GF3 with TV-out and controller(s?).
"Xbox 8 of 42 in sector 47 Alpha reports an unauthorized modification attempt underway!"
"Initiate counteraction response 1432 Delta!"
"1432 Delta counteracation successful. Unauthorized technology modification attempt terminated."
"We are the Borg. All attempts to modify our proprietary technology have been reversed. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile, have a nice day."
All consoles mainly differ from the pc by their Unified Memory Architecture. This basically means that all of the hardware shares the same memory so the latency between the various parts is nearly zero. Basically your graphics card and cpu use the same memory as your sound card. Xbox just takes the top of the line graphics card and eliminates the bottle-neck of pushing numbers to it. Don't kid your selves the first genaration titles look better then PS2 and weren't designed to truly take advantage of all the xbox can do. Later games will look MUCH better. Of course, the true secret is in the sauce. If the games aren't fun what does it matter how much better they look. It's why nintendo is still alive. They make good games.
Run Linux on it, and with the built in broadband, it could be used as a decent MP3 player maybe? It has Dolby certified audio output if I remember correctly, which would be great to run through a home theatre system
That would be pretty cool to see... a game console that doubles as a self-contained MP3 player/server...
So when is this Linux for X-box coming out? heh
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
...slashdot sure seems to have blown its collective load several times over since the XBox's release.
/. saying that we've figured out how to get linux, a X11 server, and SDL ported onto the Xbox. It would be like shoving a million needles in microsoft's eye when it happens.
And why not? I think MS is irrelevant to the fact that it is indeed a cheap alternative to the PC once we get the internal workings figured out. In these hard economic times, who wouldn't want a cheap PC?
And what would make us blow our load harder (and Bill Gates top higher) than an article on
Of course, there is the argument that we're just throwing money back into the devils pocket. Actually though, we're not. MS is taking about $100's loss per unit. With Linux running on it, it would give game developers an alternative to MS licensing on the XBox. You see, every game company that want's to make a game for any console system has to pay the console maker a royaltee on every game they make. So if we get the Xbox figured out, we could really start fucking with MS's head.
One last reason to blow a load on the Xbox, it's just PC hardware, which I myself really understand well myself. Sure I could be taking apart a SunE250 server, but who has the money or the access to one? Even if you had access, my boss would certainly look at me strangely if I had a screwdriver near anything Non-PC in the enterprise class of hardware.
Hope you enjoyed that, please aim your load away from me now.
Irony # 1: Paying M$ money (buying XBox) in order to run Linux on it. They'll be laughing all the way to the bank. I guess techies will find any excuse to conveniently forget why they hate MS - just offer them tech candy and they submit.
/. about how ironic aforesaid misunderstood course of action is. Joke's on you, my friend.
Irony # 2: Doing #1, then thinking somehow you've won a victory for Open Source. And then, posting on
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
BUT.........
Just a few days ago there was another discussion at this fabulous web site about hacking the XBox, and several people pointed out that M$ uses various encription techniques in this machine which makes hacking incredibly difficult.
Perhaps before people start spanking their monkeys for a second time thinking about hacking an XBox, they should recall the discussion following the first article.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Considering them irrelevant and technically backward hurts them FAR worse, even if it is true. And the XBox is technically backward- frame rates are poor for a console, and it's early days to be talking about reliability. Don't waste your time on the silly thing. Buy paintball equipment instead- now that's a game ;)
I think the original poster meant that the launch developers were "rushed" to get their titles out, so they weren't able to make all the tweaks that later developers can do. Usually the difference between "generations" of games is fairly vast. Look at the PS1 (yes PSOne) launch titles and look at the ones being released now. The developers have learned in the ins and outs of the system, what it is good at, what it is not good at. They have developed libraries of code to reuse. This is what developers can do with a machine that remains constant for over 5 years.
On the other hand, since X-Box is basically a PC, I don't know if the differences will be that great after the second generation games. From what I hear, PS2 was hard to program for because of its multiprocessor design, so the differences between the launch titles and today's games are fairly vast since the developers have gotten a handle of things now.
Slashdot loves hardware that somebody is helping pay for.. It includes everything from hackable bar code scanners (thanks Digital Convergance), pre programmed internet terminals (thanks I-Opener) and now hackable PC hardware (thanks Bill).
The truth shall set you free!
I actually found that link insanely funny. If you're such a low user number and you fall for that old trick... hehe... Hope you're not admining anything important....
While it's true that MS is losing money on the hardware, any purchase of the hardware will help them achieve the exonomics of scale that will allow them to reach break-even (or even profitability) on Xbox. By the way, this is standard console practice; the Playstation 2 was also a loss leader at its intro:
Driving down production costs will be a determining factor in profitability over the next five years. According to most estimates, Sony's PlayStation 2 cost the company $450 per unit upon initial production in early 2000. The company had first sold the machine as a loss leader for $360 in Japan and for $300 in the United States and Europe. The strategy paid off with the first Play Station because Sony was able to reduce the product's cost from $480 in 1994 to about $80 now (it was initially priced at $299 and is sold at about $99 today). Meanwhile, the company sold about nine games for every console. That model allowed Sony to make billions of dollars over the life of the PlayStation, even if it lost money at first.
source: Red Herring
While estimates say MS will lose $2 billion on hardware before break-even, much of that could be recouped in games from Day One, and the hardware should itself become profitable relatively soon.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Second, do you honestly believe an established multimillion dollar game publisher is going to risk MS's wrath by publishing games that run on the X-Box but are unlicensed? Not to mention the legal ramifications if a publisher decides to skip on the royalties. Sure, I expect the X-Box to be hacked, and yes, we might get PC games to run on it and all of our other software, but I seriously doubt any of the big publishers (e.g. EA, THQ) has the balls to stand up to MS and release unlicensed games designed for the X-Box but not anywhere else and just release it as is. I'm sure that the publishers have some competent developers around that could reverse engineer the consoles, but there's a reason they just don't release unlicensed games.
Anyway, just some thoughts. I'm not saying that MS's move into consoles is necesarily bad, but this is just a broader strategy to increase their goals of dominating new areas and increase their growth. I also personally do not believe MS has a chance against Sony, and from the looks of things, maybe not even GameCube. Their hardware does look very nice, but I don't know if they can hold out for the long haul without itching to build a new device too quickly.
OK, put your mouse over the submitter's name (Keith). The link is to Icrontic.com. But that's also the site he points us to in his post.
I wish the Slashdot editors would check to see that the story isn't just spam, promoting the poster's site.
qslack.com
I'm also keeping a close eye on the preferences page for an "XBox" section I can uncheck so I don't have to see these useless stories anymore.
-Legion
AOL, M$, what's the difference?
and it's even a low-end PC: it's a fairly unimpressive processor, and they're not even using the highest end video cards available, which is, of course, crucial for a game console.
the use of DirectX is another thing, however. in terms of PC compatability (not interesting to me, since i don't use M$ ever, but it's still a market factor worth talking about), it helps alot, and that's really apealing to a game designer. the problem is the M$ doesn't know crap about portable code, so DirectX is pretty closely tied to x86 architectures, without major work. which is why they put an Intel chip in there, which costs them in terms of performance. which does not look good to a game designer. it remains to be seen whether they made the correct tradeoff.
what i'd like to see is someone design the game interfaces around something more cross-platform, like OpenGL. that'd open the way to more games on more platforms, and PCs running varous OSs. but most console makers don't want that. M$ was willing to "compromise" with DirectX because they own the only other place it runs, too! (excluding small, not-really-relavant-to-the-market hack jobs for other OSs, with poor performance and not-quite-finished functionality)
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Any X-Box owners out there that can testify to the existance or absence of any sort of EULA for the hardware? Microsoft is somewhat famous for their software EULAs, would it be so supricing to find one on the X-Box?
I've looked at the boxes they come in, but short of buying one I haven't been able to check out the included liturature. Perhaps one of you can stop gaming/hacking for a moment and actually read the paper waste that came with the box.
Not that it will make a difference one way or the other. But you figure they have to know there's a hacker community out here just waiting to rip this thing apart. If not, I'm sure it will be a real i-opening experience!
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
One interesting thing, though, is that it seems like all of the consoles have the standard "50,000 blocks" of memory to save games and music on the XBox. Where are the additional blocks for the 10 gig system? (Or less blocks for the 8 gig?)
- The Xbox is still cheaper than even the cheapest PC. This makes a difference at the low end of the market.
- Unless you buy a bunch of parts, it's not all that easy to buy a PC without M$ getting paid for a pre-loaded OS.
Let's think about the state of the world, 6 months from now. The Xbox is completely hacked, and loading Linux takes about an hour per box. If I'm running a business that needs low-cost desktops (or even low-cost servers), I might be tempted to deploy Linux Xboxes.I'm not saying this is the universal answer for everyone, but we are looking at the latest attempt at subsidized hardware in pursuit of a captive software market. I see nothing wrong with taking advantage of subsidized hardware if I can escape from software captivity. If M$ doesn't like it, then they can price the console at a level that reflects its cost.
IMHO: Of all the companies that might attempt to market unhackable devices, M$ would be dead last in their ability to pull it off. The only time-tested method of making unhackable devices requires the use of non-standard (expensive) components. This drives up the per unit cost, which is unacceptable in a subsidized hardware environment.
Microsoft will most certainly bust out the DMCA on you and have you arrested.
You have been warned.
M$ shareholders would most certainly demand prosecution under the DMCA. M$ will be forced to act.
Aeh.
733 MHz Celeron? ATA33 cable (and drive I assume)? 10 GB drive? as a friend said, its an eMachines computer in a black box, sold by MS. :-P
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
The XBox uses a X86 chip (Cu'mine Celeron, ie a P3 core) & a NVidia unified memory multimedia/graphics I/O chipset.
Right now Taiwan's motherboard makers are in the process of bringing out Athlon boards based on the EV6 bus version of NVidia's unified memory 'NForce' multimedia/graphics chipset.
That means that there will be X86 Linux chipset drivers for NVidia's unified memory multimedia/graphics chipset. & the next kernal revision will most probably have them pre-integrated.
This means one should, with little work (once the HDD is re-partitioned/formated, so it no longer has MS's propietry XBos filesystem on it), be able to load a standard X86 distibution on it - such as the Madrake 8/1 gaming installation.
Then any X86 Linux games should hopefully work.
8GB WD, 10GB S'gate
As someone who has used and maintained Macs and Wintel boxes since Windows 3.1, and *nix boxes since 98, I can genuinely say that there is a lot to the anti-MS argument besides their monopoly power abuses. I do not hold that against them as much as the average /.er either; I have Office v.X and IE for X on my system (although I tend to use other apps instead of them most of the time).
Now your argument seems to be that MS's problems are gone. First, stability is improving, but it is still playing catch-up with the other OSes. A complaint that is still valid in Win 2000 and beyond, however, is that Windows is much more prone to having problems for seemingly random reasons, as opposed to other OSes where I may still have complicated problems, but at least i will find a reason for them. Anyone else know what I am talking about?
Secondly, you argue that bloatware is no longer a problem in Redmond. How did you come to this conclusion? I see no trend towards more compact software in their latest products. As MS said, it is very hard to take features out, and as most of us know it is hard to consolidate and reengineer with such large development teams.
And the monopoly power does have an effect on the product they make; it inspires it to be mediocre and overpriced. Consider Office v.X vs AppleWorks (I know most of you son't have direct experience with both, but it's a good example). Yes, Office does a little more, but I would say 95% of the features are in AppleWorks, and AppleWorks is a beautiful example of how not to overbloat a program and is therefore more efficent for me to do most of my work in. Why is this? MS made some progress in Office 2001, then got complacent because they know they need only do a mediocre job. Same with IE for Mac, back in version 4.0 chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki himself endorsed it for freeing us from the weak Mac version of Netscape, and the development has slowed to a crawl and resulted in a mediocre product that has been surpassed by OmniWeb. Now consider that AppleWorks is $99 and Office is $499 (full version prices for both).
Anyways, I think the quote in my signiture sums it up best; who would know better than the man who figured out how a computer should be designed to work with people in the first place. Consider how many good products have buckled under the competitive pressure of mediocre MS software, and hopefully now you understand why so many people want to buy an XBox and turn it into a cheap Linux system just to make MS lose money:)
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
So I've been thinking about all this interest in hacking the XBox, and I've decided to take part in the fray. Bold statement: Hacking the XBox to do other stuff would be cool, mainly because it would earn one bragging rights, but it would be useless.
The technology in the XBox is more expensive than a comparable PC. A $300 PC has much higher resolution video, more/expandable memory, standard expansion slots, a faster/larger HD, compatability with productivity software, and some even have TV output. The one thing that it doesn't necessarily have is the DVD-ROM.
THAT'S IT.
In the time it takes you to hack this device, the hardware gap will only increase. The only advantage to owning an XBox over a PC is in its entertainment value. Porting Linux to the XBox is an absolute joke. Since when has Linux been a platform for playing video games? Porting Windows would be far more interesting, but in all seriousness, Microsoft did that for you with DirectX (hence the X in the name XBox).
Microsoft designed the XBox knowing that you're going to try, so if picking all the Microsoft protections satisfies your personal vendetta, go for it. You won't be able to market anything you come up with without a team of lawyers larger than Microsoft's, and if you're looking for render-farms, I hear that people waste CPU cycles all day long on the internet. If you convince a whole bunch of people to donate their unused CPU cycles, you benefit far faster than you do spending $300 a pop for a Box that's likely to be sold out at your local toy store for months.
Don't listen to me. I just work here.
-Mike
yes we are, and you know something? It's pretty damn nice in this here ideal world.
Btw - why can't I just hate MS indiscriminantly and be taken at my word? Why do people think that I need to somehow justify to them my relationship (or lack thereof) with a company?
I hate their guts. I don't use their software - case closed.
sic transit gloria mundi
They've already release a EV6 bus (Athlon) version of their NForce unified memory graphics/multimedia i/o chipsets.
This means that X86 Linux NForce chipset drivers are probably already out.
Here's a preview of the referance board
Here's a pic of the board
PC unified memory chipsets in the past (SIS, VIA/Trident Blade, VIA/Savage, Intel 810/815), never really had the memory bandwidth for fast gaming graphics, but with a combination of twin bank & DDR its no longer a problem.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Tradtionally, UMA is a huge performance issue because all the components are accessing memory over the same, narrow bus. However, Xbox uses AMD's HyperTransport bus, which effectively provides a dedicated channel for each device on the bus (in the Xbox's case I believe just the CPU and GPU are on the bus).
sigs are a waste of space
.. or has the quality of newbies gone down?
Firstly, don't think your going to be able to put RedHat bootdisks in and fire it up.
MS will have pretty good security here to stop this working (I know, Dreamcast's protection got hacked eventually, but we need a simpler way of doing this).
What I suggest is the Trojan way in. We need to get a boot disc that has the capability of loading something like VMware/Bochs, and is certified by MS (The tricky bit). Once that is done, we're in. We use that as a bootloader, swap discs, and carry on as usual.
Not the perfect solution, but it's a start to get a development system onto the machine.
And it would show Linux running on a XBox onto a TV, this fact alone would be an achievement, no?
So, who's up for a bit of social engineering into talking someone at MS to let us use a CDR with emulating boot code?
As an aside, does anyone know if the XBox is region locked? I'm visiting the US tomorrow and would like to know if it's worth me bring a machine back to the UK. Ta!
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Um I for one cannot stand the thought of gaming on something using a crappy low res TV (& even the highest end HDTV running at 720p is less than what I run my crystal clear monitor at for gaming). So your thought about killing gaming on the PC (as frankly billy knows most PC gamers don't run Linux for gaming... & no don't try to say you do, those 50 or so games that run on linux won't satisfy a serious PC gamer), would be the worst possibel thing he could ever think up... & he knows very well it would be that sorta idea, so it's never gonna happen...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
64Mb is a bit on the slim side for rendering nowadays. I work in the digital effects industry, and our render farm boxes all have at least a gig of RAM. Really, I think you'd be better off buying rack systems - they won't end up that more expensive, they'll do the job properly, and you won't have to mod them yourself. And of course, they'll actually have a warranty after you've set them up... ;)
Actually the gamecube has a fan on the left side (when it's facing you), It also has venting on both left & right sides... The PS2 is more like a laptop in that it's casing just gets hot...
No modern system is very cool running & their aren't many alternatives to using fans...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
It's the TV-Out chip.g in e.class/Web/products/products.jsp?Type=Prod&ProdFa mId=10&ProdCatId=0&ProdSubCatId=94&PartId=278&clrT rail=yes
http://www.conexant.com/default.sph/SaServletEn
If it was doing the DVD playback it'd be marked 'Video Decoder'
and I don't think Conexant actually makes an MPEG-2 decoder chip.
HardOCP made the same mistake... Hmm...
Paul "TBBle" Hampson
Paul.Hampson@Pobox.Com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm pretty sure the XBox is for sale at "regular" retail stores. There is no way that retail stores are going to go to the trouble of getting signed contracts from each person who buys an XBox. It would just be too much of a hassle, and they would have to refuse to sell the product to the most obvious market: minors. Therefore, regardless of whatever claims Microsoft (or pieces of paper inside the box) may make, there can't reasonably be any EULA for this product.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You're kidding right? Linux has been ported to every freakin piece of hardware that has come down the pike. I've asked myself that same question at least 10 times in the past two years when I hear that someone has taken a perfectly working machine and hacked Linux on it just to stare at a command line. Why start questioning it now? Especially since, of all the latest ports, this one comes closest to being actually useful!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
I have some maps for UT that are 4mg is size alone. Surely they jest with us.
I'm surprised they did not put in a 40gb drive. It about where the lower end price/size break is. (eg cost per meg)
By my estimates its about 40gb on the low end and 80gb on the high end. Any bigger or smaller than that, and you start paying through the nose for little extra bang.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Everything will be cheaper next year -- the video cards as well as the Xbox. An honest comparison would be this year's commodity hardware vs. this year's Xbox.
BTW, the bargain-basement PC costs far more than $323 if assembly labor is factored in. I could be wrong on this, but hacking an Xbox is probably quicker than building a PC. The last time I tried to build a cheapie PC for someone, I discovered the ribbon cable on the front-panel switches and LEDs was too short to reach the motherboard (it was a hefty-sized case). I had to cut the cable and manufacture a sleazy "extension cord" out of cat.5 cable. Thirty-two stripped wires and sixteen solder connections later, it worked, but what a pain! Anyone who has built PCs knows the typical hazards: DOA parts, ill-fitting cases or cards, short-cable syndrome. These things don't happen every time, but unless you are running a PC factory where you repeatedly assemble the same configuration over and over again, you have to factor in at least a few hours to build the PC.
Borg, schmorg.
That little play works better in Cylon voices.
--Blair
"By your command."
Of course, there is the argument that we're just throwing money back into the devils pocket. Actually though, we're not. MS is taking about $100's loss per unit.
Keep in mind that I might buy this but...
You do realize that if you DO NOT BUY it they'll have a MUCH GREATER loss per unit? Let's do the math. Buy one is -100 dollars for MS. Don't buy one is -400 (they cost 300 right?) for MS.
Of course they'll get bought by somebody anyway, so buying it (with MS losing money) and then putting Linux on it is a lot more spit in MS's eye then just losing money... They have so much is just ridiculous. They could make money probably just from interest if they only charged a nominal fee for their software. (NB: Just a wild guess, I have no idea if that's true or not.)
No sig for you.
As I recall, the Cylon's only interest in humanity was to fly around and shoot at them (mostly exploding dramatically).
No, no... there is something much more insidious about Borg's MO. Turning you into one of them while wiping out the one's they can't assimilate. *That* is evil.
Cylons are just chome-plated target drones.
That's just a discussion... not any sort of proof.
I still don't believe it.
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