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?
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.
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.
$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.
...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
Regarding PC ports, I wouldn't be surprised to see an emulator come out pretty quickly. As long as Microsoft can build into Windows (maybe it's already in XP?) a way to enforce the copy-protection mechanism of the discs, they should have no problem with people without X-Boxes trying to buy and play games for their PC. It just means $100 Microsoft saves on X-Box hardware.
The reasons against are support and development issues. That is, you can make a much cooler game much faster if you know exactly what hardware with what capabilities each user will have. That said, if someone goes out and makes a PC port, and it's recognized that all guaranteed-compatability bets are off (as was the case with Connectix's VGS), then it shouldn't be that hard to write it, and if it sells more X-Box games, then Microsoft probably wouldn't have a problem with it either.
Kevin Fox
BUT.........
Just a few days ago there was another discussion at this fabulous web site about hacking the XBox, and several people pointed out that M$ 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)
That doesn't make much sense.
Maybe it can't be made to boot from anything but the hard drive (or some ROM on the board) but the drive can, at the very least, be repartitioned on another system.
The big hurdle will be getting it to boot the "wrong" OS. I'm sure it is rigged to check, and some sort of ROM update or hacked BIOS will be necessary.
-Peter
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.
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.
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.
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
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