Slashdot Mirror
Strong Hints On Flashing Your Xbox
customsex writes: "bunnie has written a nice one with pictures documenting his adventure flashing his bios on his xbox. check it." His page also points you to the Sony vs. Connectix case regarding reverse engineering of hardware.
So it looks like hardware hackers only with the appropriate tools and skills.
There was also this tidbit:
If you are looking for the FLASH ROM contents of the XBOX, you won't be able to download them even though I've extracted them. I got a call [recording edited to protect sensitive info] from Microsoft within 12 hours of posting this page regarding the binaries...
Sounds like MS is on the ball on this one, as far as protect their hardware secrets.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Nobody who can't extract his own would have a use for them until someone writes an Xbox emulator. Even then I guess the emulation can be done with a few device drivers running on nt, instead of writing a whole machine emulation. Bios image may be required in that case too, but probably not.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Seems like he's replacing his bios more than flashing the existing one.
Am I wrong, or is slashdot not fully understanding this article?
I was just wondering that if the dumping of the rom will actually help in the emulation of the XBox, since everyone can now examine the bios. Most instructions can be emulated easily as they are similar to PC instructions, UMA can be examined closely too :)
You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.
If the xbox BIOS was replaced with LinuxBIOS then that shouldnt that bypass any other protection they put in software.
linuxBIOS project http://www.acl.lanl.gov/linuxbios/
Hmm X-Box games on a PC?
You will not see that for at least a year. There are a few reasons:
1) X-Box is a product - if i can play the games elsewhere why should i buy an x-box? e.g. Halo looks like it rocks, and if the only place i can play it is on an X-Box then that means i have to buy one if i want to play it.
2) X-Box is an appliance with a roadmap already laid out for it - if i remember the goal is to get it to become a home multi-media station, if you give people a reason not to buy one then you risk losing a market segment.
3) Assuming a 3rd party does this then they will be sued to hell and back by MS - this guy got a telephone message within 12 hours for releasing something only the most techie of people would have a use for. What do you think they would do if/when someone releases an emulator.
I suggest a year simply because after this people and the company will see exactly who won the console war - if anyone, if it is the x-box that won then you can release an emulator in the hopes of getting people hooked and eventually buying a console.
If the x-box didn't win then you release an emulator to keep the devolopers happy that they can still sell games.
The only problem is if it all ends in a draw between X-box and another console - in that case you want to produce the best games you can and make sure you can only play them on your machine!
You could never make an "L-box" as cheap as the X-box because the beauty of it is that it's subsidized hardware! Every X-box subverted to another purpose not only deprives Microsoft of razor-blade revenue, but actually causes them to lose money!
If X-box can be made to run Linux, then it would be an excellent base for an open source Tivo!
We can destroy MS and get a good gaming console out of it at the same time.
Don't say "We"; I am not in your little "gotta destroy MS" club. I'm just here to read some tech news/etc;
Wake up. Microsoft loses money when an XBox is NOT SOLD... when you buy an XBox you help them recover all or part of their investment. When you buy XBox games you give microsoft a huge profit.
Come on, you'd think Slashdot type geeks would be able to do the math... Xbox costs $400 to make(that's the rumor) so they lose 100 on each sale. But they lose FOUR hundred if NO ONE buys it. lol.
John Sarek.
Did anyone get to the site and download the ROM image before it was removed? If so, what was the filename so I can go look it up on $P2PNETWORK?
In the spoon, there is no Soviet Russia!
Naw, Then it's just a writeoff. :)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
This is not a bug, it's a feature.
XBox = DirectX, known version, known platform, known hardware, soon-to-be-discovered bugs, soon-to-be-discovered optimizations, etc. etc.
It's a game developer's Nirvana, to only have to code for one platform, knowing that the way it looks on your development system is exactly how it will look on the buyer's system. No unexpected incompatible drivers. No hardware conflicts. No performance bottlenecks on strange systems with cheap-ass components. No Packard-Bells.
It's like asking why the clothing industry can't make a good-looking pair of one-size-fits-all shoes.
Yes and not. :)
Let's admit that Microsoft sells there at a loss, so yes, you're banking that money.
However, if they sell 1 million consoles, it doesn't matter whether 100k of those are converted into L-boxes, they still sold 1 million, and that is what they'll use to lure the game developers to their platform, promising bigger markets.
This is not to say you shouldn't do it
It's entirely likely MS may revise the BIOS at a later stage, for fixing bugs - if it turns out to be necessary. All console makers do. So long as you don't change the external functionality at all, that's fine.
But what the article was saying is that this is a reasonable move by MS, to increase robustness in the possible case of field flash rom upgrades, or even if multiple versions of the BIOS might be required. I'm sure MS are very aware that the latter case is not a desirable one.
Come to that, I doubt that "flash ugrades in the field" are even possible, let alone planned, or the author probably wouldn't have had to replace the ROM at all. It'd be a major security hole, if you could do that! :-)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
That ratio is mostly due to the fact that basically everywhere FORCED you to bundle games with the system.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I can't believe they'll be able to do this - they are already losing at least $100 per box. The parts that are in the xbox, while they might be old in a year or two will still cost money.
Example - ever need just a 2 gig harddrive? Was it 1/5 the cost of a ten giger?
Or ever try to buy a pentium?
Of course ms will have access that we don't but I don't see the parts and supplies for this thing coming down to $200.
Microsoft wasn't being nice so much as being intelligent. It's a shame they don't put the formidable powers they do have into making good products. If they did, I wouldn't have had to learn half of the computer stuff I know.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
I don't know if I'd say they were being nice so much as they were worried. If they pissed the guy off, I've got a hunch that copies of the ROM would begin to 'appear' all across the internet.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Many stores were not selling the X-Box standalone. You had to buy the X-Box plus 2 or 3 games as part of a bundle. There is rumor that this bundling was an edict by Microsoft before a store was allowed to sell the X-Box. WIRED ran an article discussing how EB, ToysRUs and Gamestop were doing nothing but bundles, much to the annoyance of their customers who didn't necessarily want all the games in a particular bundle.
It strongly looks like MS knew the deal and has been loading the deck to give themselves a better hand. Golden Rule #1: Never Let Microsoft Deal The Cards.