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.

Comments

Hardware hackers only

[Alien54]

You need the following to do this: tongs-style soldering iron (to remove the existing flash device), a fine-tipped soldering iron, a microscope, flux, and some solder paste is always nice, but you can use just plain old fine solder too. If you don't have tongs-style soldering iron, you can just cut the device off the board if you have extras laying around (presumably you also have a ROM burner--I use the Needham's Electronics EMP series) or you can build your own (I built an improved version but I haven't got the docs on the web yet...)

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.

Re:running things for different platforms

[dreamquick]

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!

Re:The point?

[SpinyNorman]

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!

Re:running things for different platforms

[JWhitlock]

Conversely, when will someone get me a program that will let me play DOA3 or other xgames on my PC? I wouldn't think that would be too hard. I think MS should even support it because if we can buy a program to let us buy and run games on our PC, they don't lose money on each console sold.

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.