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

Microsoft at their best

[torqer]

The XBOX keeps "multiple versions of the BIOS around in case different games rely on features or even bugs found in previous BIOS versions."

man pretty smart of microsoft to realize their own mistakes may be required in games

Is it illegal overseas?

[Guysdrinkingbeer]

I understand that posting the ROM image is illegal in the states, but does that apply to Europe or Russia or even China? I know that the Xbox is not in release in those places yet but should not stop a small email attachment of the image making it's way overseas and winding up on a web site. Just wondering. Thanks.

Long-term benefit

[smittyoneeach]

Recall reading the Wired article about the XBox, where they mention that its initial $300 dollar price will be driven down to around $100 as soon as possible.
Sorry about the low end of the computer market, but it'll be cool when you can drop a grand, pick up a ten-pack of them, and construct your Much-Ballyhooed Beowulf Cluster (MBBC).
Maybe one day /. itself could run on such an installation. Feel the irony.

The point?

[SilentChris]

I'm not entirely sure I see the point of this exercise. Bear with me. I can see upgrading the drive cables or trying to solder on extra memory for performance reasons (as some people have done), but flashing the BIOS of the XBox seems to be a pointless exercise. First, you need to have pretty strong hardware knowledge -- it's not something that's going to be "mod chipped" in the future. Secondly, and more important, apparently the BIOS is heavily encrypted and/or compressed, so (if Microsoft used its noodle) it will be extremely difficult to retrieve.

As opposed to hacking an XBox to use Linux (which I agree is a noble pursuit, if not flawed), why not find a cost-effective way to make a "LBox" out of cheap hardware. Put a penguin on the cover or something.

Me, personally, I bought my XBox for playing games and DVDs, like most people. I love fucking around with hardware myself, but this thing is a toy to be played with and enjoyed for me, not a job.

Congrats to Microsoft!

[Ndr_Amigo]

I know it's an odd thing to say, but I would like to congratulate Microsoft on (unusually!) actually being half-decent. Listening to the phonecall, whether he was coached or not, I would congradulate Mr. Thompson on not being a smeghead and actually NICELY asking for the image to be removed.. without threatening legal action over some obscure EULA clause for looking at the motherboard or something :)

XBOX MAME

[timbong]

Someone already made an XBOX MAME emulator that supposedly runs at 60fps. However he cant release it because of legal restrictions and it only works on the developer xboxes now. His website is http://www.otakunozoku.com/xbox/

Re:Why flash the ROM?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The only way I can imagine this failing is if the BIOS runs the entire game in protected mode with no way to subvert it.

Well, actually I can see one way it could fail: If the BIOS uses asymmetric cryptography to see if the game is signed by Microsoft's private key and refuses to run it otherwise.

But that would also break the "game that flashes the ROM" unless you can get Microsoft to sign it.

Or break the asymmetric cryptography. B-)