Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Strong Hints On Flashing Your Xbox

Posted by timothy on from the wink-wink dept.

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.

3 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Microsoft at their best by torqer · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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

  2. Long-term benefit by smittyoneeach · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  3. The point? by SilentChris · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.