X-Box Emulated (Not)

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Saturday January 12, 2002 @05:26AM from the surprised-it-took-this-long dept.

evilpaul13 submitted linkage to news about an X-Box Emulator. It requires a pretty high end video card and a DVD player, and doesn't yet support joysticks, but it does emulate 3 of the X-Box games (which is what, half the games available for the system yet? :) Todays PS2 Addiction: Tony Hawk 3. But I still am tempted to get an MSX-Box if only to handle my DOA addiction. UPDATE by HeUnique:Is this emulator a fake? according to these messages in the XBox Hacker web site - this is a fake one. Could someone actually try it? Update: 01/13 by J : The consensus in our comments is that this is a hoax, and the paranoid would do well to treat it as a trojan or virus. Sorry.

18 of 432 comments (clear)

Hmmm... by Outlyer · 2002-01-12 05:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

If Microsoft is smart, they'll ignore this. Why? Well, they're losing around $150 USD per console, and they make the money from the games. If you buy your own high end PC, pay full sticker, and then buy their games, you're saving them money, and they're still getting their cut from the development fees for the game.

Best of all, since no method for copying DVD games exists (well, not for under $5,000) it's not like piracy will be the issue.

By the way, for those of you who think Apple Superdrive or the HP DVD+RW machine will help, think again; they don't have a capacity to store most of the XBox games; as they only support 4.7gb DVDs, and the majority of XBox games are dual-layered (i.e. 8gb+)

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1. Re:Hmmm... by Namarrgon · 2002-01-12 11:03 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  No, that definitely won't work, for the reasons below (and probably others):
  - All Xbox games are made on dual layer (DVD-9) discs, and the OS & game are booted from the second layer. As no DVD writer (under at least $5k anyway) will write dual layer discs, coping the games is not an option (unless the firmware is modified to bypass this restriction).
  - All Xbox executables are encrypted & signed using public-key encryption (don't know what strength). This would have to be broken, or the key(s) obtained before any executables could be patched or even executed.
  - A filesystem driver/emulator might have to be written (it's a modified form of FAT32).
  - There's still the matter of the unified memory architecture. Some games will require this, in order to directly modify textures or polygon data, or simply to get the data throughput required. At best, a regular-PC-based emulator will run such a game quite slowly; at worst it wouldn't run at all.
  - There is already an Xbox hardware "emulator", made available by MS to lower-tier developers. However, this is more a set of instructions about what PC hardware to use (i.e. GF3, DX8) to make something that approximates final Xbox hardware. It will certainly not run final Xbox games.
  Alternatively, an emulator could be made to work at the hardware level (intercepting register calls etc from the monolithic DX/driver dll), running all system software unmodified - which would restrict it to GeForce3/4 hardware at least, possibly on an nForce chipset (which has the same sound hardware) - or raise the CPU requirements considerably to emulate these.
  
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It's Fake by bparrish · 2002-01-12 05:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

The included xbox.vxd in the program is just a renamed Quake file

The xboxkrnl32.dll is a file from the Trilliam messenger program.

I'd run a virus scanner if you ran this fake emulator.
1. Re:It's Fake by baptiste · 2002-01-12 05:52 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  LOL - I think /. needs a new section "Hoax of the Day" :)
  
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2. Re:It's Fake by Juan|Corral · 2002-01-12 06:01 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Yup, "xbox.vxd" is a file from Wolfenstien actually..
  
  "snd3d.dll" and "xboxkrnl32.dll" appear to be some sort of messaging program dll's.
  
  The actual exe seems like it just loads BMP images when started.
  
  Oh well, nice prank..
As an Xbox developer... by MaestroSartori · 2002-01-12 05:47 · Score: 5, Troll

I'd take with a BIG pinch of salt. Why? Well, lets see: the DVDs are encrypted, and the decoding is done in hardware (as far as I know). The GeForce 3 doesn't have the same hardware capabilities as the Xbox GPU, and grinds to a halt in a 1.7GHz system when trying to do similar effects to the ones I run fairly easily on an Xbox. And those two are just off the top of my head. I think this is fake. Even if its not, it'll run like a dog when the graphics card can't do the T&L and shaders in hardware...

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Game dev and music blog
Linux boot disc for XBox coming soon? by Maul · 2002-01-12 05:52 · Score: 5, Informative

It is my understanding that the XBox has some sort
of protection scheme on both the games and the hardware so that

1) You can't play games without the proper key on
them in the XBox.

2) Games won't play without the XBox's key.

I might be wrong, or oversimplifying it, but
this is my understanding. The Games require the XBox key, and the XBox requires a Game's key.

It is apparent that these people who made this,
provided that it works (I haven't tried it yet, since I've got no XBox games), must know SOMETHING about this if my understanding is correct.

Some people on /. have suggested that documentation was somehow leaked about the protection scheme.
Either that or it was cracked. Neither would
surprise me.

If this is the case, then I'm wondering if this
information could be used to make a Linux install
disc for the XBox, one that had a valid key to be
played.

Can anyone with any more knowledge of the XBox give
any insight on the possibility of this?

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"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Hoax? by icemind · 2002-01-12 05:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

Must be. a) The XBox DVD drive spins backwards to read the data b) It lists Soul Calibre 2 as a working game. Soul Calibre 2 isn't even out yet, not even in the arcades. Oh, and c) They stole the screenshots from IGN, for example:

http://mediaviewer.ign.com/mediaPage.jsp?media_i d= 171619&object_id=16612&media_type=R&ign_section=27 &page_title=The+Simpsons+Road+Rage+review+on+xbox. ign.com&adtag=network%3Dign%26site%3Dxboxviewer%26 adchannel%3Dxbox%26pagetype%3Darticle&return_url=h ttp%3A%2F%2Fxbox.ign.com%2Freviews%2F16612.html

Damn that long link. ;) But anway, I'm 99% sure this is fake.

- icemind
Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. by Gridle · 2002-01-12 05:53 · Score: 5, Informative

Slashdot has sunk to a new low. We all knew it had absolutely no journalistic integrity, but come on, you could at least use your brains before accepting this sort of submission. And the previous screw-up, 100:1 lossless compression. Yeah, right. Why the hell are people so gullible these days?

At the moment, no computer on this planet has enough juice to emulate the Xbox (No, not even the supercomputers which have 9,600 CPUs - because multiple CPUs don't make it any faster to emulate a single CPU), not to mention that nobody has been able to dump the contents of the HDs, the DVDs nor has anybody been able to crack the encryption of the Xbox BIOS. Additionally, the unified memory architecture makes it impossible to emulate the Xbox on a PC like a virtual machine. An interpretive or dynamic recompiling CPU core with everything else re-implemented is the only way, and that simply won't happen during the next decade because of the sheer complexity of such a project and because of getting sued to hell by Microsoft.

They've just renamed a bunch of common files to make it look neat. But no matter how much you want it to be true, it is just a poor fake.

In a related matter, no much how you want the Xbox MAME, you will never get it. The developer cannot release his port, because software developed on the Xbox dev kit can't be released to public domain. Just stick with the good old PC versions, which are also available for *nix / Linux. :)
1. Re:Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. by SteveX · 2002-01-12 06:07 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The XBox HD contents have been dumped; read up on it at www.xboxhacker.net. It's going to be a lot of work for anyone to make an emulator, or even to get unsigned code to run on the box - but some progress has been made..
  The XBox uses the IDE password mechanism to prevent you from dropping the drive into a PC and reading it, but if you connect the drive to the PC *after* the XBox has unlocked it (without resetting the drive), then you can read from it. Course your PC BIOS didn't see it at boot so you need to write custom software to talk to it.. but that's been done..
  The folks at xboxhacker are very determined. It's fun to watch.
2. Re:Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. by Jimmy_B · 2002-01-12 09:02 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  At the moment, no computer on this planet has enough juice to emulate the Xbox (No, not even the supercomputers which have 9,600 CPUs - because multiple CPUs don't make it any faster to emulate a single CPU)
  
  That is absolutely false. The XBox's CPU is just an Intel CPU, which most home computers have something similar to, so not much needs to be done to emulate that (maybe emulate a few instructions, or shift opcodes). The video is handled through DirectX and an nVidia video chip; again, most people already have something similar, and minimal translation is necessary.
  
  People said that emulating the Nintendo 64 was impossible, but that was done, not by emulating the hardware at a low level, but through high-level emulation. Compatibility is slightly less, but it's orders faster.
  
  The fact that the XBox hasn't been fully reverse-engineered yet is an obstacle to making an emulator, yes, and this particular "emulator" is clearly a hoax, but it is by no means impossible.
The contents of the files are.. by Gridle · 2002-01-12 06:02 · Score: 5, Informative

I actually went and checked the files.

snd3d.dll is from MSN Messenger

xbox.vxd is a data file from Return to Castle Wolfenstein

xboxkrnl32.dll is from Trillian (another messenger program)

xbox_emulator.0.35.exe is a Visual Basic program compiled to .exe form that uses the c:\con\con trick to induce the Blue Screen of Death on unpatched Win9x systems.
Re:way to go! by bojolais · 2002-01-12 06:04 · Score: 5, Informative

And, even better yet... go throw $300 at a PS2 now, so you can throw another $100-150 for hardware when the network capability is available? After all, Sony is the most benevolent of companies, feeding the hungry and healing the sick. Downright charitable. Sheesh.

The console industry defined itself from its inception as an arena for hard-core capitalist corporations to milk maximum revenue from content providers and customers. Microsoft deserves a place in that wonderful market segment as much as any other.

If you want to exercise some philosophical consistency, remove Windows and Microsoft Office from every machine you own and/or use (no, you don't deserve to use stolen M$ software just because you disagree with their criminal business practices) and feel comfortable owning both a PS2 and an Xbox. If you want to gripe indirectly about the way a relatively free capitalist economy works, try making a difference for a change.
FAKE !! FAKE !! FAKE !! by Zurk · 2002-01-12 06:17 · Score: 5, Informative

guys...dont try this. its a FAKE. and its possibly a TROJAN.
The PC DVD drives cant even read XBOX disks. i tried it out and it has a fancy splash screen and shit but it doesnt do anything with an XBOX DVD loaded. DONT DOWNLOAD IT. it seems to modify files (possibly). i whacked up a ghosted image of win on a spare PC and ran the software. it didnt do anything with an XBOX DVD and it seemed to modify a few files (i ran sentinel on the partition before and after running it). i dont knwo if it is a trojan..i just reghosted the entire machine in case.
Re:Emu X-box by AndrewHowe · 2002-01-12 06:20 · Score: 5, Informative

"not a hoax"
Wrong.
"the directX libraries are the same on the XBOX and a PC"
Wrong.
- An XBox developer
Slashdot Editors forgot about their comments by Calle+Ballz · 2002-01-12 06:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

UPDATE by HeUnique:Is this emulator a fake? according to these messages in the XBox Hacker web site - this is a fake one. Could someone actually try it?

Read the comments on your own website! Plenty of people have tried it, it is a simple application designed to give a video error message (Unable to initialize display, or something)... to make people think it's just their box. Read the comments above me, and giving a few more minutes, below me as well... A majority of them are people's personal experiences.
Re:Does this actually work? by CaseyB · 2002-01-12 06:48 · Score: 5, Redundant

Appears. The problem is that is DOES none of those things. The dlls and vxd are bogus files, copied from other software and renamed. The rest is just a simple VB application that shows menus and fails to initialize the video, so you can't run anything.
Hmmm... Nope. by Namarrgon · 2002-01-12 12:15 · Score: 5, Informative

Your standard DVD-R discs are single layer only. Xbox games (and most movies) are DVD-9, dual layer discs. No consumer-level drive will write dual layer discs.
Xbox games MUST be dual layer; the Xbox boots off the second layer. You might be able to squeeze a movie onto a single layer disc (though not the extras - there wouldn't be room), but even then you'd have to decrypt it with DeCSS or similar first.
DVD-Rs are made to the DVD-General standard, which has an unwritable key data track, precisely so you can't just bit-copy CSS-scrambled content to them. DVD-Authoring discs allow this, but they're unusable by consumer DVD-Rs (and the drives are a LOT more expensive).

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Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?