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Xbox Mod Chip in Beta Testing

Posted by timothy on from the matter-of-time dept.

Odinson writes: "Well it looks like a modchip design has been completed for the Xbox. The most interesting thing is that 'Modified XBE's and custom code can boot' with the chip The chip costs $65 list in U.S. dollars." Wake me up when standard X86 code can run on the Xbox :)

3 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. Could we use this to make a render farm? by pubjames · · Score: 5, Interesting


    Could you use this to make a graphics render farm? A rack of 25 X-Boxes all running Linux - let me see that would cost just $5,000 for the X-Boxes - the same as a high-end graphics PC. That would be sweet - you'd have your own powerful personal render farm and the warm feeling inside from knowing that you've cost Microsoft over a couple of thousand bucks.

  2. Divx - The Real Xbox Killer App by donnacha · · Score: 5, Interesting


    All Hell is going to break loose when it becomes possible to play a CD holding a Divx film on the Xbox.

    And here's something I'll bet MS already know: they're going to sell a lot more Xboxes when that happens.

    With Divx, you can cram an absolutely fine rip of a DVD onto a single CD-R. That incredibly compact size also means that they only take a few hours to download. The downloadee can then churn out copies for his friend at about 25c a shot, as opposed to $1.50 or whatever for blank DVDs.

    The only hurdle to widespread casual distribution channels evolving is that watching films at your workstation is uncomfortable and cabling the signal to your main television is a little too messy, unsightly and expensive for most people.

    Find a way for people to play Divx on their Xboxes, however, and the situation reaches the momentum it needs to really take off.

    Then the shit will really hit the fan and the studios, the premium channels and Blockbuster all have a HUGE problem.

    Which isn't entirely unfunny.

    So, is this likely to happen anytime soon? Well, I think this is what they meant on the Xtreme-Xbox site when, while listing this mod chip's features, they stated:

    Modified XBE's and custom code can boot (This is a HUGE feature - as you'll all see soon)

    I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure that the whole copyright situation is about to explode.

  3. GPU Useless - Maybe Not!? by slithytove · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Xbox has a unified memory architecture, which for those who don't know, means that the cpu and gpu share the same 64M.
    Furthermore, the GPU in the Xbox, like the Geforce4, has two programmable vector units. I'm not an Xbox developer, and I havent written any vertex programs yet, but I think it may be possible to use them in custom HPC apps because of the unified mem.
    The limiting factor in using Xboxes as cluster nodes to me is the 64M of ram, but there is a spot for another RAM chip (which is used in the Xbox dev kit), so that may be correctable.
    As to whether just the 700Mhz cpu, ram, hd and nic are worth it for clustering at $200, I havent done the math, but I would certainly guess so. I cant think of any system I could buy a bunch of identicals of for $200 a piece regardless of speed.