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No-Solder Modchip For The Xbox
toothfish writes "There's a review of the latest generation of Xbox modchip over at xbox hacker- no solder, flashable BIOS, 15 min. install, etc. Stuff like this should make it easier for the average Xbox user to run emulators, Linux, and such. No word if it does or does not work in the latest iteration of Xbox though. Anyone from australia order one of these guys yet?"
For $200 you can get a PC with Linux pre-installed: 800MHz, CD-ROM, 10G disk, 128M. If you want to run Xbox games, get an Xbox, but for everything else, a real PC is probably cheaper and better.
Here's a scenario: Once the xboxes have populated the homes, in no time at all Microsoft will start shipping Microsoft XB to run in the device. This will happen especially if they notice that a competing open source OS has already penetrated their territory. This is just what Microsoft needs to overcome legal battles related to doing it (combining hardware and operating system) and selling it to large public and to win monopoly accusations related to doing it.
When the G spot is reached the LED will flash green immediately, hold firmly and tighten the screw.
ah, you kids. Back in my day we had to find the G spot manually... and we were lucky if we got an audible alert.
I'd really like to find an easy to use set top box.
My mother is basically wheel chair bound, and has visual problems. She watches a lot of TV, and has never used a computer.
She has a WebTV and can surf the web, but her WebTV will not let her watch more than 128K of movies. And I don't believe any WebTV model will. That makes those movies of my kids that much harder to distribute to her.
So I'd like to find a set-top box internet access solution for her. I haven't done a lot of looking, but it seems that the Xbox running Linux with a cordless USB keyboard may be a winning solution.
She could surf the web to see the kids, download and play their movies, print their photographs out, and all from a machine designed to work well with TVs. And when her other grandchildren come over, well they can do the first person shooter thing.
So I have high hopes for this Xbox project. I believe it can really offer a social good to a class of people that don't have a good internet solution.
Then again, if you know of other, better, also inexpensive set top box internet solutions, do let me know.
You don't need a chip at all!
-1 Flamebait (Microsoft just knew we would all bite!)
+1 Interesting (modding xbox is fun to do, fun to do, fun to do!)
-1 Redundant (already got the PS2, why get an XBox?)
Hey, moderators! Mod the XBox!
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
What we really should be doing is figuring out how to use my existing PC to Play Xbox games...that woul be a much more interesting hack...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Firstly, there is not yet an N64 emulator that runs well. There are the preliminaries of a port of Daedalus for the XBox, including a leaked beta binary. It runs so-so because it was still early in development. This is not a comment on the author - I'm sure something will be developed soon that will make the majority of people happy, but don't get your hopes up about emulating all your favorite N64 games just yet.
There is also no PSX emulator yet. You can find the usual hype/marketing ploys on modchip reseller webpages about modchips allowing you to emulate "great systems like SNES, N64, PSX...". Please remember when you read such things that these people want your money. Look into it yourself first. There are no PSX emulators for the XBox yet. I'm sure something will be ported over in the future ( or Linux-on-Xbox will be able to run a linux PSX emu at a decent speed soon).
The good news, however, is that the world of emulation on the XBox is unparalleled on any other console. Here is a list of emulators ported to the XBox which work almost flawlessly:
Stella (Atari 2600)
Gnuboy (Gameboy/Gameboy Color)
FCEUltra (NES)
SMSPlus (GameGear/Sega Master System>
HU-GO (Turbografx-16/PC-Engine)
NeoPop (NeoGeo Pocket Color)
DGen (Sega Genesis)
Bochs (x86)
Bochs emulates the PC architecture and has prebuilt packages for running DOS 6.22, Windows 3.11, and Windows 95. Windows runs too slowly in Bochs to do anything useful, but it runs old DOS games very well.
Snes9x (SNES)
MAME (Arcade machines)
Daedalus (N64)
Frodo (Commodore 64) (url?)
Handy (Atari Lynx) (url?)
GBA (Gameboy Advance) (url?)
Final Burn (Arcade/CPS2 esp) (url?)
Owning a modded XBox allows you to easily play just about all of your console classics on the TV in your living room. (No, not everyone has computers in every room of their house yet. :P ) IMHO, the most fun I've had with my XBox so far is playing games on all of the above emulators. Now that there is a solderless modchip, just about anyone can enjoy them also.
Well, first of all, the new chip doesn't work with the latest boxes that were recently manufactured (in August, I think). This has applied to EVERY OTHER chip that has been released for it (there are plenty). While, I'm sure there will be ways to circumvent this relatively soon, it is still interesting timing to see if this new chip will prompt a buying spree of X-Boxes.
As for the cheap PC vs. X-Box argument, there are many reasons why I have found it useful: Hooks to a TV with progressive scan (there are now patches to enable the DVD and the dashboard menu in progressive mode), Media streaming - the current media player can view streamed video from a host PC or from media on the x-box HD. This works with the x-box remote, and even plays divx. MUCH more seamless than any PC-home theater-type setup. And this is coming from a guy who has had a living room computer hooked up to a home theater for a few years now. This way I don't have to keep a computer in the living room, and I don't have to keep a mouse/keyboard handy to do trivial tasks such as watching a video clip. Emulators are great, and work great with the x-box controller (controller S is actually very nice). A PC is much more tedious to setup, harder to get multi-player configured, and once again requires mouse/keyboard to even startup.
Sorry for the rant, but after all the modding, my X-Box has actually turned into that set-top box everyone was talking about (when coupled with my UltimateTV set, of course). It provides customizability and ease of use that a living room computer simply can't compete with. If you can get over the Microsoft factor, I think anyone would be quite pleased with what has been accomplished in such a short time as compared to a stagnant PS2 development community (grass-roots, not companies trying to make PVR software) trying to play catch-up on such a limited system (even with the Linux kit).