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XBox Chip With Legal BIOS
Lours writes "OzXChip, an Australian company, has a new Xbox chip which comes preinstalled with the new (Cromwell Linux BIOS. Previous chips came without (or simplistic) BIOS for obvious legal and hardware-related (HD-key) reasons you had to go through a lot of manipulations in order to install a patched version of the original Microsoft BIOS or ask the vendor to do it which obviously he was not willing to do for free (when he was willing to). Since the new Cromwell BIOS is fully open source it can be shipped with the chip without any legal risks, gaining you a lot of time, sweat and money. Plus the chip has a very useful feature: by using software based on Andy Green's -- one of the maintainers of the XBox Linux project -- Raincoat, it lets you flash a new BIOS very easily: burn the BIOS file onto a blank CD, put it in the Xbox, boot and you are done. With such beasts there is not much left in the way of want-to-be Linux Xbox hackers who might have been affraid until now to have to deal with delicate hardware intricacies or reluctant to run the whole town for a vendor willing to mod their Xbox at the smallest fee. With important linux distributions also incoming (Debian and Mandrake are underway if not completed) it won't be long before everyone can write code for (and on!) the machine only a few minutes after receiving the chip in his mailbox. Hopefully we are going to see a zillion things running on the machine that Microsoft would only have dreamt of making (and selling)." Update: 01/23 16:07 GMT by T : The company's name is actually OzXChip, rather than OzChip (as originally rendered); thanks to reader Michael Muir for pointing this out.
Cool. A reason to own an Xbox.
everyone will still buy the bad ass xbox games.
Haven't most xbox owners already got both of those?
Sweet! And the "Matrix" chip that I ordered last week should be here tomarrow.
In other news, I buy all of my Apple hardware the day before a Macworld Expo.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
What is this guy, a Lisp programmer?
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
Actually microsoft loses money everytime someone purchases an xbox. So just buy the machine use it for a media box or whatever just don't buy any games, and microsoft will lose about $50 on you.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
gaining you a lot of time, sweat and money
Well, one of those things I have plenty of, but I could always use more of the other two.
Karma whorin' since 1999
What's the fun part in running anything on an x-box? Have you forgotten that it's made by microsoft? It's like saying that it's cool to run programs in windows, which it obviously isn't. Stop the madness!
Except for Sony's Linux kit.
When new OS and BIOS is installed, it gets another PC
Yes, but only after it puts the lotion in the basket.
Install Linux and then what, who cares. It is a game console. People are so busy hating MS they forget to look at the big picture. It plays video games.....Hey look there is a toaster, let's put Linux on it, what about that can opener, put Linux on it, how about that mixer.......
yes, but they should have to keep buying them damnit.
"It's a fraction of the machine my laptop is"
Yeah, but its loads better for games, and costs about 1/10th as much. My mobile phone is a fraction of the machine my desktop is....so what?
NO! The real solution is buying used Apples. That way, MS neither makes money from the used sale nor made money from the original one. That will surely make MS go under.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!