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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.
> Hopefully we are going to see a zillion things running on the machine that Microsoft would only have dreamt of making (and selling)."
I hope so too, but I thought the same thing when I picked up my Sony PS2 Linux kit. Not too many useful projects have come out of THAT yet. (All I really wanted was the ability to play mpeg video on my TV at a decent speed...but SDL hasn't been optimized yet, so that's not yet possible.)
So I buy an X-BOX, buy the chip, and then install a linux based bios.... on what amounts to a shitty celeron based machine? I don't know... seems kind of weird.
I'd rather get a good machine, install linux... and NOT pay microsoft 300 bucks for sub-standard equipment.
I'm gussing most people who do this sort of thing are the types who would love to see Microsoft fall... if that is the case, don't give them your money.... no matter how cool your modded X-BOX will be.
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
Not really because they lose money on every x-box sold and if we can run free software on it nobody wants to buy the expensief x-box games...
X-box games are very expensief to cover the losses on the machine sels
when the next 'leaked' halloween memo states that the original Xbox strategy was
(1) to test different types of security and see which ones were easily hacked
(2) to test different types of licensing agreements for their real hardware push into the living rooms of America
(3) to find a way to willing have people buy ms boxes to replace the failed WebTV fiasco
(4) to use open source people to boost the sales of Xbox above Sony's PS2s.
People are going a little overboard with the XBox modding. Sure, have fun, do something new with it, but for the same price, you can get a faster PC, with expansion slots where you can plug in any device you might want, and less expensive than xbox accessories.
Then, you'll be supporting the PC industry, instead of a Monopoly that makes propritary, overpriced, devices.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Well, that's exactly the point: It's made by Microsoft. They can shut us out of their software with their "screw-yew" EULAs, but they've tried to shut us out of the hardware as well, and the xbox modders have proved that they can't do that, neither technologically or legally. Bet they've got their best monkeys scratching their heads to work out how to close their platform legally, but when it comes down to it, it's hardware, I've bought it, not licensed it and I can do what I damn well like with it. If I want to hack my fridge to run Linux, then I will. Same goes for the Xbox, and there's not a damn thing they can do about it.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
Gee since It's half the price of the PC you are pricing, I WOULD consider that a great reason to buy an XBOX. Also, with the XBox media player you can watch SVCD/VCD/DIVX, etc. Try building a computer with TV out that will do that for any where near $200.
--
I am waiting for a "real" X-Box.
I would be very happy if I could get an X-box to be a 'good file player' that could play DVD, VCD, and everything else I play on my PC (QT, AVI, DIVX, VOB, blah blah... I admit, a big bag), and some basic network functionality without compromising the ability to play legal X-box games.
Within the community, we seem to have several counter-productive lines of progression.
There are the folks that want to play around with their X-box and add functionality (the most interesting and productive pursuit) and the people who want to buy a M$-subsidized device and use it for Linux-only purposes.
Realistically, the latter are better served to craft their own boxes w/o M$ at all (we all know what has happenned w/ HW prices).
Does it make any sense to buy an X-box and use it as a Linux box? It did months ago, but, with the way the market is progressing, you will gain far less in HW $ than you get is SW time...
I am all for EXTENDING the abilities of the X-Box, but you get much beyond that and it ends up being a gesture motivated not my innovation, but by spite for M$.
-Z
M$ XP user (3 PCs) w/ a SUN Solaris, MacOS, and a lil TiVo on the SDA LAN.
Writing is like coding: keep it simple. Spend some time on it, and have pity on your poor readers. There's more to writing than just spelling and grammar.
(My appologies if you are not a native English speaker---your spelling and grammar are good enough that it's hard to tell.)
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
It's a fraction of the machine my laptop is.
I'm assuming your laptop has a kickass 3d card, a dvd drive, component out, kickass controllers (laptop keyboards BLOW for gaming), and almost no OS overhead. Don't fall into the (pretty closedminded) belief that the XBox is just another shitty msft project. The Xbox is as much a regular computer as the new BMW 7 series, which is built with similar off-the-shelf parts and a MSFT OS.
The XBox does have some advantages.
First, it's closed hardware, so developers know what they are working on. They do not need to support 100 different video adapters and sound cards. They can optimize their code a lot more than for a PC game.
Secondly, the audio/video components are nice. The component out is a nice feature for those that are mad about image quality (although component only reduces the bandwith used to transmit video). The optical audio also is nice. Having a game run with optical Dolby Digital 5.1 is really cool.
Lastly, consoles output to a TV, not a computer screen. XBox games run at 640x480x32 because anything higher is useless on a TV monitor. When was the last time you played a game at such a low resolution on your computer? This fact gives the developers another chance to optimze their code and add more features since they have more memory to work with.
So, it is not closeminded to see the XBox as a PC, because it IS a PC. It simply provides a platform on which game developers can maximize their talent and not worry about compatibility issues and the like.
I'm the first to admit that the games are nice, but I think it is closeminded to think that the XBox is an incredible innovation. It is not. It's a PC with just enough modifications to make it proprietary. It's like a Mac with crapy parts so that anyone can buy one. It's the Microsoft Way(tm).
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