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Linux On Unmodded Xbox, Improved
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like pSyCo from XEmulation.com Has found a way to boot Xbox Linux Live on an unmodified Xbox with nothing but an Xbox and Linux PC (no memory card of any kind, etc). Also a guide to using this method to flash your Xbox's onboard TSOP with the bios of choice, making the Xbox modded without an actual mod-chip. $5 to rent 007 to mod my xbox sounds nice =) Check it out at: XEmulation.net Forum or XboxHacker.net BBS. *Wonder what the DMCA would think about this...*" This builds on the "007"-based method discussed earlier. Update: 04/15 01:11 GMT by T : XEmulation.com, not .net. Sorry.
What you'll need:
"Soldering Iron + Solder (and torx screw drivers)
Now you must open up your Xbox *which I don't think I need to explain how to do*, take out the motherboard, and solder the 2x2 jumpers. Now put everything back together, but leave the case top off, and keep the Xbox near your pc!
While this method might not require you to use a mod chip, it definately requires you to mod the xbox in that you have to take it apart, and solder stuff. The only think that will make me run linux on my xbox is if I can install a working system withou touching a screw driver.
The guy who came up with the 007 method gets whatever rewards were for booting Linux first on an Xbox. Yeah, this seems more like what "people want". But that wasn't the challenge. It was to boot Linux.
I'm sorry but the fuss around the backdoor-ness of the 007 method was blown way out of proportion.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Has anyone made progress on hacking the nvidia drivers to work on the XBox? If so, there is software, called Chromium I belive, that can take advantage of multiple OpenGL rendering nodes, making the XBox a very cost effective platform for such a project.
Um, no!
It's true you don't need a memory card, but you still need 007 Agent Under Fire to do this.
I think it's less work and easier to do it with a memory card though. This method requires hooking the xbox drive up to your pc and a lot of recompiling kernel stuff.. the other way just requires you putting some files on a memory card (you can do it with a previously modded xbox or a couple of other ways) and that's it. Once you've got that memory card you can reuse it on each xbox you want to mod too. It takes about 90 seconds to get an unmodded-xbox to run linux with the memory card:
Question from the floor:
Everyone is saying that the DMCA does not apply to this, as there is no circumvention device at work. Why isn't the 007 save game, with the buffer overflow, classifiable as a circumvention device?
so why do folks sink lots of time and effort into this?
I already have an XBox.
It is connected to my TV and my stereo.
I want it to play MP3s from my server.
I don't want another box.
It can't be all that hard to understand.
What are your thoughts on Moderators that are trying to do a good job for the /. community. When ever I see that I have the moderator points it almost seems like a job reading slashdot. I have to read the articles(no, I don't always ;^) and keep tuned in closer then normal so all the good ones aren't already at their threshold.
Actually, there is one use that most XBox users might see as useful: With Linux running on your XBox you can FTP files in and out of it, letting you hack savegame files, or load hacked savegame files.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
MS's answer to this problem will no doubt be revocation lists. I think of the Xbox as a dry run for Palladium, and the dependence on a trusted central server is the one thing that's missing. A Palladium Xbox would contact the mothership to verify any software it was about to load. If a bug like the one in 007 is found, MS simply revokes that particular image's permission to run until your box downloads the patch that repairs the buffer overflow.
Now I'm not saying full-blown Palladium will be hack-proof, but it will be a lot more difficult to break than this. I applaud the Xbox hackers' efforts to find clever ways for people to use their own hardware (MS's business model be damned), but they still have their work cut out for them.
The most common question here seems to be why? Well, for my, XBMP is the answer. Few months ago, I installed a mod chip in a friend's Xbox. One of the first things he did was get XBMP running. Wow, all I can say is XBMP is the killer application for the Xbox. Just to run XBMP, I picked up a used Xbox and DVD remote just before the initial exploit was discovered, and I grabbed 007 off ebay for like $10. Though when trying to bridge the 2 resistor pads, I knocked another resistor off the board, so I need to obtain a replacement resistor (soldering iron I was using was WAY too big) to finish this project Really though, if you haven't seen XBMP, look at it. It is a killer app-ESPECIALLY for college students. For $150 or so I have a box that will play damn near any media file I through at it, off CD, DVD, or SMB share, and is designed to be hooked to the TV, with an interface designed for it too. To me, the Xbox with XBMP is the media PC Microsoft has been trying to create.
a powerful processor
A mobile celeron 733 powerful? A 1 gig tualitin celeron would be 40 bucks, with another 30 or so for a mobo.
enough memory
What's 64 megs of SDRAM worth? 10 bucks? I bet most of us have a DIMM collecting dust we could use. I know I have a dozen of 'em.
dvd drive
A crappy dvd drive, on which recordable media support is somewhere between terrible and none, depending on your luck.
high-end graphics card
To be fair, it's a GeForce 3 with another pixel shader. And with no real driver support past a plain-jane framebuffer. And I sincerly doubt nVidia is going to pony up some drivers for the xGPU any time soon.
and more
Yes, an 8, 10 or maybe 20 gig HDD depending once again on luck. A terrible (from a general use PC standpoint) bus configuration. No way to do key/mouse input without sacrificing a $40 control pad.
Seriously.
Cheap case + PSU = 40 bucks
mobo, 733mhz celeron, ram = 100 bucks
Crappy DVD drive = well, you cant buy one as crippled as the xboxes. But lets say 25 bucks for a used 8x.
Cheapest, smallest HDD you can get = 30 bucks.
Sound card and video = spend as much as you want. You can get xbox-linux functionality on anything with a framebuffer. But hey, spend the 10 bucks on a Riva TNT2 and you're already smoking X-linux. But I'll say 50 bucks for a SB PCI card and a cheapo video card with TV-out.
100+40+30+25+50 = 245 bucks for a similarly configured home-built machine.
Xbox would be the price of the box (200) + a memory card (40) + a copy of 007 (20?).
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Why isn't anyone trying to get Windows to run on one of these things, as well? Sure, Linux is nifty and all, but some of us actually *prefer* using Windows. Just curious.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
show me another computer with 64mb ram, 8/10/20gb hard drive (depending on when you bought it), decent 3d video, dolby digital 5.1 sound, dvd-rom, and 10/100 ethernet that you can buy for $200 and i won't call your post a troll.
Wonder what the DMCA would think about this...
Even if you didn't have to open the box and do some soldering, I think this would still violate the DMCA, because MS will claim that there's no way anyone could have discovered this method without reverse-engineering either their BIOS or the assumably proprietary 007 save game format and code.
Probably the only way you can get Linux or any other software to run on an unmodified XBox would in some way involve using MS's Xbox SDK. Most likely, that includes code that must be licensed from MS. I don't know that to be the case, but that's my guess.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I mean, where's the point in hot-plugging devices which by design are not supposed to be hot-plugged (i.e. the IDE/ATA bus), "for safety" doing backups seemingly no less risky than the patches that follow this way afterwards, but then reassembling your Xbox with the tiny hard drive still in place, once the TSOP does hold a BIOS that should also support huge replacement HDDs of 120(+) GB (or shouldn't it)?
Sure, you still need the original hard drive to boot one last time before flashing the TSOP, but wouldn't it be easier to use the "first 007 method" (i.e. Agent Under Fire + USB memory stick) up to this point, power down the flashed Xbox, and then just replace the unchanged hard drive with a much larger unit (in other words, using the original drive as the very physical "backup" of itself, which you can still plug back in should the need ever be)?
Or am I missing something, as -minutes after the article has been posted- of course I haven't tried the method myself yet?
I'd find it REALLY neat if some game write would write a game for Linux which will compile without much change for Linux/XBox as well as Linux/PS2 (and even Linux/PC). Or are there games out there now? I wouldn't mind buying an XBox or PS2 if someone would release/sell Linux games for it.
(They'd have to use the game controller, of course)
Your example defeats your point! A new DC costs $50, you can probably get a keyboard (or adapter, or make one) for $10, $5 RF adapter, and then get a crappy TV from a yard sale for $5. Customize NetBSD for yourself and you have a fun little server. Cram it anywhere! Put it on the network at the office and hide it in the ceiling!
I'd like to see Walmart try and sell me a server for less than $100.
And of course when you get bored you can take the server down and play some sweet games on it (they sell for peanuts now).
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
Just thought of this...
Has the fellow who first figured out the 007 hack come forward with his real identity yet? Seems like awfully good fortune to find this vulnerability lurking around.
<Conspiracy Theory>
I can't help but wonder if Microsoft didn't plant this 'hack'. Follow me out here--MS doesn't really care if Linux runs on XBox. Sure it's a black eye, but it doesn't hurt their bottom line. But--all of a sudden there's a flaw in the closed system, and it's in --gasp-- a program written by someone other than MS. Now when future software is released for the Xbox (or Palladium) MS can use this 'incident' as an excuse to call for complete code disclosure from 3rd parties
I can hear Microsoft saying "You need to show us all your code so we can test it--otherwise how can we be sure it won't break our 'perfect' security system?"...
</Conspiracy Theory>
I don't mean to say this to take away from the guy who came up with this, but it's just an interesting, plausible scenario.
the alwsn says: "i want to make some electronic equipment i own do something it was never intended to do without opening the case, changing anything, and i want it to work flawlessly every time."
ALL RIDICULOUS.
One of those things is not like the others- one of those things does not belong!
The 4 examples you give are examples of equipment that is impossible because it violates the laws of physics. The last example is a violation of the will of Microsoft- which is a much softer target to attack.
The X-Box is a stored-program computer. It loads programs and runs them. Since it can load software that wasn't conceived back when the hardware was built, it's what is called a "general purpose computer".
The manufacturer has attempted to cripple the device- to take away a capability it naturally had- in order to earn themselves some more cash. It was intended first to run programs, then as an afterthought, made to only run a tiny fraction of the many possible programs for marketing reasons.
It's not ridiculous at all to think that the code-signing restriction can be lifted from the XBox, without changing the hardware. Bill Gates could accomplish this in 30 seconds if he wished. US normal people might take longer, and it might be "illegal", but the probablities aren't so low as to be humorous.
(Unless someone imagines they'll brute-force the encryption, which is just funny)
Use two-pass encoding. This way you know that your rate control variables are always at their optimal setting. Highest quality for any bitrate is this way, at the expense of 50-75% longer encode times. (The second pass goes quicker on more recent DivX versions that allow you to save the motion vectors to a file, the second time around the codec doesn't need to do motion estimation a second time.)
In the end it's faster, since you don't have to constantly tweak the RC settings depending on source material via trial and error.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I just went to the website of a computer store just down the street from me. I could go out and buy a full system (except monitor & OS) with an AMD XP1700, 256 MB of RAM, 32MB video card, 10/100 LAN card, and CD for CAD$415, which is $285 of "your" dollars. That's brand new, and that's a way better system than an unmodded XBox. The same system with a 16x DVD player and USB 2.0 will cost $305 USD. Then you have to get a TV-out card for another $40 US, but the system you end up with is hugely superior to the XBox, both in upgradeability and flexibility.
Of course, I can't argue with the "interesting weekend project" aspect. I like doing that stuff too. But don't try to use the financial argument with me...
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.