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Xbox Modchip Featuring Onboard Operating System
An anonymous reader writes "A group of talented coders known as TeamXodus, have released an xbox modification chip with a difference, the 'Xenium' is a modchip which features a fully legal operating system that was coded by the team from scratch. The mod can be installed Solderlessly and will allow the end user to unlock the power of the xbox and run applications such as Linux on their Xbox. The onboard Operating system currently stands at version 2.0 and features a massive 1.35 million lines of code and was recently reviewed by HomeCinemaChoice whereby they declared the Xenium 'The creators of the easiest Xbox modification - the complete package.'"
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So Linux is not an os but an application that runs on the operating system?
Anyway, I would love to install WindowsXP Media Center in addition to Linux on mine. If I could also run Xbox games it would be a pure orgasm.
Does anyone know if you can add additional hard drives or bigger ones?
If I were Billly gates I would port Windows Media center to the Xbox2 and turn it into a PVR/Video game system. PS/2 and Nintendo would have their asses majorily kicked in!
http://saveie6.com/
This table should be helpful in answering that question...
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In the end we are ALL disconnected....
You do not want to use a solderless modchip, they suffer from the same problem they did back in the Playstation days: They WILL eventually get bumped out of where they need to be. Then you need to shut everything down, open up your Xbox, realign all of the points, and close it again. It is well worth the price to get an installer to install a soldered modchip. You can find installers at the forums on xbox-scene.com
I got it hot off the presses... and it even has a cool little LED light on it that changes colors with the different BIOS's that you can choose.
It has an awesome FTP program out of the box... and plans to run BIO's straight from the harddrive instead of from the TSOP.
The only downside to the whole thing is that it seems the website for xodus is not currently up anymore, so lord knows if the improvements will actually come through... and the little solderless adaptor has been a horrible pain as it doesn't really sit well on the board, and so I had to keep opening it up over and over until I got a bigger screw to hold the thing down. Other than that it's been a total boat.
My xbox now just has become my own personal media center... and houses a 40 GB harddrive, all my mp3 albums, runs Slayer's Evox install, and comes with loads of great apps for doing just about everything a XBOX could do; but microsoft was too whipped by the industry to include.
Best part? Playing DVD's without a remote... something the xbox should have been able to do in the beggining.
I still get a kick out the the glow my xbox emits letting me know that it's running my favorite *legal* bios.
The new Xenium adapter that allows you to connect the chip to the board is a much better design than the PS or even older Xbox ones. It can take a little more punishment and still remain connected. This is the real deal for those ham-fisted soldering iron amateurs who want to run unsigned code on the xbox.
After 3 beers and 3 espressos, there's a 20-minute period where you can climb anything.
I have modified a few XBoxes in my time, and the Xeniums are very expensive compared to other chips, and I must say, the coding standards of these guys is rather low.
In particular, they have done something weird with the hard drive partitioning/copying utils, and hard drives made using the Xenium tools actually *prevent* the XBox being used to play original games.
The way to remedy this situation is to format the hard drive using EvoX, and build the file system from scratch again.
GG guys, release a modchip with tools that prevent the original legal purpose...
I would suggest going for a far cheaper modchip, and not having to put up with the strange behaviour the Xenium brings about.
modchips have been out for a while. team xodus hasn't done anything new. in fact, when the Xecuter 3 is release this week their chip will be the best, not Xodus'. http://www.teamxecuter.com.nyud.net:8090/ check them out.
Sorry, this is overhyped crap.. a.) Mod chips have been around for a long time. They've been solderless for a long time. b.) We've been able to run Linux on our xboxes for a long, long time. c.) The "Onboard OS" is an *application* stored on the chip's flash, which allows users to flash different bios images. It is an OS in that is does not require the stock xbox kernel. No more. This is absolutely nothing new. Recent Xecuter bios images have supported packing .xbe files into the bios (simple ftpd was a good example).
Looks like your admins have been duped by an "anonymous" poster from the company who make this.
As for those of you who talk about wanting to use the MS media center thing and stream from Linux - check out XBMC (sourceforge) - it is one of the best pieces of "homebrew" software ever created.
TD
Just to clear up a few misconceptions and false statements that people have made here....
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1.35 million lines of code for an operating system, including kernel, drivers, libraries, applications, etc etc etc... is not at all unbelievable. And, like they said, that includes library code. Pull in SDL, there's quite a chunk of code for 5 minutes work. Pull in some other libraries, and there's more big chunks of code, and so on. Considering they must have drivers for all of the hardware, as well as lots of various libraries for their networking, UI, httpd, etc... i'm suprised the number isn't higher. I'd be interested to see a count of the lines of sourcecode that go into a small linux distribution, including everything from kernel to user space apps, just for comparison.
Also... yes, linux is an OS, of course... Their wording was a bit poor. However, to run Linux on the xbox, the user *must* run an application... the loader, whether that be cromwell, xromwell, or xbeboot.
The claim that XOS2 is based on OsKit is rather ill founded, and goes back to some discussions about a year ago. I happen to know one of the Team Xodus developers, and he tells me that although Oskit was considered for the project, it was quickly decided against.
These "rival modchip makers" need to find some better reverse engineers, who stop making assumptions based on political and social forces.
Also, the source for all of the components which were based on cromwell (the old "os") are available for download from their site.
It has also been stated here that this is "nothing new"... that smartxx and x3 and x-chip all have OSes too. Well, smartxx's "os" is based on cromwell, a GPL platform, and they have not released any source, or made any efforts whatsoever to comply with GPL, and have even publicly said that they would not do so. X3 and X-chip's "OS"es are both based on illegally modified and redistributed microsoft kernels. Really, the big acheivement here is the first and only LEGAL os, written from scratch, for the specific purpose of xbox modding. Yes, IMHO that is quite an acheivement, and worth of
Finally...
"Besides, if these guys are that good they should be coding a real operating system and throw it in the mix with Linux and Windows. "
Who ever said they havn't? Most of these programmers work on embedded platforms besides the xbox, as well.