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Xbox Modchip Featuring Onboard Operating System

Posted by timothy on from the that-and-a-pawnshop-visit dept.

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.'"

13 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Utility computing by ddent · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, people are always wanting to use these things as general purpose computing devices. Is the math still such that it is a good decision (as compared to purchasing standard PCs).

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    1. Re:Utility computing by G27+Radio · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My X-box is hooked into my entertainment center, so it'd be handy to be able to use it to play music and video off my linux server. Being able to ssh into it (or control it otherwise) from my workstation or notebook is an additional bonus.

      Other than that, there is the cool factor you mentioned.

    2. Re:Utility computing by zakezuke · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So, people are always wanting to use these things as general purpose computing devices. Is the math still such that it is a good decision (as compared to purchasing standard PCs).

      You would get more bang for the buck with a true blue PC. This is true, can't argue this. The only xbox benifit is that it's small, and has good tv output.

      A laptop is also small, often has TV output, but would likely cost you $300-$400 or so on e-bay for the same CPU class as xbox.

      The x-box I believe is $150 new.

      Someone else will have to find prices for things like the shoebox sized flex-atx style PCs, but for a new device the x-box is still reasonably priced.

      --
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    3. Re:Utility computing by abresif · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I just bought a refurb xbox from EB, with the intention of modding it. The primary reason I want to do this is to run xbmc (http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/). I really just want access to my media (photos, movies, music) from my living room. Earlier this year, I bought the Go Video D2730 Networked DVD Player for $120 from eCost. It works fine, but doesn't support every codec I want - and can't play media from disk (cd/dvd). I also purchased the Philips DVP 642 ($75) from Best Buy. The Phillips unit is not a networked unit, but it does play DIVX/XVID from disc. Nevertheless, after tinkering with these two units, I decided that I wanted something a little more extensible. The obvious solution is to grab an Xbox and mod it. With xbmc, I can do everything these other players can, plus more (games, emulaters, etc). The total cost will be under $200 - I'll throw in an old 40GB HD and access all the media through the network. The alternative is to build a dedicated machine for this purpose, which would cost much more. However a dedicated machine could support PVR/burining a la MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/) or the like. I don't intend to pirate games, although that'd be one use for the system. I think you get a lot of bang for the buck even without the games.

  2. Web Server by with_him · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Good I have been looking for a cheap file server and since I don't have time to play my XBOX much anymore it can do the job.
    Suppose I switch between XBOX gaming and file serving?

  3. Switch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm interested in modding up my Xbox, but curious as to whether any chip allows the mod chip to be turned off via something like dashboard(for the purposes of using Live!), rather than a physical switch.

    1. Re:Switch by Jicksta · · Score: 2, Interesting

      To save yourself the time looking it up, I'll spend my time explaining it. :)

      Microsoft has spent millions on detecting illegit xboxes on their networks for obvious reasons - they don't want people hacking game physics/item counts or, more importantly, potentially crashing the Live server software from unexpected requests sent from modified clients. (this is Microsoft, remember?)

      Live's protectection first creates a hash of your BIOS, so if you try to connect and don't have the official xbox bios, you get your MAC address banned and you'll be buying another xbox if you want Live again.

      Live also checks to see if your HDD is locked or not. This is a little scheme Microsoft uses to keep people from connecting an xbox HDD to a PC and fooling with saves. A modded xbox must use an unlocked hard drive, otherwise it wouldn't be writable. It's possible to easily lock a hard drive again once unlocked.

      There are a few newer mod chips (X3 for example) that allow you to deactivate the d0 redirection for a legit booting, but you'll also need to physically replace the hard drive you've bought for your hacked xbox with the original locked hard drive. This may seem like a pain to do frequently, but a solution is to keep your xbox cover off. Personally, I NEVER put my xbox cover back on for a number of reasons. (1) I'm always tinkering in it, (2) I'm always hiding crap in it (who would think to look there?), and (3) a coverless xbox is very much less likely to be stolen in the case of a break-in.

      If you're not a lazy bastard, you can deactivate/reactivate all modifications on your xbox in five minutes. The use of once-hacked xboxes on Live is really not as big a hassle one would assume.

  4. CRUNCH! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Here's a mirror through the Coral web cache:

    http://www.teamxodus.com.nyud.net:8090/

    (...but the mirror contents is of the broken web server. ;)

    /. really oughtta have a script that does a quick Coral cache population of all the links in a story before posting them... once the site's already been destroyed, it ain't going to be cached.

  5. This has been out for a WHILE (but it does rock) by Gregoyle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This chip isn't new, it's been out for a long time. I got mine about 6 months ago and it had been out for a few months then.

    But it still does rock. You can do things right out of the box that normally take a lot of searching and downloading with other chips, e.g. format an enormous hard drive to FATX and copy over all the old partitions and information, all with one push of a button.

    As a bonus it includes Cromwell in its own memory bank on the chip. This is the BIOS that's usually used to start linux distros. I use it for my MythTV XBOX. To tell the truth I've never even had to add an extra BIOS to it, because all I use the XBOX for is for MythTV and to VNC for Linux apps.

    Oh, it's also really easy to turn off so you can use your XBOX for xbox-live, if that's your bag.

    --

    "He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."

  6. Coded from scratch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    According to a rival modchip maker, after 10 minutes of reverse engineering, XOS2 is based on OsKit (http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/) - though this may just be a slanderous claim so I can't say whether this is the case or not. I KNOW that certain parts of the OS are based on Xbox-Linux's Cromwell efforts (the Recovery mode uses Cromwell for sure, along with the Xbox-Linux video drivers), but wheres the source? Nowhere. Would be nice to get some seasoned hackers to do some reverse assembly here.

  7. This is cool except... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    when recently, a couple of weeks ago, this female customer returns an X-Box to Wal-Mart (I work in electronics) and said she couldn't get it to play any games. She said this weird menu kept coming up and she couldn't get it to do anything useful.

    So we fired it up there in the store and lo and behold this menu comes up for Xenium by TeamXodus. I knew it was a modded X-Box but didn't know why she would have one or why she would want to return it. Apparently she had purchased it from another Wal-Mart and someone returned the modded X-Box there.

    She kept asking me why someone would do this and I tried to explain the coolness factor of being able to control your own X-Box. She wasn't getting it. So, she returned it and got a regular ol' X-Box that does what she wants.

    However, I'm confused as to why someone would successfully mod an X-Box and then return it! Is this Xenium thing not all that its cracked up to be? Was it too powerful for someone to handle and they had to bring it back? I don't know, but it really makes me wonder...

  8. Re:All links dead.. by Talez · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The REAL reason, of course, is that figuring out a good caching policy would take thought and work, which don't seem in much supply for the last couple years.

    The reason is that the subscription business model of "see it before the crowds turn the server into molten sludge" would disappear.

    If I had a huge bandwidth bill because of slashdot herding 250K+ people to my website for fun and profit you sure as hell better believe I'll sue their asses to recover the bandwidth bills.

  9. Re:What a minute? by Jicksta · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So Linux is not an os but an application that runs on the operating system?

    Actually, the xbox uses its own filesystem: FATX. In order to linux on it, the linux root partition is stored in a (by default) 3GB file located on the root of either the E or F partitions. This file contains all linux data in a sort of emulated reiserfs filesystem (assuming you use Gentoox).

    The xbox kernel was ported to the xbox and wrapped in an .xbe (XBox Executable) to work as a bootloader. The kernel mounts the F:/rootfs and F:/swap files as folders; this is much like mounting an iso in linux using "mount -t iso9660 -o loop FILE.iso /LOCATION".

    Now, if you flash a legal linux BIOS on your modchip and boot it, you'll need to have formatted your xbox with a supported linux filesystem such as fat32, ext2, ext3, reiserfs, etc. In this case, linux does not run from an "application ... on the operating system" but normally, as a PC would.

    Hope this makes sense.