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The Scoop on the Xbox 360's Embedded OS?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the what-could-it-be-man dept.

An anonymous reader writes "When the Xbox 360 was launched two weeks ago amid much brouhaha over its custom-designed IBM PowerPC-based CPU with 3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2GHz each, WindowsForDevices.com wondered aloud, 'What OS runs inside the Xbox 360?' Now, the website thinks it has found the answer to its question. No, it's not Linux or BSD, nor a derivative of Longhorn or Windows CE."

26 of 504 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by gowen · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's Windows 2000. What a shock, who would've guessed, I'm so exci..... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

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    1. Re:Wow by NinjaFarmer · · Score: 3, Funny
      I take it that you didn't even bother to RTFA. It says it has roots in windows 2000 but it is NOT windows 2000, a derivative may be but NOT windows 2000.
      So why don't you just come out and say they are using windows XP?
    2. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Bwa-ha-ha! You old fuckers are funny. Hike your belt up and start telling anecdotes about mainframe programming, because it's just so RELEVANT!

    3. Re:Wow by WormholeFiend · · Score: 4, Funny

      According to the article, the XBox OS was Windows 2000 with 95% of it removed

      Where can I get a trial copy this Windows "lite" edition?

    4. Re:Wow by Dylan2000 · · Score: 4, Funny

      buy an XBox?

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    5. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Let's see... Hyperbole, check. Extreme generalizations, check. Bald-faced lies, check. Strawman and matches, check. Non sequitur insults, check. 2+ uses of a 'curse word', check. Belief in inherent self-superiority uber alles for being an emo chestbeater, check.

      Stricken nerve, check.

      Too easy. Catch ya next time, sucker.

    6. Re:Wow by HuckleCom · · Score: 1, Funny

      Windows 100?

    7. Re:Wow by sherpajohn · · Score: 2, Funny

      If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn't it just lie there and rot?

      Yes, yes it does.


      Well, no, no it does not just lie there and rot. At least not in the (dwindling) temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest:

      "Frequently more than half of the total mass in these forests is in the form of dead trees, either snags or logs. . . The great abundance of dead, woody material in such forests has led to the development of complex communities of organisms that depend on decomposing material . . . structural attributes characteristic of older forests are a wide range of tree sizes and ages, and a patchy, open canopy punctuated by gaps beneath which the forest understory is especially well developed."

      from: Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska by Jim Pojar, Andy MacKinnon

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    8. Re:Wow by jmello · · Score: 2, Funny

      What the hell does that mean? /\/\/\

  2. Three letters... by Waltre · · Score: 5, Funny

    DOS

  3. First Power chips on the X-box by G27+Radio · · Score: 5, Funny

    What's next? Next thing you know Apple will start using Intel chips instead. Strange days. :)

  4. Windows 3.11?? by SilentBob4 · · Score: 3, Funny

    How can they run an XBox on Windows 3.11?? I just don't get it... Will we be required to add TCP/IP on our own if we wish to play over the network?

  5. Faeries... by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 5, Funny

    My guess is faeries. They captured a whole mess of them and have chained them to tiny little switchboards in the machine. I was going to say leprachauns, but the extra gold they carry around would make the machines too heavy.

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  6. Re:What a letdown! by ghoti · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thanks for ruining that movie for me, you insensitive clod!

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  7. Re:What a letdown! by lewp · · Score: 2, Funny

    He just saved you two long, boobless hours.

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  8. missing option by John+Macdonald · · Score: 2, Funny

    The obvious answer hasn't been mentioned yet: OS\360 (especially since it is running on an IBM processor).

  9. Re:IBM is making out well by Ham_belony · · Score: 2, Funny

    IBM sticks with what it is best at. And the saying if you can not beat them join them applies very well here. With the powerpc division and cell processor hitting it off again, they generate a lot of revenue to maybe go for the personal desktops again and take out intel completely.

  10. Quoth the article by jabber01 · · Score: 2, Funny

    "The original Xbox ran an OS that had its roots in Windows 2000. Granted, by the time you strip out everything that is not needed in a console like the Xbox and replace some of the parts with stuff specific to that device (like the file system), and add a few pieces, it hardly resembles anything remotely like Windows 2000 at all. "

    So, in other words, it runs DOS 5.1

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  11. You're all wrong. It's actually OS/2 WARP! by netglen · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's right, the OS is actually MS's old friend OS/2 WARP.

  12. Re:IBM is making out well by digidave · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Maybe some of this is payback for Intel's Linux support"

    I've heard that IBM is thinking of supporting Linux, too...

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  13. Re:What a letdown! -- *Spoiler Alert* by hoggoth · · Score: 2, Funny

    > Thanks for spoiling the ending of the movie for those of us that haven't had a chance to see it yet.

    The movie came out in 1941 for God's sake! How long do you expect everyone to tiptoe around you?

    Oh, and the Planet of the Apes is the future Earth.
    Bruce Willis? Dead.
    Kaiser Sose? Verbal.

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  14. Re:My question is. . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    That was an outstanding display of righteous indignation. Well done.

  15. 3 out of 4, you mean... by Colol · · Score: 2, Funny

    Whaddya mean "3 for 3"? As we all know, the Phantom is running on commodity x86 hardware! It'll be out any day now with a vast library of games, really...

  16. vaXbox by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's Xbox360, which was Xbox, which was Windows 2000, which was Windows NT, which was... VMS. How many VAXMIPS does the X360 run? And where's my DCL interpreter?

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  17. Re:My question is. . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    I guess my point is : if the dev kits are using G4's PowerPC, does it make the console easier to crack ?


    Only if you can stand one-button mouses!
  18. KERNEL.EXE is now in ELF format... by leonbrooks · · Score: 2, Funny
    ...and you'll have to get into the habit of referring to DLLs as "shareable objects", but on the other hand it's kinda virus-proof, it's reliable for the first time evah, and you can install things using our fabulous new Redmond Package Manager system. But yeah, it's Windows 2000, stripped down and with a few replacements.

    If you don't believe me, just pop a Konsole on it and type "uname -a"; there it is, right in front of you:
    Windows xbox360 2000.4.22-29mdksecure #1 SMP Tue Mar 23 17:31:10 MST 2004 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Windows
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