The Scoop on the Xbox 360's Embedded OS?

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."

Wow

[gowen]

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

Three letters...

[Waltre]

DOS

First Power chips on the X-box

[G27 Radio]

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

Windows 3.11??

[SilentBob4]

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?

Faeries...

[Shadow Wrought]

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.

Re:Wow

[NinjaFarmer]

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?

Re:What a letdown!

[ghoti]

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

Re:What a letdown!

[lewp]

He just saved you two long, boobless hours.

missing option

[John Macdonald]

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

Re:IBM is making out well

[Ham_belony]

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.

Quoth the article

[jabber01]

"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

You're all wrong. It's actually OS/2 WARP!

[netglen]

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

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:IBM is making out well

[digidave]

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

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

Re:What a letdown! -- *Spoiler Alert*

[hoggoth]

> 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.

Re:My question is. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Wow

[WormholeFiend]

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?

Re:Wow

[Dylan2000]

buy an XBox?

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

3 out of 4, you mean...

[Colol]

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...

vaXbox

[Doc Ruby]

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

Re:Wow

[HuckleCom]

Windows 100?

Re:Wow

[sherpajohn]

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

Re:My question is. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Wow

[jmello]

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

KERNEL.EXE is now in ELF format...

[leonbrooks]

...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