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Games Entertainment

Strong Hints On Flashing Your Xbox 219

Posted by timothy from the wink-wink dept.
customsex writes: "bunnie has written a nice one with pictures documenting his adventure flashing his bios on his xbox. check it." His page also points you to the Sony vs. Connectix case regarding reverse engineering of hardware.
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Strong Hints On Flashing Your Xbox More

Strong Hints On Flashing Your Xbox

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  • Phone message: (Score:5, Funny)

    by mESSDan ( 302670 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @09:47AM (#2675240) Homepage
    That phone message was pretty funny, the x-box guy sounds pretty nervous/antsy. "We'd uh, like you to remove that rom image, and uh, call us when you do. Or call me and uh, we can talk about it."

    One cool thing to note is that this wasn't a lawyer calling him, it was one of the x-box dev guys.
    • From the tone of his voice, I could imagine there were a few people standing behind him and coaching what he was going to say next.
    • That phone message was pretty funny...

      Does anybody with an MP3 decoder feel inspired to write a transcript of it for those of us who don't have one set up yet?

  • Hardware hackers only (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @09:50AM (#2675244) Journal
    You need the following to do this: tongs-style soldering iron (to remove the existing flash device), a fine-tipped soldering iron, a microscope, flux, and some solder paste is always nice, but you can use just plain old fine solder too. If you don't have tongs-style soldering iron, you can just cut the device off the board if you have extras laying around (presumably you also have a ROM burner--I use the Needham's Electronics EMP series) or you can build your own (I built an improved version but I haven't got the docs on the web yet...)

    So it looks like hardware hackers only with the appropriate tools and skills.

    There was also this tidbit:

    If you are looking for the FLASH ROM contents of the XBOX, you won't be able to download them even though I've extracted them. I got a call [recording edited to protect sensitive info] from Microsoft within 12 hours of posting this page regarding the binaries...

    Sounds like MS is on the ball on this one, as far as protect their hardware secrets.

    • Their hardware secrets? It's a friggin' PC...
      • c'mon, you know EVERYTHING Microsoft does is a secret. If they don't protect their secrets, people might partake in such willy-nilly activities as Free-speech! And Freedom leads to Open Source! We all know, as Microsft does, that Open Source is un-american (Uh-oh...un-american? Does that make Linux users terrorists?). MP3 is communism! Arggh! ::sarcasm:: "Software pirates are nothing compared to the anal pirates @ Microsoft" -Anon
    • So it looks like hardware hackers only with the appropriate tools and skills.

      Only to do the initial work. Presumably you can also flash the ROM in place, which is what Microsoft would do if they need to upgrade/fix it.

      All we need is one person to create an X-box game that just flashes in a Linux BIOS and can boot a linux image from CD.

      • Why flash the ROM? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @03:30PM (#2676098) Journal
        All we need is one person to create an X-box game that just flashes in a Linux BIOS and can boot a linux image from CD.

        Why bother flashing the ROM?

        Just reverse-engineer its contents sufficiently to see how it loads from the CD. Then make a new LILO version-or-replacement that will boot linux (and other stuff) on the X box - perhaps with a soft BIOS under it and/or suitable modifications to certain linux modules that use BIOS services.

        The only way I can imagine this failing is if the BIOS runs the entire game in protected mode with no way to subvert it.

        Of course flashing the BIOS ROM is cleaner when you're done (except that you can't run the games anymore.)
        • The only way I can imagine this failing is if the BIOS runs the entire game in protected mode with no way to subvert it.

          Well, actually I can see one way it could fail: If the BIOS uses asymmetric cryptography to see if the game is signed by Microsoft's private key and refuses to run it otherwise.

          But that would also break the "game that flashes the ROM" unless you can get Microsoft to sign it.

          Or break the asymmetric cryptography. B-)
      • Presumably you can also flash the ROM in place, which is what Microsoft would do if they need to upgrade/fix it.

        Not "presumably" but "for sure". Flash is soldered onto boards unprogrammed, blank. This is because you don't want to mess with the manufacturer's packaging, and it is too expensive to put anything in TSOP package into the burner anyway. Chips are put on boards by pick-and-place machines, and these machines want chips in their original packaging (tape/reel or tube).

        Absolute majority of designs has some sort of in-circuit programming feature, like a connector where you can plug a programmer and burn the Flash in place.

    • So it looks like hardware hackers only with the appropriate tools and skills.

      It's more of a tools problem than anything else; removing surface-mount devices without damaging anything requires either a desoldering device that can heat up all the pins simultaneously, or a very fine pointed soldering iron and lots of patience. The original author is at MIT, where there are lots of people around who do hardware. That helps.

      From an intellectual property standpoint, Microsoft can't object if you replace their ROM contents with something else, like a boot loader for Linux. Something like OpenBIOS. [linux.de]

    • can someone please explain to me the insighful nature of this comment?

      thanks in advance

    • No only that, he certainly does not over-state the difficulty of doing this stuff. This is NOT for the electronics-hobbiest. Espcially putting on the ROM socket is not easy (without shorting out something ;o))

      I have been working with the exact same device and would totally recommend an emulator. It's not cheap, but you are sure to screw up some Flash chips. I use the promice [promice.com], which works well (although the software is, like with all of these emulators, braindead).

      Also regarding the following quote:
      My guess is if this information is true, there is a PIC 16LC63A microcontroller right next door to the FLASH...I wouldn't be surprised if the PIC microcontroller monitors the FLASH to make sure the right sequence of operations happens, and halts the processor if something is amiss.

      See, if I where to design something like that, (wait a second,- I am in fact designing something like that, it's a little different though) I would do the following: Program a private key and decryption algo in the PIC, then encrypt the BIOS image using the companion public key. The PIC then decrypts the data comming out of the flash before it hits the Southbridge (I guess you could also use a symetric like 3DES algo with just a private key,- there are a couple of ways to go about it, really). One of the problems is that the code is not read sequentialy, but that would be easy to handle with some decent programming. :o)

  • Microsoft at their best (Score:4, Interesting)

    by torqer ( 538711 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @09:52AM (#2675249)
    The XBOX keeps "multiple versions of the BIOS around in case different games rely on features or even bugs found in previous BIOS versions."

    man pretty smart of microsoft to realize their own mistakes may be required in games

    • More like people taking advantage of specific hardware/bios "quirks" in thier software. I suspect they're not supposed to but some people do to "optimise" performance.

      Heck, back in the Atari 8bit days, and the Atari ST days, you had to downgrade your ROM or TOS image for specific games... especially old ST games which almsot all virtually requires TOS 1.0 (buggy as hell!) or TOS 1.06.

      So not necessarily a MS thing, and it is great foresight, assuming of course the X-Box can actually be told which BIOS Image to load on boot. ;)
    • "... in previous BIOS versions."

      oh dear, why would there be previous bios', because they intend to flash these things :[

      the consolepc bridge loses another step :/
      • They may not intend to have users flash their Xbox's, in fact I highly doubt that. What may happen is that in future shipments of the Xbox, they may have an upgraded version of the BIOS. This is not a unique Microsoft idea, as the Dreamcast did this about a year after its original release.
    • No, "there are in fact four identical 256k copies of the ROM image in the 1 MB flash ROM." - not multiple different versions of the BIOS.

      It's entirely likely MS may revise the BIOS at a later stage, for fixing bugs - if it turns out to be necessary. All console makers do. So long as you don't change the external functionality at all, that's fine.

      But what the article was saying is that this is a reasonable move by MS, to increase robustness in the possible case of field flash rom upgrades, or even if multiple versions of the BIOS might be required. I'm sure MS are very aware that the latter case is not a desirable one.

      Come to that, I doubt that "flash ugrades in the field" are even possible, let alone planned, or the author probably wouldn't have had to replace the ROM at all. It'd be a major security hole, if you could do that! :-)

      • "Come to that, I doubt that "flash ugrades in the field" are even possible, let alone planned, or the author probably wouldn't have had to replace the ROM at all."

        That's not necessarily so. For example, the X-box could be set up to only accept cryptographically signed ROM upgrades that're stored on an authorized CD.

        There're two methods I can think of to crack such a system. The first is to look at an authorized, MS-released ROM upgrade and try to reverse engineer it. Since MS hasn't released one yet, this obviously isn't an option right now. The second is to reverse engineer the existing ROM. The leads to a chicken-and-egg problem: You can't reflash the ROM to reverse engineer it until you've already reverse engineered it.

        So in the future, it's entirely possible that people will be able to provide software that will do the ROM dump on a still sealed X-box. But for now, they have to do things the hard way.

  • wonder how hard it would be to mod a bios to let you boot up things like Office 2000 or something like that. Not that it would be particularly useful displaying to a TV. Something like geiss would be cool to run on a big screen hi-def tv, though.

    Conversely, when will someone get me a program that will let me play DOA3 or other xgames on my PC? I wouldn't think that would be too hard. I think MS should even support it because if we can buy a program to let us buy and run games on our PC, they don't lose money on each console sold.

    • Re:running things for different platforms (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dreamquick ( 229454 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @10:39AM (#2675331) Homepage
      Hmm X-Box games on a PC?

      You will not see that for at least a year. There are a few reasons:

      1) X-Box is a product - if i can play the games elsewhere why should i buy an x-box? e.g. Halo looks like it rocks, and if the only place i can play it is on an X-Box then that means i have to buy one if i want to play it.

      2) X-Box is an appliance with a roadmap already laid out for it - if i remember the goal is to get it to become a home multi-media station, if you give people a reason not to buy one then you risk losing a market segment.

      3) Assuming a 3rd party does this then they will be sued to hell and back by MS - this guy got a telephone message within 12 hours for releasing something only the most techie of people would have a use for. What do you think they would do if/when someone releases an emulator.

      I suggest a year simply because after this people and the company will see exactly who won the console war - if anyone, if it is the x-box that won then you can release an emulator in the hopes of getting people hooked and eventually buying a console.

      If the x-box didn't win then you release an emulator to keep the devolopers happy that they can still sell games.

      The only problem is if it all ends in a draw between X-box and another console - in that case you want to produce the best games you can and make sure you can only play them on your machine!
      • Hmm X-Box games on a PC?

        You will not see that for at least a year. There are a few reasons:

        1) X-Box is a product - if i can play the games elsewhere why should i buy an x-box? e.g. Halo looks like it rocks, and if the only place i can play it is on an X-Box then that means i have to buy one if i want to play it.

        Geeze, is anyone paying attention? M$ looses money on every X-Box they sell. They make it up in royalties paid them for every game sold, which is why you won't see anyone come out with a simple CD/DVD that turns an X-Box into a general purpose Linux computer -- M$ would never grant you a license (i.e. give you a key to put on your CD/DVD), even if you did pay them the royalty. Hack/steal/reverse-engineer a key and they'll come after you with the DMCA.

        So, given that the real money is in games and royalties from 3rd party games, why wouldn't they be happy if you bought X-Box games to play on your PC? But I'm guessing that the required video card (with the X-Box specific nVIDIA chip) would probably cost as much as an X-Box, so unless you really hate playing games on your television, why bother?

    • They have PC video cards with some thingie called 'TV-out' for exactly that ;-)

    • Re:running things for different platforms (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JWhitlock ( 201845 ) <John-Whitlock&ieee,org> on Saturday December 08, 2001 @01:05PM (#2675746)
      Conversely, when will someone get me a program that will let me play DOA3 or other xgames on my PC? I wouldn't think that would be too hard. I think MS should even support it because if we can buy a program to let us buy and run games on our PC, they don't lose money on each console sold.

      This is not a bug, it's a feature.

      XBox = DirectX, known version, known platform, known hardware, soon-to-be-discovered bugs, soon-to-be-discovered optimizations, etc. etc.

      It's a game developer's Nirvana, to only have to code for one platform, knowing that the way it looks on your development system is exactly how it will look on the buyer's system. No unexpected incompatible drivers. No hardware conflicts. No performance bottlenecks on strange systems with cheap-ass components. No Packard-Bells.

      It's like asking why the clothing industry can't make a good-looking pair of one-size-fits-all shoes.

  • Reverse torture (Score:3, Funny)

    by imrdkl ( 302224 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @09:55AM (#2675256) Homepage Journal
    I'll sacrifice a GC for the sake of curiosity and dissolve the package with hot sulfuric

    I have no idea what a GC is, but I imagine it's in alot of pain. Isn't there a more humane way of doing this?

  • Is it illegal overseas? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Guysdrinkingbeer ( 207045 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @10:14AM (#2675281)
    I understand that posting the ROM image is illegal in the states, but does that apply to Europe or Russia or even China? I know that the Xbox is not in release in those places yet but should not stop a small email attachment of the image making it's way overseas and winding up on a web site. Just wondering. Thanks.

  • Doesn't MS lose money on every Xbox? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08, 2001 @10:15AM (#2675283)
    And make money on every game to make up for it?

    So, let's all buy an Xbox, convert it to running Linux, and come up with a cool open source development environment to build our own games.

    We can destroy MS and get a good gaming console out of it at the same time. :)

    I would also love to make a C64 emulator CDROM with about 500 old games and a nice menuing system to select which games to play, and make the save and load work from all the games as well.

    A system like the X-box would be great for that.
    • We can destroy MS and get a good gaming console out of it at the same time.

      Don't say "We"; I am not in your little "gotta destroy MS" club. I'm just here to read some tech news/etc;
    • "a C64 emulator"

      Underacheiver, you should get a $50 Dreamcast instead. But an N64 emulator would make use of some bit of the Xbox.

      Demand SID ringtones in your next mobile phone!
    • Wake up. Microsoft loses money when an XBox is NOT SOLD... when you buy an XBox you help them recover all or part of their investment. When you buy XBox games you give microsoft a huge profit.

      Come on, you'd think Slashdot type geeks would be able to do the math... Xbox costs $400 to make(that's the rumor) so they lose 100 on each sale. But they lose FOUR hundred if NO ONE buys it. lol.

      John Sarek.
    • All of the consoles sold now are loss leaders. With the cost of development and manufacturing, its a must for set-top boxes. Its nothing new.

      I wish there were enough people to buy an X-Box and never buy even one game for it. Of course, I think to kill of the X-Box (or any console for that matter) it would take as many people who already are buying one. I doubt that many people would be willing to pay whatever it costs for one.

      As a side note... I got a dreamcast with NesterDC. It has something like 1,000 NES ROMs. Very fun to play some of those old games again. But then, I only paid $50 for the dreamcast....
    • The percentage of people buying xbox's and reverse engineering them would be extremely small. Those with the knowledge to even do it is extremely small; I'll admit that I probably couldn't do this. There are always those people who buy a console and only get 1 or 2 games, and this would just add a few more doing relatively the same thing.
    • hey not a problem! How bout I sell you my C128D for $199 and you can run them from disk. It will save you $100. That should at least make up for the lack of a CD w/500 games.
  • "I forget his name, but he was important--I do recall he claimed to help define the DHCP spec :-P"

    Is this a good or bad thing? I do imagine though any old MS guy saying windows was his idea [maybe they worked at xerox?]

  • "Flashing" an XBOX? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bnitsua ( 72438 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @10:22AM (#2675298)
    Do we really need to post a story everytime some guy plays Halo naked in front of his television?

  • A possible step forward in Xbox emulation? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xiangpeng ( 324117 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @10:23AM (#2675300) Homepage
    I was just wondering that if the dumping of the rom will actually help in the emulation of the XBox, since everyone can now examine the bios. Most instructions can be emulated easily as they are similar to PC instructions, UMA can be examined closely too :)

    • Re:A possible step forward in Xbox emulation? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Xbox is actually a PC. Instructions are not similar, they are identical.
    • The benefit of disassembling the ROM will be to help figure out the hardware and to therefore be able to replace it with a Linux BIOS.
    • The only differance between the Nvidia NForce Xbox chipset & the new Nvidia K7 PC mainboard chipset [gamepc.com] is that Xbox version is designed for the GTL+ bus, while the K7 PC version is designed for the EV6 bus, other than that they are exactly the same.

      Consequently once one has worked out how to master/hack the Xbox BIOS & the propietry MS Xbox file system (to load a PC OS compatible FS), there's no reason why one couldn't load any X86 PC OS on it (the chipset drivers for both versions of the NForce are, or should be the same).

      Now if your talking about playing XBox games on a PC, why would you want to? MS is selling them so cheap that they are losing $100 a pop on them, so the big saving would be in utilising the Xbox as a PC, rather than the other way arround.

      Maybe you could load Linux on & turn the Xbox into a xbox.

      • Bullshit (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Why does /. have people posting at standard scores >1. Its not like you can see any correlation between quality and the initial score ... quite the opposite really, karma whores dont make very good posters they just know how to get points. Which gets them into trouble when like now they try to contribute something intelligent to a real discussion.

        Anyway you are dead wrong, NVIDIA left heaps of features off the X-Box graphics part of the chipset which are essential for backwards compatibility on the PC ... this bought them some of the space to make room for GeForce3 class hardware with extra vertex shaders etc etc. Although Im pretty sure that even given that the chip is still a whole lot more complex in the X-Box. Their PC chipsets are only weak cousins of the X-Box one.

  • Erm, no. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08, 2001 @10:27AM (#2675306)
    "...documenting his adventure flashing his bios..."

    The story is about his adventure *removing* his bios. It's interesting - you might want to read it.

    • Re:Erm, no. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Bozar ( 458678 )
      he did flash the bios. He took an image of it and re-wrote it over itself (when he thought he had the wrong image, i dont understand why he would want to destroy the original this way but whatever) and then re-inserted it. That's flashing the bios. He removed it to flash it cuz asking the XBox to flash its bios nicely seems ineffective... Its a nice story, you might want to read it.

  • Long-term benefit (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smittyoneeach ( 243267 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @10:30AM (#2675312) Homepage Journal
    Recall reading the Wired article [wired.com] about the XBox, where they mention that its initial $300 dollar price will be driven down to around $100 as soon as possible.
    Sorry about the low end of the computer market, but it'll be cool when you can drop a grand, pick up a ten-pack of them, and construct your Much-Ballyhooed Beowulf Cluster (MBBC).
    Maybe one day /. itself could run on such an installation. Feel the irony.
    • I believe the business model is more reflective of the Gillette model,
      i.e., give away razors, sell and make money on razor blades.
      They intend to make money on the licensing and sale of the games on
      their proprietary, enabling hardware.
      ?sp
      • As has every other home videogame manufacturer since Nintendo lost its deathgrip on the market...
      • Furthermore, as the XBox runs under a Mr. Softy OS, featuring DirectX, game vendors target the desktop and console markets with a single code base.

        Slap a keyboard on this thing, and Mr. Softy has done what all of the Internet appliance people could not; put a cheap email computer in every house.

        As usual, regardless of your opinion of the technical merits of any Mr. Softy's products, he sure knows how to go after a market.

        The icing on the cake is that Mr. Softy has no sunk costs in the manufacturing of XBoxen; it's all outsourced, as detailed in the aforelinked Wired article.

        Smart, smart, smart. But can you get one at S-Mart?

    • Re:Long-term benefit (Score:2, Insightful)

      by horster ( 516139 )
      I can't believe they'll be able to do this - they are already losing at least $100 per box. The parts that are in the xbox, while they might be old in a year or two will still cost money.
      Example - ever need just a 2 gig harddrive? Was it 1/5 the cost of a ten giger?
      Or ever try to buy a pentium?

      Of course ms will have access that we don't but I don't see the parts and supplies for this thing coming down to $200.

  • The point? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @10:30AM (#2675314) Homepage
    I'm not entirely sure I see the point of this exercise. Bear with me. I can see upgrading the drive cables or trying to solder on extra memory for performance reasons (as some people have done), but flashing the BIOS of the XBox seems to be a pointless exercise. First, you need to have pretty strong hardware knowledge -- it's not something that's going to be "mod chipped" in the future. Secondly, and more important, apparently the BIOS is heavily encrypted and/or compressed, so (if Microsoft used its noodle) it will be extremely difficult to retrieve.

    As opposed to hacking an XBox to use Linux (which I agree is a noble pursuit, if not flawed), why not find a cost-effective way to make a "LBox" out of cheap hardware. Put a penguin on the cover or something.

    Me, personally, I bought my XBox for playing games and DVDs, like most people. I love fucking around with hardware myself, but this thing is a toy to be played with and enjoyed for me, not a job.

    • Even if you can't read the bios flash part it is important in understanding how the device starts up. Chances are that if you can get your own executable onto the box you should be able to do whatever you choose and install some sort of interface that will allow for continued hacking/exploring. Knowing whats in the bios might also allow for changing the harddrive out, or having the ability to use the other 64MB ram footprint on the pcb.

    • Re:The point? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SpinyNorman ( 33776 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @11:25AM (#2675470)
      You could never make an "L-box" as cheap as the X-box because the beauty of it is that it's subsidized hardware! Every X-box subverted to another purpose not only deprives Microsoft of razor-blade revenue, but actually causes them to lose money!

      If X-box can be made to run Linux, then it would be an excellent base for an open source Tivo!

      • Re:The point? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by kinkie ( 15482 )
        Yes and not.
        Let's admit that Microsoft sells there at a loss, so yes, you're banking that money.
        However, if they sell 1 million consoles, it doesn't matter whether 100k of those are converted into L-boxes, they still sold 1 million, and that is what they'll use to lure the game developers to their platform, promising bigger markets.
        This is not to say you shouldn't do it :)
        • This is only partly true. There was a press release from Nintendo the other day and it spend some time talking about the 1.9 Games to Console ratio they obtained. A few days later MS announced that they had the best ratio ever recorded for an initial concole launch of 2.4.
          This number is important and the game developers are not fools. They have been in this arean much longer than MS and knows the deal. Second the games sold will be analysed endlessly by all kinds of parameters like age, gender etc, so a significant conversion rate to Linux will have an impact.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
            Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re:Game Ratio important (Score:3, Insightful)

            by nathanh ( 1214 )
            There was a press release from Nintendo the other day and it spend some time talking about the 1.9 Games to Console ratio they obtained. A few days later MS announced that they had the best ratio ever recorded for an initial concole launch of 2.4.

            Many stores were not selling the X-Box standalone. You had to buy the X-Box plus 2 or 3 games as part of a bundle. There is rumor that this bundling was an edict by Microsoft before a store was allowed to sell the X-Box. WIRED ran an article [wired.com] discussing how EB, ToysRUs and Gamestop were doing nothing but bundles, much to the annoyance of their customers who didn't necessarily want all the games in a particular bundle.

            This number is important and the game developers are not fools. They have been in this arean much longer than MS and knows the deal.

            It strongly looks like MS knew the deal and has been loading the deck to give themselves a better hand. Golden Rule #1: Never Let Microsoft Deal The Cards.

      • If X-box can be made to run Linux, then it would be an excellent base for an open source Tivo!
        Do you even understand what you need to do what Tivo does? There's no MPEG2 realtime encoder chip in the Xbox, and therefore it can't do what Tivo does.

        Twoflower

    • Re:The point? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You apparently don't understad the hardware issues at all, or have a desire to learn. I serriously doubt that, if the BIOS is encrypted/compressed that it is heavily so/hard to decode. There aren't alot of crypto devices implemented in hardware that are difficult to circumvent if you have physical access to it. If nothing else, you could remove the crypto crap, and install a regullarly executable BIOS in the flash ROM. May not play XBOX games after being hacked, but as you say(and sooooo many others as well), might make a good MAME/SNES/*insert fav old console here* arcade box. This means that someone must do it, now doesn't it?
      • "May not play XBOX games after being hacked, but as you say(and sooooo many others as well), might make a good MAME/SNES/*insert fav old console here* arcade box. This means that someone must do it, now doesn't it?"

        Why the fuck would I ruin my XBox to make it into a SNES emulator? I can either a) purchase a used SNES for change or b) get an emulator for my PC, which doesn't ruin it's potential after you use it.

    • Yeah, good idea (Score:2, Informative)

      by stud9920 ( 236753 )
      As opposed to hacking an XBox to use Linux (which I agree is a noble pursuit, if not flawed), why not find a cost-effective way to make a "LBox" out of cheap hardware. Put a penguin on the cover or something.
      Yeah, good idea ! No one ever tried this [indrema.com] before !
    • I'm not entirely sure I see the point of this exercise. Bear with me. I can see upgrading the drive cables or trying to solder on extra memory for performance reasons (as some people have done), but flashing the BIOS of the XBox seems to be a pointless exercise.

      Why hack up an interesting bit of hardware/software? I'm shocked a Slashdot reader even has to ask! Because it's fun to do, of course. Fiddling around and figuring out new and intersting systems is what hacking's all about. I imagine there's a lot to be learned about the system's internals by looking at the BIOS ROM. And no end of the cool hacks you can do by providing a non-standard BIOS image. Clear wall cheats, for example (if you're into that sort of thing), or make it possible to burn your own programs and run 'em (not illegally, of course), the list could go on and on, really.

      Me, personally, I bought my XBox for playing games and DVDs, like most people. I love fucking around with hardware myself, but this thing is a toy to be played with and enjoyed for me, not a job.

      Well, no one's forcing you to hack your XBox. Play all the games and DVDs you want, and if someone else wants to work on cool hacks, let 'em.
    • Why does a man climb a mountain?

  • Could Bios be replaced with LinuxBios (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bug1 ( 96678 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @10:35AM (#2675318)
    If the xbox BIOS was replaced with LinuxBIOS then that shouldnt that bypass any other protection they put in software.

    linuxBIOS project http://www.acl.lanl.gov/linuxbios/
    • Assuming of course that they load the bios data into memory and then execute this code to unencrypt itself. They might have specific hardware built into a chip on the board that is performing this encryption/decryption so if you wanted to put LinuxBIOS on the board you would have to encrypt it using the same mechanism they do, and then put it in the flash part. Also, since they might not be using a standard chipset it is questionable as to whether a straight PC bios will even work on the xbox, something xbox specific would more than likely have to be written and would require a bit more knowledge about the chipset and other components.

  • Sure, you can hack an X-box (Score:5, Funny)

    by multiplexo ( 27356 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @10:40AM (#2675338) Journal
    But I'm waiting for someone to hack the new Maytag Neptune washer and dryers, the ones with the 4" plasma touch screen. I want one that will run Linux and play DVDs while I'm doing my laundry. Or actually if I had the washer and dryer I could have one running Linux and the other serving as a game/DVD console, and I could wash my clothes.

  • Man! (Score:2, Funny)

    by DelyApple ( 322505 )
    Man, can't you people make it so it just brings up the porn when I poke the buttons?
    Wha?
    Oh! I'm sorry, I thought this was a thread on the XXX-Box. I saw flashing... :(
  • How does MicroSoft find out about these sites before /. does?
    I think they are paying some guys to just surf the web looking for stuff that can stuff people from using M$ products.
    Man, surf the web all day AND get paid... I'd take that job !

  • Congrats to Microsoft! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ndr_Amigo ( 533266 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @01:47PM (#2675819)
    I know it's an odd thing to say, but I would like to congratulate Microsoft on (unusually!) actually being half-decent. Listening to the phonecall, whether he was coached or not, I would congradulate Mr. Thompson on not being a smeghead and actually NICELY asking for the image to be removed.. without threatening legal action over some obscure EULA clause for looking at the motherboard or something :)
    • You need to look at where MS was going with being nice. If being nice removes the image, fine. If it doesn't, being able to tell the judge "we asked him very politely" will carry a lot of weight. That's something that they would need, considering that any law he might have been breaking would be a very flimsy one that would only apply to him if the court wre already convinced that he was a nasty bad hacker.

      Microsoft wasn't being nice so much as being intelligent. It's a shame they don't put the formidable powers they do have into making good products. If they did, I wouldn't have had to learn half of the computer stuff I know.

    • I don't know if I'd say they were being nice so much as they were worried. If they pissed the guy off, I've got a hunch that copies of the ROM would begin to 'appear' all across the internet.

  • Harddrive (Score:5, Informative)

    by omega9 ( 138280 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @01:54PM (#2675835)
    This gets on topic towards the end:

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that the HDs in the Xbox are standard IDE drives. I've also read that people have attempted to chain the drives into their PC's IDE loop and mount them, but have been unable to because of a prop filesystem. Seeing as how the drives are 8-10 GB, what if you were to dd if=/dev/xbox of=/spare/drive bs=1024 to a spare drive >10GB (to hold the info). This way you don't damage your Xbox drive and you have a copy of it to play with. The reason?

    I have worked with proprietary systems in the past that were (more or less) similar to the Xbox, in that they used standard PC hardware and theory but needed to be secure from hardware "hack" attempts. Microsoft has had the tools to do something similar for a while. Reports state the Xbox is using a W2K kernel. The most associated filesystem with W2K is NTFS. With NTFS it's possible to create an encrypted filesystem. Now, if you wanted to handle the de/crypt as fast as possible where would you put it? In hardware.

    Take it a step further. Instead of adding extra de/crypt hardware to the mainboard why not consolidate a little bit more and take it straight to the I/O, that is the BIOS. Perhaps the HD is using an encrypted filesystem that is being handled directly by the BIOS. This would make some sense, since a software part could be broken all to easy. This also protects all components equally. Replace the BIOS and you can't read the HD, replace the HD but the BIOS can't read it (which has been proven).

    I venture that if you were to hammer out the details of the filesystem it would provide insight into the working of the BIOS. The sour part of this is that we already know it can be done (to some extent) because we have seen shots of MAME running on Xbox hardware. Though, perhaps that was under different rules since it was an SDK kit.

    • Harddrive is ATA password protected (Score:5, Informative)

      by Namarrgon ( 105036 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @02:40PM (#2675957) Homepage
      That's not so easy. The HD is locked by a password, as provided for by the ATA spec. It's not the filesystem that's the difficulty.

      What you can do is power the HD with a cable from a PC, turn on the PC then the Xbox, wait till the Xbox firmware unlocks the drive, does what it has to do, then goes idle.

      Then you turn off the Xbox (drive stays powered), carefully unplug the IDE cable & attach it to your PC's IDE controller instead. Rescan the drives & you should see it AND be able to read from it. Some info here [siliconice.net], and elsewhere on those forums.

      Reportedly, the filesystem is a variant on the good old FAT, and not even encrypted. There are some differences, but apparently nothing too challenging (but it won't mount as an ordinary FAT partition, of course).

      Executables are signed, and modifying the exe invalidates the signature, so that won't be easy to get around. Perhaps replacing the BIOS would help, but you'd want to find out the HD password first...

      And yes, the MAME port was done on an SDK kit, which is much more open of course).

  • XBOX MAME (Score:3, Interesting)

    by timbong ( 311303 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @01:55PM (#2675842) Homepage
    Someone already made an XBOX MAME emulator that supposedly runs at 60fps. However he cant release it because of legal restrictions and it only works on the developer xboxes now. His website is http://www.otakunozoku.com/xbox/ [otakunozoku.com]

  • xbox.bin (Score:2, Funny)

    by L3WKW4RM ( 228924 )
    Download the xbox.bin linked at the very top of his page...

    lukewarm@mr-causey:~ > cat xbox.bin
    gamecube rulez... ;-)

    This encryption is going to take a long time to crack!

  • ... um (Score:3, Funny)

    by fldvm ( 466714 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @02:26PM (#2675920) Homepage
    I hope this guy did not buy his xbox from CompUSA because I think he may have voided his [cnet.com]
    $30 two-year warranty

  • Another XBox presentation (Score:5, Informative)

    by naoursla ( 99850 ) on Saturday December 08, 2001 @03:42PM (#2676125) Homepage Journal
    Microsoft recently gave a presentation at my school on how the XBox works. I don't know how much of this information is available elsewhere, but here is what we were told:

    DVD is not included because it would have cost $8 more per box. They decided to let the people who wanted it pay for the license. The DVD codec is stored in the dongle.

    The controllers are big because printing smaller circuit boards is expensive. There is a Japanese controller that about half the size of the US controller and they said it would work on the US version.

    A guy named Horace designed the logo (he's also done branding work for Nike) and working on the branding. The first concept sketch was done with a green highlighter marker. The color stuck.

    The XBox allows ripping of CDs into 128 bit using WMAC codec. The CD tracks can be used to replace game music streams (perhaps by choosing a radio station in your racecar). Volume level is normalized when ripping CDs.

    The strategy for the XBox is to provided ease of development. Single platform. No plans to upgrade since that would destroy ease of development.

    The XBox uses an extremely stripped Win2K kernel. The original was something like 12MB. The stripped version is around 28kb (I didn't get the exact number). When the XBox boots, the kernel is running in ring 0 and nothing else is running. The game loads all of the remaining libraries. A game could also use completely custom libraries.

    No dynamically linked libraries. All libraries are statically linked into games during development. Driver upgrades will only be on new games to prevent DLL incompatibility hell.

    The XBox has "strong security". They do a lot of tricks to make sure that you cannot hack the box (regions, copy protection, unauthorized software). A comment was made about unsoldering three chips. Microsoft does all production of disks and all games have been 'encrypted' to run on the XBox. It sounds similar to the DVD encryption, but Microsoft is holding all the keys so that they do not leak.

    The developer talking to us said he would like to see Linux running on the box, but thought it unlikely that anyone would get past the security schemes.

    They said that no mouse or keyboard would be released. "Not a Trojan horse".

    The hard drive has three 700MB partitions that are allocated to the three most recently played games. These partitions are used to cache data from the slow DVD drive. After loading onto the drive, subsequent loads will be must faster.

    4.5 MB are allocated for each game to store persistent world data and save games. For example: If you crash into a coffee store in a driving game, the next day you play the windows might be boarded up. A few days later the store has a "Closed for Repairs" sign on it. These world details would be up to the game developer to implement of course, but the potential is there.

    Ethernet is enabled out of the box for local networks. The presenting developer was aware of software allowing internet play and seemed happy about it. Microsoft has an online program in the works where you will be able to get software updates for the XBox. Something was said about providing emulators and MAME was mentioned.

    Graphics chip is a custom nVidia GeForce3 chip. It is slightly older and probably slightly slower that current consumer chips, but the standard platform will allow games to be much faster since code can be optimized for the standard platform that they are not going to change.

    They will release a voice-peripheral with hardware compression that plugs into the controller. This could be used in multiplayer games like Halo for communication. This was described as a work around for not having a keyboard.

    The Devkit does not have the security lock on it (which is why MAME was only on a Devkit - I don't think we'll be seeing a consumer version until MS authorizes it). The Devkit has a 9GB hard drive that acts as a DVD simulator. The developer downloads their executable to the hard drive then reboots and the XBox loads it. It can simulate DVD load time too. There is an extra serial port on the Devkit, which is used for kernel debugging. There is also a way to set the game region. The game region might be software settable on the consumer boxes too.

    There is a 64MB memory limit. The XBox will crash if this is exceeded. More memory will not be available in the future.

    System menus use a vertex shader to do green x-ray effects. The entire vertex shader is stored on the GPU and only polygons are sent to the card once the shader is loaded.

    DOA3 has the best 3rd party utilization of the XBox and it uses pixel vertex shaders.

    Halo has 8 texturing passes. One of the MS developer beat Halo on the hardest level using only pistol whip.

    • Halo notes (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Butcher ( 96532 )
      As one of the Halo developers, I can tell you that nobody is going to beat it on the hardest difficulty using only the melee attack. There's just absolutely no way. There are levels full of enemies that are basically immune to melee. It's insane enough when you have all your weapons. :)

      We use a variable number of texturing passes on the environment based on how many lights are shining on a surface - the minimum is four and it's easy to get even higher than eight on certain surfaces in a firefight.

      - butcher
    • Lots of wonderful info. As a curiousity, can you at least tell us what school you go to?
  • (FTR, Nintendo has patented what looks to be the entirety of the N64 console, thus perchance making reverse engineering an N64 illegal--not yet court tested.)

    A patent does not prohibit reverse engineering. To the contrary: if the patent is on the entire game console, it should be detailed enough so that people could build another one: a valid patent must describe the invention in sufficient detail that someone of ordinary skill can build one.

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