Xbox 360 Hacks - News, Hacks, Cracks, Mods.

Thanks to Emanuel, an intrepid tipster who went above and beyond the call of duty, there has been a full unboxing of the “Xbox 360 Arcade”, before Microsoft has even been able to send out a press release about it. Whenever the console officially lands, you can expect to pick up the hard drive free console for $279.99, which includes a 256MB Memory Card, a Wireless controller, and? A HDMI port minus the cable.  Also included is a disc that has Xbox LIVE Arcade games: Boom Boom Rocket, Feeding Frenzy, Luxor 2, Pac-Man Championship Demo, and Uno.

Arnezami started a thread over at XBH to start of development of a ‘rebooter’ for the Xbox360 with exploitable HV. The goal is to reboot with a modified kernel and HV that will allow unsigned executables. Arnezami already released an initial version of his rebooter, but some work is still required before we can actually run homebrew code:

Before going to the juicy stuff I will first address these matters:
* How rebooting into an(y) unsigned kernel and hypervisor is done (using a 4532 or 4548 xbox).
* Why it is required to make substantial progress in the development of homebrew applications and software mods.
* How it can be a solution to the dilemma of having to choose between homebrew/linux vs playing new (or live) games.
* What milestones this project has to reach to arrive at the desired results.

***The rebooter:
And finally the juicy stuff. Go here to try out (and help testing/developing) the rebooter itself:
http://www.xboxhacker.net/index.php?topic=8737.0

The Xbox 360 processor was designed to give game developers the power that they actually need, in an easy to use form. The Cell processor has impressive streaming floating-point power that is of limited use for games. Why? Game code is a mixture of integer, floating-point, and vector math, with lots of branches and random memory accesses. This code is best handled by a general purpose CPU with a cache, branch predictor, and vector unit. The PS3 SPEs have no cache, no direct access to memory, no branch predictor, and a different instruction set from the PS3’s main CPU. They are not designed for or efficient at general purpose computing. DSPs (SPEs) are not really appropriate for game programming. Xbox 360 has three general purpose CPU cores. The Cell processor, in addition to the 7 SPEs,  has only one General Purpose CPU.

Dot products are critical to games because they are used in 3D math to calculate vector lengths, projections, transformations, and more. The Xbox 360 CPU has a dot product instruction, where other CPUs such as Cell must emulate dot product using multiple instructions (Emulation uses more of the CPU’s power - and more CPU cycles). Cell’s streaming floating-point work is done on its seven SPE processors. Since geometry processing is moved to the GPU, (Even ignoring the bandwidth limitations the PS3’s GPU is not as powerful as the Xbox 360’s GPU) the need for streaming floating-point work and other SPE style programming in games has dropped dramatically. Sony’s CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis, but not for games. Cell is optimized for streaming floating-point, with 87.5% of its cores good for streaming floating-point and nothing else; this is the only place where XB360 falls short, by 50%.

So, why are games slow to arrive on PS3? Game programmers do not want to spread their code over eight processors, especially when seven of the processors are poorly suited for general purpose programming. Evenly distributing the game code across eight processors, one being a general purpose one (optimized for other code) , is extremely difficult. It’s almost a whole new way of thinking and programming, the developers were not prepared for.

Back in July, Microsoft dropped the price of the Xbox 360 HD DVD player add-on to $179 in the US and threw in five free HD DVD movies as part of the Perfect Offer promotion. That promotion was scheduled to end on September 30th, but it has been extended until next year with a new set of movies to choose from.  The new five free HD DVD offer started October 1st, 2007 and will run through February 28th, 2008, where with any new HD DVD player purchase, customers will get to choose five free movies.

DETAILES HERE

This should be further evidence that the Core system days are over. A photo obtained by GameSpot, shows that retailers are already erecting displays for the Core replacement, the “Xbox 360 Arcade” SKU. As previously speculated, the display shows the console will come bundled with a wireless controller, a 256MB memory card, and five arcade games. Microsoft declined to offer comment on the photo of the console.

As you can see in the comparison columns, one says Xbox 360 Arcade, then Xbox.  There was no pricing information.

Well, we all know the 65nm CPU will be in the “Falcon” release boards, so what of JASPER? I think enough is enough!

Jasper (the friendly…. Eh, never mind) is the code name for the next motherboard for the Xbox 360. It will becoming next August, just in time for next year’s holiday season. Jasper is going to have a 65nm GPU (graphics chip from ATI Technologies), as well as smaller memory chips. That isn’t much information to go on, but it’s enough to tell people about their great cost-reduction plan. If you ask me, and probably everyone else, it’s a bit of a slow pace, considering…

So, why will it will take Microsoft essentially three years to cost reduce the size of the graphics chips, and memory chips, through a manufacturing shrink (Can you imagine what Sony will do with PS3 by year three?)? It doesn’t seem all that likely that they’re in a hurry to launch a redesigned Xbox 360 with the new graphics chip, considering that Intel (and AMD) have introduced their 65-nm chips a long time ago. ATI uses TSMC to make its chips out of Taiwan, and TSMC (look them up), hasn’t been the fastest people at moving to the 65-nm manufacturing process. We are to understand these tasks are difficult, and they take a lot of engineering resources. Microsoft has had to divert a lot of engineers to debugging problems with Xbox 360 reliability (hmm, you don’t say). Even so, you would think that they would have moved just a little faster, since the move to 65-nm graphics chip will likely be one of the best things they can do to improve the reliability of the XB360, considering HEAT generated is the main problem with it.

So, here is something that Xbox 360 buyers (and owners) should be aware of: Both Falcon and its predecessor Zephyr (used in the Xbox 360 Elite) have different thermal solutions than the original Xbox 360 (NO, Really?). You’ve seen the heat sinks in the cut-out photos posted elsewhere. Microsoft engineers believe those heat sinks will be sufficient as a solution for keeping Xbox360s from overheating. From their point of view, you don’t have to wait until Jasper to get a reliable machine, right? Then why are they making it?

This is all very suspicious here, because apparently, they still have a problem. So, they keep redesigning the product, all in an effort to reduce the heat output from the console. I, and everyone else, will not appreciate that; by THIRD generation, other people will have a more reliable, and to boot, a cheaper console. So, what about everyone that paid FULL PRICE for the portable oven that they have now? I don’t like it, not one bit. Sure, I like the Xb360, but I don’t have to like what they are doing, as they know full well, they have a real problem on their hands with the Xb360.

So, since we all have a 3-year, 3 lights of death warranty, one can only hope to snag a Jasper just before the warranty runs out.

Zelnick told the world that the delay was due to “almost strictly technological problems… not problems, but challenges.” 

“We’re not gonna send money back to Microsoft. That’s not part of the deal.” Said Zelnick about the planned episodic content for the game, the first instalment of which is scheduled for a March 2008 release. Take-Two don’t plan to adjust the Xbox 360 episodic content schedule at the moment and are confident that they can deliver the episodic content as planned.

I looked at the “content” of the game, and there is definitely a graphic depiction of  the Lawyer, Mr. Jack Thompson (As seen below)

That looks pretty close, if you ask me.

Other rumors say the delay was because Halo III would have killed sales.  The others are because of the Ban of Manhunt 2, and legal issues with GTA:IV and Mr. Thompson.  I read elsewhere that; Development on the PS3 has proven to be a little more difficult, where as the XB360 version was pretty straight forward.  Zelnick said there were technical problems, and that would be PS3 issues.  Neither game is a port, they are both being written from the ground up, for each console.

Remember, GTA has always been a port to the original Xbox, from six months to years after the PS2 versions.  So, you have to wonder, why is this taking SO LONG?!  My money is on the rumor that; one version is completed, but waiting for the other.

On 10th May 2006 Rockstar announced that the next version of Grand Theft Auto will be released simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PS3.  That is the contract deal that Take 2 has with both M$, and SONY.  Rockstar also said that they are “not giving money back” to M$?  This may be due to the possibility, that the XB360 version is done, but the PS3 version presents programming “challenges”, so even if the the XB360 version is done, it  can’t be released till the PS3 version is done and ready for release.

Also? Hosi starts off assuring gamers that it doesn’t matter which platform they play on, he soon makes it clear where the hardcore gamer will find the ‘complete experience’;

“They’re identical games. We’re not hardware makers, and we’re not like a pawn between these companies, we try not to be as much as we can. We make great games for people to enjoy on whichever system they want.”

Wait for it…

“But I guess if you want the complete experience with the episodes, then yeah, you should buy the 360, I suppose.”

As always, rumors are just that, RUMORS.  Feel free to search the internet on why GTA IV is being delayed.  There is more to Zelnick saying it was simply his decision alone for the Fiscal 2008 release.

The Philips DROM6316 drive is using x360 retail benq firmware, and dvd key. A small modification enables it to run backups.  Do not ask for the firmware, it’s not available, and it’s all still not finished. The eject function is now almost fixed. Open/close tray options also works through dashboard.

Oh, and by the way, this is not new information, but a progress update. It will hopefully be possible in the future to run an ixtreme variant on this drive.

See it at the original thread at: xboxhacker.net

Apparently, the below depicted Xbox 360 meltdown occurred when a young fella and his pals, setting up to conduct a furious Halo 3 LAN match, ran out of space for an Xbox everywhere in the house, except on the kitchen stove. Well, someone turns the range on, and presto change-o: you have instant grilled Xbox. Well, maybe the story doesn’t quite add up, but there’s no denying; This box is melted.

Lite-On IT, the largest Taiwan-based maker of optical disc drives (ODDs), has received additional OEM orders for internal DVD-ROM drives for use in Xbox 360 consoles from Microsoft and consequently has given top priority to Microsoft’s orders in allocating its total production capacity, according to sources from the ODD components industry in Taiwan.

To meet Microsoft’s urgent demand, Lite-On IT has allocated production capacity solely for turning out one million Xbox 360 DVD-ROM drives a month, the sources pointed out. But the capacity is still not enough, and thus Lite-On IT has dedicated additional capacity, the sources indicated.

Lite-On IT is the third OEM maker of Xbox 360 DVD-ROM drives having started shipments in June-July with an initial monthly volume of 300,000-500,000 drives, the sources said. Shipments in September were already likely close to one million drives, not including the additional orders, the sources indicated.

Microsoft has also placed additional orders with Wistron, a Taiwan-based assembly maker of Xbox 360 consoles, the sources indicated.

Note: Lite-On bought the BenQ-Philips ODD division a while ago, so they are probably talking about what we know as the ‘Xbox360 BenQ drive’. Looks like we’ll be seeing more and more of these drives soon.
Full Story: digitimes.com