May 4, 2008For those confusing “Homebrew” with “hacked original kernel.”
Posted by The Ori
Some of you are still not understanding that porting XBMC to a (XDK) 360 is still more than just a matter of recompiling, you do not know that a decent MAME port requires things which the original XDK doesn’t evrn provide (self modifying code; that was the main reason why the existing MAME port, which was done using a devkit, is said to perform quite bad on complex stuff). You also aren’t even considering alternatives and you are generally clueless.
There exists code to reload a kernel; though it’s not easy, it’s doable, and requires a lot of knowledge, but has been done (however mainly for a certain different situation which is not relevant for us). But: booting into a non-4532/4548 kernel is going to be complicated and likely requires hardware modifications like a dual-flash mod. Now, does this still sound as good huh? You won’t be able to run (newer) games, and you won’t be able to go live. That shouldn’t be a problem for XDK-warez. So, one question: If it won’t give you games from HDD (cause it will run an old kernel), if it won’t give you XBMC (cause of XDK-XBMC being totally non-portable, relying on x86, little endian, DX8-fixed-function, a fast single-core CPU), if going live will still ban your box (due to microsoft’s cleverness in some specific design choices), if it won’t boot without using the KK exploit (i.e. still requiring a modified firmware): Is this still the “uberhack” you are waiting for? As it is, the main showstopper is still in the awkwardness of running the exploit. SO, hardware hackers, where are you?
It’s just an opinion expressed, but it’s seen as pretty unlikely that there will be any other real exploit in the next few years (same with PS3). Lots of smart people looked at the code. All they could do is to invent new ways to trigger the exploit. But that’s off-topic here, and has already been discussed without any further result.
The hacked ORIGINAL kernel allows you to install and run LINUX, which is NOT homebrew!
It will happen about when the 360 will be “retired” kinda like when all the past modded consoles at their last days had all kinds of ways to mod them. All games were out so you could play everyone also. Maybe or maybe not???
The original XB was hacked wide open a few months after its release. The softmod exploit was the first, and was relatively fast. Then the onboard TSOP could be flashed, for five generations of the system, till they decided at V1.6 to stop it. Modchips became available almost immediately with XB1 at least by V1.1. There are six versions; V1.0 to V1.6 and a rumored V1.7 version. Modding the XB1 was done very quickly, I remember, within the first year the first chip came out. I didn’t mod mine for three years, but it was all there in the first.
So, modding the original XBOX was done way before it was retired, and had plenty of apps and utilities. It is not going as strong as it was when it was in production, but at least XBMC is still beging updated regularly.
XB360, and PS3 are way behind in modding compared to the original XBOX. Homebrew is what many people want, not just the ability to run backups. XB360 already had that, PS3 does not. Neither one have homebrew yet.
I felt like M$ wanted it to be hacked so they could see what we would do that make it more marketable. Then they took some of the things we did and put them in the 360.