Xbox 360 Get's Hacked=The Dutch Rock

[mac.head.high]

The Xbox 360 is hacked already, so says this article:

http://www.pcmag.co.uk/vnunet/news/2147633/xbox-hacked






Sweet!

[heaven]

lol, thats microsoft :rolleyes:

[Dagless]

He said that hardware on the system only allows Microsoft certified and signed programs to run on the console. Copied games would not be recognised by the system and would not run.

I love that part. What so previous consoles had no way of checking if a game was real? The whole point of modding a console is to get around the checking system.

Anywho, the 360 was always going to be unhackable. Even this generations impossible hack (the Cube) was eventually done. Sure it was messy in the beginning, streaming games via Phantasy Starr Online but it became easier.

This time next year the 360 will be playing copied games as common as they are today. Go into any computer market in England, all the places I've seen offer Xbox mod chip installations, HDD upgrades etc.

Its nice of Microsoft to say that its impossible to hack, but oh so pretentious.

Looks my prediction was almost right too. I was saying months ago that Germans would hack the 360 within a month of its European launch.

[chicagdan]

Looks my prediction was almost right too. I was saying months ago that Germans would hack the 360 within a month of its European launch.

Are you saying the Dutch are almost German? Come on man, you know how mad that makes them!

[GFLPraxis]

lol, I used to live in Holland, the dutch do indeed rock.

He said that hardware on the system only allows Microsoft certified and signed programs to run on the console. Copied games would not be recognised by the system and would not run.

You know, the DS did this, too. They got around it with PassMe- a device that plugs into the top slot, in which you insert a game. PassMe takes the headers off whatever game you popped in, so the system boots from that game, then redirects it to run whatever is on the bottom slot (where you insert a flash cart with NDS apps). Ta-Da, homebrew.

I suppose something similar could be done with an external drive on the 360. Or they need to find some way to create a fake Microsoft signature.


Are you saying the Dutch are almost German? Come on man, you know how mad that makes them!

Yeah, in Holland they'd mob you if you said that.

[Dagless]

Are you saying the Dutch are almost German? Come on man, you know how mad that makes them!

I've spent time in most places in Europe and yea, linch mob :D thats why I said I was almost right. That neck of the woods (germany or holland) but never somewhere like Poland, Italy, France, Norway... just never seem the type to me! and hey I'm quarter Polish so :p

I predicted the PSP would flop (or rather not do as well as the DS, going off theory) and that HD-DVD will be the victor as the next gen video format. Fingers crossed aye!

[MacRumorUser]

I don't know why your all flaming microsoft. Ok it's bad news for it that someone has hacked the machine, but they still have to make a mod chip and burn a readable disc yet.

Besides in the long run Microsoft will probably sell more consoles ironically, because Sony's BluRay drive is going to be a bugger to pirate as the cost of the blank media will be astronomical for a couple of years, look at the price of Dual Layer DVD's still.....

[Dagless]

I don't know why your all flaming microsoft. Ok it's bad news for it that someone has hacked the machine, but they still have to make a mod chip and burn a readable disc yet.

Besides in the long run Microsoft will probably sell more consoles ironically, because Sony's BluRay drive is going to be a bugger to pirate as the cost of the blank media will be astronomical for a couple of years, look at the price of Dual Layer DVD's still.....

hey its closer than not hacking the system. Like I said, I predict this time next year mod chips will be commonplace in the market, albeit expensive but there. Remember these guys have only had a 360 since Europe launch and look at the progress already.

funny to not hear of any american hacking the machine, seeing how long its been out over there.

[GFLPraxis]

Depends. What drives hacking systems- piracy, or homebrew?
PS3 will be the easiest of all systems for homebrew- Sony announced they will even support it. You'll recall Sony will install Linux on the hard drive and encourage homebrew developers to make apps. Blu-ray on the other hand will make piracy harder.

[greatdevourer]

Er... guys... check the dates. It's more than slightly old. While you can rip games, you cannot play them. There is no modchip. There is no softmod. Something more interesting (being worked on, although very little has come out of it yet) is the store kiosk demo disc. That disc can be burnt with any DVD-R drive and can be played in any XBox 360. Also, Hexen HD (and so probably the rest of the arcade games) is just a .swf flash game that can be played in a browser and you can replace the WMV-HD PGR3 demo with any WMV-HD file, and it will play (HD movies! :D). Not much more than that has come out of it, but, as said, they're working on it

[XNine]

Yeah, it won't take long. Afterall, if it can be programmed it can be re-programmed.

My modded Xbox that I use to own Ran Unleash X as the main system and XBMC seconbdary. IT was great.

IF it's true that the arcade games are just flash files, is it possible that we can take these off the HD with a thumbdrive, and play them in Quicktime or Safari even? Or even possibly pass them to another 360? hmmmmmm.

[Dagless]

Yeah, it won't take long. Afterall, if it can be programmed it can be re-programmed.

My modded Xbox that I use to own Ran Unleash X as the main system and XBMC seconbdary. IT was great.

IF it's true that the arcade games are just flash files, is it possible that we can take these off the HD with a thumbdrive, and play them in Quicktime or Safari even? Or even possibly pass them to another 360? hmmmmmm.

Aye the regular Xbox provided me with a lot of entertainment, before I got my monitor (and partially the lack of Tv-out for the 12" PowerBook) I could only watch DivX files shared on the house network with XBMC. it was great. But since getting my monitor I haven't used my Xbox much. XBMC is brilliant.

[ThomasM]

microsoft never said it would be impossible to do it...they just said that they expect it to take longer time than it took to fully hack the xbox, this due to the fact that they have done their best to prevent the xbox360 from being hacked, while the xbox was just a bunch of hardware put together.

[jayscheuerle]

Will all the smirks vanish when OSX for Mactels (the new, official version) is cracked to run on any PC?

[Dagless]

microsoft never said it would be impossible to do it...they just said that they expect it to take longer time than it took to fully hack the xbox, this due to the fact that they have done their best to prevent the xbox360 from being hacked, while the xbox was just a bunch of hardware put together.

I'm sure I read somewhere that some big guy at Microsoft claimed it would be impossible to hack a 360. That each one is different or something like that.

and here we are. (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/xbox360/xbox360theguts.htm)

Funny how they think 'tamper revealing stickers' will stop people getting these things modded :rolleyes: then again with the 360's track record so far I suppose you can't be too safe.

[GFLPraxis]

Er... guys... check the dates. It's more than slightly old. While you can rip games, you cannot play them. There is no modchip. There is no softmod. Something more interesting (being worked on, although very little has come out of it yet) is the store kiosk demo disc. That disc can be burnt with any DVD-R drive and can be played in any XBox 360. Also, Hexen HD (and so probably the rest of the arcade games) is just a .swf flash game that can be played in a browser and you can replace the WMV-HD PGR3 demo with any WMV-HD file, and it will play (HD movies! :D). Not much more than that has come out of it, but, as said, they're working on it

Wait...

If the 360 will execute content off that disk and you can change the content...

What is to prevent replacing the demos on the disk with commercial games?

[Abulia]

Er... guys... check the dates. It's more than slightly old. While you can rip games, you cannot play them. There is no modchip. There is no softmod. Something more interesting (being worked on, although very little has come out of it yet) is the store kiosk demo disc. That disc can be burnt with any DVD-R drive and can be played in any XBox 360. Also, Hexen HD (and so probably the rest of the arcade games) is just a .swf flash game that can be played in a browser and you can replace the WMV-HD PGR3 demo with any WMV-HD file, and it will play (HD movies! :D). Not much more than that has come out of it, but, as said, they're working on itHoly crap, Batman! :eek:

[wnameth]

I am new to xbox as i just got a 360, but i am pretty sure that if you have a mod chip or hacks on your xbox you get kicked off Live and there goes your subscription... so is it really worth it... :confused:

[d_saum]

Will all the smirks vanish when OSX for Mactels (the new, official version) is cracked to run on any PC?

well, Im not saying its impossible but it will have to be cracked by a HARDCORE programmer that will know how to get OSX to run with a bios instead of EFI. I don't know about you, but I dont know any single person that is that good.

[GFLPraxis]

Find one of these videos:
[macbidouille.com]OSX86.mp4
[macbidouille.com]Startup_Hi.mov

They've already got OS X booting.

And future PC's will have EFI.

[TheGimp]

AWW...but we'll always be willing to shell out for masterpieces such as Condemned and its (announced) sequel in order to support the efforts of hardworking and creative individuals to spread the fruits of their good karma to all...

[After G]

It should be easy for Apple to stop people running OS X x86 on PC. Just implement a hardware check similar to the iTunes one. I'm pretty sure Apple keeps track of which Ethernet addresses are their hardware. Or if not the ethernet address, perhaps the serial number on the computer.

If hacking the OS ever causes OS X / Apple hardware to dip in sales, Apple will implement a check for sure. Then you can thank the bastards who are too cheap to get real Apple hardware for making your life just a little bit more miserable.

[greatdevourer]

Will all the smirks vanish when OSX for Mactels (the new, official version) is cracked to run on any PC? Apple will probably do something like make it require simultanious multithreading, thus stopping most of the OSx86 people who didn't buy an X2

Wait...

If the 360 will execute content off that disk and you can change the content...

What is to prevent replacing the demos on the disk with commercial games? While there are no checks on the disk itself and no checks on the data files, the apps still have a form of check that prevents you from just dragging-dropping games to the disk. However, Hexen HD may end up being replaced with an exploit, so you run the disk, chose Hexen, then take the disk out, put a copied disk in, and it boots

[mac.head.high]

I am new to xbox as i just got a 360, but i am pretty sure that if you have a mod chip or hacks on your xbox you get kicked off Live and there goes your subscription... so is it really worth it... :confused:

Not true. A long story short, even if you were to not turn your mod off or hide it when you went on XBL, only your box is band from going online. And that's only if you aren't paying attention. And there are work arounds, but the easiest is just buying a new Xbox.

Just a note: The most common reason modders get banned from XBL is the fact that they don't observe the marriage theory and install a new hard drive in a after having been online already (and installed the newer/newest dashboard). That's the burn.

[XNine]

Not true. A long story short, even if you were to not turn your mod off or hide it when you went on XBL, only your box is band from going online. And that's only if you aren't paying attention. And there are work arounds, but the easiest is just buying a new Xbox.

Just a note: The most common reason modders get banned from XBL is the fact that they don't observe the marriage theory and install a new hard drive in a after having been online already (and installed the newer/newest dashboard). That's the burn.


This is correct. After the Xbox goes on Live, a database on MS's end stores the information on the HD and motherboard. I believe they also store the eeprom #.
However, if you mod the box before going on LIVE, they have no real way to detect anythign has been changed. Sneaky bastards.

[GFLPraxis]

It should be easy for Apple to stop people running OS X x86 on PC. Just implement a hardware check similar to the iTunes one. I'm pretty sure Apple keeps track of which Ethernet addresses are their hardware. Or if not the ethernet address, perhaps the serial number on the computer.

If hacking the OS ever causes OS X / Apple hardware to dip in sales, Apple will implement a check for sure. Then you can thank the bastards who are too cheap to get real Apple hardware for making your life just a little bit more miserable.

They did. Hackers simply fooled the OS.

[Abulia]

This is correct. After the Xbox goes on Live, a database on MS's end stores the information on the HD and motherboard. I believe they also store the eeprom #.
However, if you mod the box before going on LIVE, they have no real way to detect anythign has been changed. Sneaky bastards.This isn't entirely true. MS only recently (within the past year) added the checks to Live. For example, I have a launch Xbox and was a Live beta tester and modded my Xbox about a year later. It can still go online just fine.

So, depending on a number of variables, you can mod an Xbox that has already been on Live with no problems.

Sorry for the tangent. :)

[Symtex]

Isn't it against Macrumors policy to discuss modding and hacking ? Back to original subject. They are far from succeeding in implementing Mod chip or able to run un-autorized software on X360. It will happen soon but I don't see this as good things. Pc hackers have ruins online games enough. The consoles are the only place left where cheating is not widespread.

[Abulia]

Isn't it against Macrumors policy to discuss modding and hacking ? Back to original subject.It's not, but I've reported you anyway. :)

[Dagless]

It's not, but I've reported you anyway. :)

HAH!

Seriously though, why do people keep thinking that modding is illegal? I had this discussion on another, less educated forum about a year ago. Modding a console is not illegal, playing pirated games is. Please PLEASE will people start to understand that. This is why a lot of completely legal shops, newspaper/magazine ads and even market stalls offer mod chipping.

There was a computer market near my place that used to sell pirated software... whenever the police arrived they'd scarper. nowadays you don't get them anymore but the chippers remain!

at least in England.

[XNine]

This isn't entirely true. MS only recently (within the past year) added the checks to Live. For example, I have a launch Xbox and was a Live beta tester and modded my Xbox about a year later. It can still go online just fine.

So, depending on a number of variables, you can mod an Xbox that has already been on Live with no problems.

Sorry for the tangent. :)

Yeah, I know. IT actually happened on the Release date of HAlo 2, or just before that, that they started keeping track of this stuff. There was an update that wouldn't allow you to play xbox live without it. So once you accepted that update it transmitted the data. I remember this well because I bought DOA: EXTREME or whatever it was, and then updated, and then a week later I got Halo 2 and couldn't get online with the modded box (which I ahd modded in between DOA and HAlo 2 release.)

[Symtex]

HAH!

Seriously though, why do people keep thinking that modding is illegal? I had this discussion on another, less educated forum about a year ago. Modding a console is not illegal, playing pirated games is. Please PLEASE will people start to understand that. This is why a lot of completely legal shops, newspaper/magazine ads and even market stalls offer mod chipping.

There was a computer market near my place that used to sell pirated software... whenever the police arrived they'd scarper. nowadays you don't get them anymore but the chippers remain!

at least in England.

Modding is the senses of changing the case, custom skins is not illegal. But I was referring to people who chip mod their console in order to play game that they haven't acquire legally.

[greatdevourer]

Hey, what happened to my post!

[GFLPraxis]

Isn't it against Macrumors policy to discuss modding and hacking ? Back to original subject. They are far from succeeding in implementing Mod chip or able to run un-autorized software on X360. It will happen soon but I don't see this as good things. Pc hackers have ruins online games enough. The consoles are the only place left where cheating is not widespread.

Only if its illegal. Modding and hacking is not illegal unlses you use it for illegal things. Hacking your XBox to run Linux is not illegal, Microsoft just doesn't like you to do it. Modding your XBox or PS2 to play copied games is not illegal, if you only play your own legal backups. If you play copied games on it, THEN it's illegal.

PC hackers have ruined online games enough? The mod community enhances most games. I've found almost no cheaters on the various online games I play, but I like to join enhanced mod servers that have custom user created maps, or in Star Wars Battlefront have been hacked to have playable Ewoks or Jedi, etc.

[Symtex]

Only if its illegal. Modding and hacking is not illegal unlses you use it for illegal things. Hacking your XBox to run Linux is not illegal, Microsoft just doesn't like you to do it. Modding your XBox or PS2 to play copied games is not illegal, if you only play your own legal backups. If you play copied games on it, THEN it's illegal.

PC hackers have ruined online games enough? The mod community enhances most games. I've found almost no cheaters on the various online games I play, but I like to join enhanced mod servers that have custom user created maps, or in Star Wars Battlefront have been hacked to have playable Ewoks or Jedi, etc.

I was not referring to the same kind of hack. I hear you. I love user created mod. I was referring to games like Counter-Strike where it's almost impossible to play without someone hacking the game.

[Dagless]

Only if its illegal. Modding and hacking is not illegal unlses you use it for illegal things. Hacking your XBox to run Linux is not illegal, Microsoft just doesn't like you to do it. Modding your XBox or PS2 to play copied games is not illegal, if you only play your own legal backups. If you play copied games on it, THEN it's illegal.

PC hackers have ruined online games enough? The mod community enhances most games. I've found almost no cheaters on the various online games I play, but I like to join enhanced mod servers that have custom user created maps, or in Star Wars Battlefront have been hacked to have playable Ewoks or Jedi, etc.

You pretty much can't cheat on games like HL2 these days. If the server is VAC secured then thats it. no cheating.

this whole thread is about hacking the 360. Sure there have been whisperings about playing pirated games but thats not the subject of this topic. the topic is hacking and chipping (I'm now officially dropping the word modding, it seemed to pop up from american Xbox sites when they spoke about chipping but I'm going back to chip, dammit).
in that case I have a chipped Xbox. I might install Linux on it too...

[Abulia]

Hey, what happened to my post!Mean the one I reported for rudeness? Deleted, it appears.

[Dagless]

Mean the one I reported for rudeness? Deleted, it appears.

Welcome to Nazi Land, if you look to the right you can see a statue of Stalin eating a pudding, to the left, just through the forest you may be able to spot the trees.

[mac.head.high]

Find one of these videos:
[macbidouille.com]OSX86.mp4
[macbidouille.com]Startup_Hi.mov

They've already got OS X booting.

And future PC's will have EFI.

The Xbox was made to run OS X with no opening of the Xbox and no chips about 2 years ago by some high end college students. You can use a chip if you want. But check this out, it's tight.

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~ranma1/mac_install.html

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~ranma1/softmodding_xbox.html

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~ranma1/linux_install.html

I'll be doing this soon, so I'll let you all know how it turns out.

[mac.head.high]

This isn't entirely true. MS only recently (within the past year) added the checks to Live. For example, I have a launch Xbox and was a Live beta tester and modded my Xbox about a year later. It can still go online just fine.

So, depending on a number of variables, you can mod an Xbox that has already been on Live with no problems.

Sorry for the tangent. :)

You can mod (chip or whatever) after going online as long as it isn't a hard drive swap.
There are some who say that the uber-elite and can copy the drive ID's and key codes.

[GFLPraxis]

The Xbox was made to run OS X with no opening of the Xbox and no chips about 2 years ago by some high end college students. You can use a chip if you want. But check this out, it's tight.

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~ranma1/mac_install.html

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~ranma1/softmodding_xbox.html

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~ranma1/linux_install.html

I'll be doing this soon, so I'll let you all know how it turns out.

Yeah, but that's very different. What you're talking about is running an emulator on the XBox and running OS X on that. From what I recall about PearPC's performance, that should be about equivilant to a 73 MHz G3 or less.

That video has a Dell actually tricked into installing and booting the Intel OS X natively, no performance loss.

[mac.head.high]

Yeah, but that's very different. What you're talking about is running an emulator on the XBox and running OS X on that. From what I recall about PearPC's performance, that should be about equivilant to a 73 MHz G3 or less.

That video has a Dell actually tricked into installing and booting the Intel OS X natively, no performance loss.


I thought we were talking about the Xbox, I am confused. I have to go back and read the story. But as for PearPC and the Mac OS X, I heard the same thing, it's very very slow. It takes hours to install the OS itself.

[7on]

Find one of these videos:
[macbidouille.com]OSX86.mp4
[macbidouille.com]Startup_Hi.mov

They've already got OS X booting.

And future PC's will have EFI.

I think that was the Dev OSX86

And the whole point of EFI is that if is customizable by the manufacturer. Think web setup on a router... except for EFI is suppose to "self-destruct" if you attempt to copy or change it. Not that it won't be done, it'll just be something that is as hard as brain surgery is. A brain surgeon could tell you how to do brain surgery and you could probably not be able to do it.

[GFLPraxis]

I thought we were talking about the Xbox, I am confused. I have to go back and read the story. But as for PearPC and the Mac OS X, I heard the same thing, it's very very slow. It takes hours to install the OS itself.

Ah.

Yeah, we started talking about the same hacking techniques applying to the Intel Macs and that lead into that discussion.

[greatdevourer]

There are some who say that the uber-elite and can copy the drive ID's and key codes. It's not actually that hard - there are a number of tutorials on the web. I got mine from x-scene.com ;)

All you people talking of putting OSX on the XBox has lead me to think about putting OSX PPC on the 360. Before you say "Open Firmware", think PBL. Before you say "no OoO", think 6 simultanious threads. The only problem is the graphics card, which could probably be fiddled with in the PBL-type-program-thing. Think about it, eh?

[Subliving]

Well done MicroSoft, another safe, secure, reliable product.

Subliving

[Anarchy99]

ok there are 2 things preventing the 360 from running games and such theres a signature if you modiffy the contents you break the signature and it wont work
the 2nd thing is a boot flag saying what media you can run it on so you can have a perfect backup it passes the signature but fails the boot flag so it wont run
now you may have heard of the kiosk dick the for some reason forgot the boot flag so a backup runs :)
one idea i mentioned over at xbox-scene was for the original xbox there was this x-drive or something like that it ran backups so its a start (homebrew usually comes after backups in most cases)
it modified the xbox's drive to say that burned disk is pressed and it would work on the 360 from what i hear if they made it for the 360s drive
but the x-drive failed once chips came out because homebrew was easier to do ect.
but if there was enough attention put in it it could have beccome a firmware flash instead of additional hardware crazy huh?
but i digress...

now after all that you have to worry about hyporvisor preventing most if not all buffer overflows which will be needed for homebrew
but common one step at a time

oh the idea of modifying the flash games even if flash had enough calls for this sort of thing to preform a buffer overflow or some other exploit which it doesn't
it gets very little access to the hardware a bit of the caches and read only access to some other stuff not enough for exploits especially since most of its access is read only

now one group is looking into shaders on the demo's of the kiosk disc and they have been able to change colors and have it run with not error from the protection but there head guy said were looking for people who are good at programing shaders and other graphics stuff because even though it should have the access needed for a exploit he and his team are not that skilled
all and all that shows the most potential for an exploit so far and i wish them luck
only other real chance at the is one of the million dollar modchip devs find something the have enough money and resources to do so especially if they succeed lots of money to be made


anyway this topic is a joke if they think Pi's ripper is hacking the thing

[louis_sx]

I love that part. What so previous consoles had no way of checking if a game was real?
SegaCD and 3DO. Both came out before CD burning was possible on a consumer level, so it was a non-issue.

[Abulia]

Welcome to Nazi Land, if you look to the right you can see a statue of Stalin eating a pudding, to the left, just through the forest you may be able to spot the trees.Your righteous indication is so noted! :D

Hey, the report function is there. Note that I didn't edit/delete his post, the forum moderators did. So focus your anger somewhere else.

[Abulia]

You can mod (chip or whatever) after going online as long as it isn't a hard drive swap.
There are some who say that the uber-elite and can copy the drive ID's and key codes.Even with the drive swap and "re-keying" the drive, the service can detect the change and ban you.

And all it takes is a PC and about 5 minutes to do. There's nothing "uber-elite" about it. :)

[benpatient]

Apple will probably do something like make it require simultanious multithreading, thus stopping most of the OSx86 people who didn't buy an X2

you do realize that every HyperThreading-enabled P4 looks like a multiprocessor machine to Windows XP, right?

It reads as 2 physical processors when running in HT mode.

[greatdevourer]

now after all that you have to worry about hyporvisor preventing most if not all buffer overflows which will be needed for homebrew Hypervisor is gonna be a right b*tch to get past. The problem is that you need to find a Hypervisor exploit, and somehow get both the flash exploit and the Hypervisor exploit to work at the same time. The problem with this is that you need the flash sploit to run the Hypervisor one, but to run the flash sploit, you need Hypervisor down :p D'oh!

[clayj]

Here's at least one report of an Xbox 360 being hacked being debunked as myth (http://www.blacklisted411.net/images/Icemodchip.com%20Research%20-%20Blacklisted411.pdf).

[mac.head.high]

Even with the drive swap and "re-keying" the drive, the service can detect the change and ban you.

And all it takes is a PC and about 5 minutes to do. There's nothing "uber-elite" about it. :)

What I'm saying is, supposedly, some uber-elite can "re-key" and still not get that box banned.
Thus when I refer to the uber-elite, I didn't mean you or I.

[mac.head.high]

Here's at least one report of an Xbox 360 being hacked being debunked as myth (http://www.blacklisted411.net/images/Icemodchip.com%20Research%20-%20Blacklisted411.pdf).


That is a separate but interesting issue. A fake Xbox 360 Chip Company with a factious product. That's kind of a low blow for those waiting for one.

[DeathChill]

It's not actually that hard - there are a number of tutorials on the web. I got mine from x-scene.com ;)

All you people talking of putting OSX on the XBox has lead me to think about putting OSX PPC on the 360. Before you say "Open Firmware", think PBL. Before you say "no OoO", think 6 simultanious threads. The only problem is the graphics card, which could probably be fiddled with in the PBL-type-program-thing. Think about it, eh?
You can't, the PowerPC chip in the 360 is A LOT different then the G4/G5 PowerPC chips provided to Apple. The 360 chip has a lot of stuff stripped out as it doesn't need to do as much as a normal computer, which is why they are clocked so much higher.

[GFLPraxis]

Maybe my knowledge is lacking in this area, but how can having more threads make up for the lack of OoOE (Out-of-Order Execution)?

And remember, these processors are MUCH different from the G4 and G5. I'm pretty sure there's no AltiVec, it lacks out-of-order execution, is not 64-bit, probably does less work per clock cycle than a G3, can't do integer calculations worth beans, etc.

Basicly, it sucks for running an OS and OS X would probably outright not run, even if you get around the fact that it blocks non-games from executing, the lack of Open Firmware, and the completely different graphics card architecture (I don't believe there is one graphics card on the market that uses a unified shader architecture, yet, thus there are no drivers that can use the 360's graphics card).

[greatdevourer]

is not 64-bit Err... yes it is :rolleyes:

GFL, read my post a little better, especially about the graphics card. Oh, and the G3 runs 10.4.4, and that doesn't have Altivec either ;)

It could be technically possible (again, adding various emulation services to PBL), but it would probably be slow and definatly be very hard if possible

What I'm saying is, supposedly, some uber-elite can "re-key" and still not get that box banned.
Thus when I refer to the uber-elite, I didn't mean you or I. That's not what the drive key is for. XBL does not check your HDD. The XBox itself does, to make sure the hard-drive is still working properly (if you boot the standard dashboard with a blank HDD, it get's confused, as it thinks the drive is broken). What they do check on XBL is changes to your firmware. However, a lot of people unknowingly found the problem with this - before either 1.5 or 1.6, M$ didn't check. If you installed a chip on one of the ones before this before you went on Live after the check was introduced, it wouldn't notice any changes, and assume that the chip was your default BIOS, thus making it so that if you removed the chip, you got banned

[greatdevourer]

*d'oh*

[GFLPraxis]

Err... yes it is :rolleyes:

Oops, you're right about the 64-bitness. Arstechnica's early reviews never mentioned it and compared it to the G3 so I had the wrong impression there.


GFL, read my post a little better, especially about the graphics card. Oh, and the G3 runs 10.4.4, and that doesn't have Altivec either ;)

To be honest, I don't know what you mean by PBL. What is that acronym?

And yeah, I know the G3 doesn't have AltiVec. The thing is, the performance on this thing will be terrible. Running PearPC on a cheapo PC would probably be better. You'd have to re-write OS X to use a lot of the hardware in the 360- stuff like the VMX-128 unit on the 360's processor, or getting any kind of decent performance out of branch-intensive code- and getting the source code to re-write OS X would be either impossible or illegal, obviously.

Even if you did get it running, there's things like this...
From Arstechnica:
So it's probable that the PPE's branch mispredict rate is higher than that of the 970, and that this higher mispredict rate, when combined with the PPE's relatively small caches, will hurt performance on branch-intensive code. However, the same article that possibly suggests that the PPE skimps on branch prediction logic also suggests that software branch hints can take up the slack.

And of course you can't rewrite OS X to 'take up the slack' for the 360 without the source code.

It just seems to me that with all the emulation and hoops you'd have to jump through to get it running, combined with all the stuff Microsoft stripped out of the processor, you'd end up with a system performing so horribly it wouldn't be worth it, if you could even get OS X to run on that processor at all.

[greatdevourer]

PBL is Phoenix BIOS Loader. It was how softmods worked on the origional XBox - run a sploit, run PBL (containing a new BIOS), play backups/homebrews at a slight slowdown without voiding your warrentee ;)