Wednesday, November 28, 2001

Explosive Growth and Official Information - SiliconIce @ 20:42 CST
WOW! This site has been online for less than two weeks and it is growing incredibly! Thanks to everyone who is visiting, hopefully through this community we can achieve some cool stuff with the Xbox.

The forums are also getting quite busy, I am not sure how well I will be able to keep up with everything going on in there in the future. So, here's the deal: If you have important information, something that has been tested and proven, please email it over to me or send me a PM so I can make sure it gets posted on the main page for everyone to see.

Thanks and happy hacking!

Site Disclaimer - SiliconIce @ 20:03 CST
I have a disclaimer to make about the information provided on this site. For the most part, the information is unverified by myself because I simply do not have the time to verify every bit of info. Basically, everything is "as-is" for the purposes of experimentation and discussion. Try stuff out and let us know how it works, but don't flame others if their results differ from yours. Eventually, enough people will come to the same conclusion (through personal experimentation) that information can be verified or dismissed. Let's keep the peace here.

Xbox Linux Contest - SiliconIce @ 15:07 CST
Saw this on Slashdot (someone mentioned in the forums as well):

I am giving the domain xboxlinux.com [easywho.com] to the first person to successfully port/install Linux to the X-Box. No cost, no strings except you must be willing to continue work on it and release it to the public in some form.

Source: Slashdot

Proven Way to Bypass HDD Password - SiliconIce @ 13:49 CST
People have confirmed that this method, posted in Icrontic's forums, will allow the HDD password to be bypassed so that the drives contents may be copied.

I honestly havent been reading much of these threads, but I did just read through both of the Reviews on the xBox. One of the Things that was discovered through the initial hacking of Tivo and ReplayTV was something along the same lines of the drive protection. I honestly dont remember the site where I read this, and it if of course Risky to say the least, but here is the idea.

Get your PC and your XBox right next to each other and open. Connect the Power Connector from the PC to the xBox's HD. Power on the PC and Do whatever is needed to get to BIOS (Or simply prevent the machine from booting)
Now power on your xBox with the Data Cable connected to the xBox and the HD, does the xBox boot properly? If so, get your xBox to a point where its not doing anything, I dont own one so I have no idea where this may be, but the general idea is you dont want to corrupt the data on the drive.
Now disconnect the Power Cable from the xBox. The HD Should still be spinning because its running on PC Power. Connect the Data cable from the HD to the PC. Obviously do this carefully as the PC is still on and waiting. Now in the BIOS, exit and Don't save. This will reboot the PC, and if all goes well, auto detect the HD with the proper size and all.
If all has gone well so far, you can now boot into 2K or XP (I'm assuming you need one of these because of the HD's possible NTFS).

Will this work? I havent a clue (nor an xBox to try it on).
Why would it work? The theory goes that the initial booting of the xBox will let it send the unlock code to the Drive that has been mentioned in the ATA33 Spec. With the drive unlocked, the only thing that would re-lock it would be to let it power down. Because your feeding off the PC Power, the Drive doesnt spin down when the xBox Power is Cut.
What to do Next? If this works, use the same technique but then boot to a DOS Boot Disk in order to run a Ghost Like Utility.

Part II of my saga. Who is the genius who decided to use Ghost? I know it has some low level options, but if we're talking firmware of the drive is what locks it, and we can get past that firmware with the above mentioned hack, then you want a perfect copy of the data. Use something like DOLLY mentioned in several TiVo Hack FAQs. It does a low level copy, sector by sector of the entire drive to the destination drive. I used this to backup my TiVo HD before I set it up for the first time so as to have a Factory Backup.

Tuesday, November 27, 2001

MS Makes Us Work For It - SiliconIce @ 22:37 CST
Taken from a forum at linux-hacker:

One of my co-workers has friends in Redmond. He went down for a weekend and had a good time with some members of the XBOX design team. From discussions with them he said it sounded like they'd put as much effort into making the system proprietary (specifically so as not to hacked to run with Linux) as in designing the box period. He was talking about changes to even the IDE interface and whatnot, but that's 3rd hand...If anyone gets it to run Linux, they deserve a NoBill prize.

Think we're up for the challenge :)

GameSpy Supports Online Xbox Gaming - SiliconIce @ 21:52 CST
Another way to play Xbox online, not bad for a console out two weeks

The GameSpy Tunnel is an application that is used with GameSpy Arcade to enable you to play Xbox SystemLink games over the Internet FOR FREE with other Xbox players.

Head over to GameSpy for more details.

Thanks to DocBaily for the heads up!

Source: GameSpy

Monday, November 26, 2001

More on VCDs - SiliconIce @ 14:54 CST
I have been notified of a program called "DVDit!" which can supposedly write DVD-format movies onto CD-Rs and CD-RWs. However, it costs a heft $299.

This is a warning, DO NOT MAKE ANY LINKS TO IT, if you find it that's your own business.

PS2 Price Cuts, but NOT for US - SiliconIce @ 14:43 CST
Sony is cutting PS2 prices:

Sony Corp said on Monday it would cut the price of its PlayStation 2 game console in Japan for the second time in less than six months and launch sales in other parts of Asia as competition heats up in the global game market.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc, the Sony unit that makes and sells the PlayStation, said it would lower the PS2's suggested retail price in Japan by 15 percent to 29,800 yen ($239.60), effective from November 29.

That follows a 12 percent cut in June to 35,000 yen.

Many places seem to leave out that this will not affect US pricing of PS2, which is very good news for Microsoft and Xbox:

The company cut PlayStation 2 prices in Europe by more than 25 percent, helping to boost to sales in that market. In Britain, for example, the console now sells for about 200 pounds ($282).

But in the United States, it has steadfastly held to the $299 tag tacked onto the console at the U.S. rollout in November 2000.

``Although this is something that will be decided by our U.S. unit, it is our understanding they are not planning any price cuts this year,'' the spokeswoman said.

``Sales are proceeding very well in the U.S.''

Source: Yahoo Finance

Definitely Moving - SiliconIce @ 14:29 CST
I have decided to move the site for certain, my current host's service is unbearable. It is exceedingly frustrating for me and I am sure also for you all as well. It will be a few days, but I will be moving ASAP.

Sunday, November 25, 2001

Current Hosting Sucks, Probably Moving - SiliconIce @ 18:11 CST
I am aware of the terrible server performance lately. To my amazement, I have had three offers in a few days to have my site hosted elsewhere for free. I think I will be taking someone up on these offers. The site will likely be moving to Icrontic.com's servers as they have offered as much free space and bandwidth as I need. Thank you to everyone who has offered!

Find Others to Play Against Online - SiliconIce @ 18:08 CST
Find other people to play against online! Too busy to try right now, let us know how it works in the forums!

Enter your info, log-in, and
set your status to waiting if you want
people to connect. Just make sure to
update your status

Source: http://www.xboxstatus.com/

Xbox and VPN - SiliconIce @ 17:40 CST
There is a nice guide to getting VPN set up for your Xbox here.

I noticed that allot of people where interested in getting Halo working online because our lovely friends at Microsoft decided to wait on giving us Xbox lovers net access till Summer 2002. Well I couldn't wait; here is a way to setup your pc to play with friends. You need 1 person as a server and you can have up to 3 (Clients) people connect to your VPN through XP *that's all they allow for concurrent connections.* You can use other operating systems to connect to the server but I am not going to go through all the O/S's.

Source: Mr Hack

Article- Hacking XBox Part 2 - SiliconIce @ 17:33 CST
Icrontic has up their 2nd Xbox hacking article. Some pretty good stuff. Some interesting stuff, though not all inline with what people around here have been concluding. Discuss...

Apparently, Microsoft has security locked the hard disk through a little known feature in the ATA-3 specification. A user name and password is set on the drive at the factory. If the user name and password isn't provided to the drive upon startup, no READ/WRITE access is permitted. It will return a bit "1" set in the ERROR register, which equates to an ABORT ERROR.

They seem to have different results on USB as well. They got mice to light up, but they still don't function in the game (no surprise there).

Now we get to what you've all been waiting for - USB. The Xbox has a Texas Instruments USB controller on the riser card where the game controller ports plug in. The game pads are USB. That's right - they are USB. The ends of the game controllers look similar to a normal USB plug, but they don't even come close to conforming to the USB specification. Upon further investigation, there are several wires plugging into the riser card. These are the USB wires, but the problem is there is one extra wire. This extra wire is additional power, most likely to power the rumble packs in the game controllers, as normal USB voltage wouldn't be enough. It's possible to hook up a USB hub through these wires and plug in USB devices.

We were also able to get a little ghetto on this bad boy. We conformed a USB plug to fit into the Xbox's game port. Magically, it worked. We tried both a mouse and a keyboard. Both lit up with power, and appeared to be "working" (ex. the Intellimouse would go dim when it was pulled away from a surface and light up again when it was moved), but nothing happened. Either it didn't work right, or the games we tried (Halo) didn't support USB devices. If any of you can shed some light onto this I would be much obliged. In addition to that, it's possible to plug an Xbox controller into a PC. We did so, and upon doing so an "Unrecognized USB Device" was found. After that, a Microsoft USB Hub was found. We haven't tried any memory cards in the controller to see if they would register.

Anyways, some pics and reading over there.

Source: Icrontic

Saturday, November 24, 2001

Burning CDs for Xbox - SiliconIce @ 21:31 CST
Pulled this from our forums, it's The Mentor's method for using burned CDs in the Xbox:

I see a lot about people having problems with their xbox and reading burnt media.

I have found that the best way to do this is to use Verbatim CDRW only, not CDR. I have tested many brands of cd recording media and the Verbatim seem to work the best.

So only use Verbatim CDRW media.

Steps to take in burning a successful readable format for your xbox.

1. Buy Verbatim CDRW's

2. Use Nero Version 55514's Audio Wizard

3. Be sure that all songs have 2 second delays in between them.

4. When burning your media do not go over 10x in recording speed because sometimes you will get corrupted data put onto the cdrw that your software will not show, I have found that 10x has worked evertime.

5. After creating your music place the cdrw in your xbox, the green light may blink many times which will most likely mean it wont read the media, if this happens simple eject the disk and put it back in, you should no see all the tracks on the CDRW and be able to rip it to your xbox HD.

I have had great success with this procedure and have yet to find 1 VERBATIM CDRW that xbox fails to read.

Horrible Server Issues - SiliconIce @ 21:24 CST
Today apparently my host had some horrible server issues...I don't know what in the world is going on. Just my luck, when I get this site up and running my host is screwed up big time. Sorry guys, little I can do except complain like the rest of their customers...

XBoxgw Boot Disks - SiliconIce @ 09:39 CST
XBoxgw has released boot disks that allow people who don't run Linux to boot into it and use their software to play Halo online. (At least that's what I understand they are for)

Source: XBoxgw

Friday, November 23, 2001

Downloads Section Open - SiliconIce @ 18:52 CST
Just letting you know that the downloads section is open. Only XBoxgw there so far.

Video Connector Pinouts - SiliconIce @ 17:58 CST
southpaw has determined what some of the pins on the Xbox video connector are, anyone know the rest? Here's what he has so far:

1.) Analog Audio Right Signal
2.) Analog Audio Right Ground
3.) ?
4.) ?
5.) ?
6.) ?
7.) ?
8.) CB ground
9.) CB Signal
10.) Y ground & SVideo Ground
10.) Svideo pin 1 - Chrominance Ground
10.) Svideo pin 2 - Luminance Ground
11.) Y Signal
11.) Svideo pin 3 - Luminance (Y) color
12.) ?
13.) ?
14.) Analog Audio Left Signal
15.) Analog Audio Left Ground
16.) ?
17.) ?
18.) ?
19.) ?
20.) ?
21.) ?
22.) CR Signal
22.) Svideo pin 4 - Chrominance (C) intensity
21.) CR Ground
23.) Composite Video Ground
24.) Composite Video Signal

Unsuccessful USB Port Hack - SiliconIce @ 16:18 CST
Got an update from Tom Marshick, seems hacking the USB ports to add things such as a kb/mouse will not be as easy as creating an adapter...

Well I solidered a USB cable on to the USB of the Xbox (See atached). It doesent work. The Xbox controlers must have some sort of Ident chip, or I'm missing something. The MS opticial mouse I tryed blinked, and then nothing. The MS keyboard didnt do anything. If anyone is thinking about doing this real quick they should think again. It's gonna take some work past what ive already done so far. There is 1 extra line that the Xbox controler has over USB. A quick look and it appears to go to the Vibration motors, and the memory card slot on the controler. Probably a lower voltage other than the USB voltage. Dunno this is gonna take some research.

Xbox HD Hacked - SiliconIce @ 14:06 CST
Wanna upgrade your Xbox HDD for some reason?

Here's how you do it, courtesy of +++The Mentor+++ (I have yet to verify, I cannot confirm that this works!):

EDIT:

The Mentor has requested me to remove this procedure due to some confusion about the process. He will be providing a more detailed and specific procedure soon.

Xbox Plays VCDs - SiliconIce @ 12:40 CST
I cannot confirm at this time, but I have been informed that Xbox can play VCDs...

I would use Verbatim CDRW only, not CDR, use Blind write in SAO Cooked Mode. This is the preferred way but it's a little more difficult to understand. (Try Nero First) Or you can use Verbatim CDRW with NERO v. 55514 using the Video Wizard. Make sure your videos are in MPEG-1 format!

This way works but you may have to eject and re-insert the cdrw 1 or two times before it reads the disc.

Thursday, November 22, 2001

Xbox Jumpers - SiliconIce @ 20:04 CST
Tom Marshick emailed me the following info and pic:

Attached is a pic of the wires I have soldiered on. I have already jumped some of them. The debug does not seem to do anything. The second jumper does however reset the system, (It asks for the Date/Time) (Cmos reset).

Xbox Easter Egg - SiliconIce @ 10:26 CST
Here's some info on a recently uncovered Easter Egg:

We have uncovered one such Easter Egg on the Xbox dashboard that reveals a thank you message to the Xbox Team as well as those who made it all possible, the gamers. An anonymous tip gave us the heads up and we were skeptical at first due to the circumstances of the information. We decided to hear them out and give it a try. To our surprise it worked and we were treated with a thank you note to the Xbox Team as well as a thanks to gamers everywhere.

Here are the steps you need to take in order to uncover this hidden bonus on the Xbox dashboard:

1. Insert an audio CD and let it begin to play.
2. Stop the disk and step back in order to "Copy" selected tracks of the CD to the hard drive.
3. When the track list comes up, "Select All" and continue.
4. Then choose "New Soundtrack" as the destination for your selection.
5. Now you will enter the name of your soundtrack. You must enter the following exactly as shown in the above photo:

<< Eggsßox>>

(remove the space before Eggs, I added because of HTML tag issues...)

Make sure you include the (less than, less than) symbols before and the (greater than, greater than) after. Also note the 'beta' character that is used for the B can be found under 'Accents'

6. After you have entered the title select "Done" and the thank you message will begin. Following the message you will see a scrolling list of the Xbox Team, its quite long...quite, quite long.

Source: Team Xbox

Xbox Gateway: Play Xbox Games over the Internet! - SiliconIce @ 10:02 CST
Play System Link games over the internet!

We are pleased to announce the first PC application to extend XBox System Link games over the Internet.

XBox Gateway is currently available on Linux x86.

We are in the works porting it to Linux PowerPC and Mac OS X (BSD).

Source: Xbox Gateway

MAME Port Pics - SiliconIce @ 00:53 CST
There are some Xbox MAME pics I saw a while back, thought I'd post a link to them:

http://www.otakunozoku.com/xbox/index.html

If you have any info on where this could actually be obtained, or any info on getting development tools, drop by the forum

Wednesday, November 21, 2001

AnandTech And Xbox - SiliconIce @ 23:48 CST
AnandTech has taken a look at the Xbox hardware and gives their thoughts on PS2 and Xbox. Nothing too exciting IMHO.

Source: AnandTech

Chipworks Dismantles Xbox - SiliconIce @ 23:39 CST
Snagged this from Tom's Hardware:

Chipworks Dismantles Xbox

If you actually forked out the money for an Xbox, you’re probably not taking it apart to see what makes it go, but several other hardware sites have done that dirty deed along with a company called Chipworks Inc., a company that does reverse engineering for the semiconductor and electronics market. The company just put out a press release with comments on the lack of technical innovations in the console. By now, you probably know that the XBox is built around an Intel Pentium III processor running at 733 MHz, but Chipworks goes as far as saying that "The whole console is in fact a stripped down medium end PC with high end graphics." Here are the details Chipworks uncovered (some of which you also probably know). Produced by nVIDIA, the graphics processor is a custom chip starting from a GeForce3 core running at 250 MHz. The system memory consists of 64 MB DDR-SDRAM running at 200MHz. nVIDIA's graphic chip performance is 125 Mpolygon/sec with a memory bandwidth of 6.4 GB/sec, which Chipworks says is better than both Sony Playstation2 and Nintendo Game Cube and is the only significant difference between Xbox and its competitors. The second chip from nVIDIA's chipset has an IDE interface capable of Ultra DMA 100, a serial interface for 4 USB ports (the controller ports) and an Ethernet 10/100 interface. The 8MB memory cards share the USB bus with the controllers. The IDE bus connects a 10GB hard disk and a DVD reader. The disk contains a modified version of Microsoft's XP OS but cannot be read if hooked to a regular PC IDE interface. An additional PIC microcontroller produced by Microchip handles the front panel and some control signals for the IDE drive and DVD. The highest video resolution is 1920x1080 with HDTV capabilities and 64 audio channels with 3D support. The Xbox does not have a shared bus since it's a system with a strong interaction between only two chips: the Intel processor and the XGPU nVIDIA chip (as a North bridge chip). Bear in mind that we here at THG haven’t taken one of the things apart, but that this particular company did and may have uncovered a few details you weren’t aware of. This account makes it sound like the Xbox is just a wimpy PC that’s been purposely set up to keep you from loading and playing other PC games you already own.

Source: Tom's Hardware

Downtime...ARGH! - SiliconIce @ 23:35 CST
Sorry for the problems yesterday, my webhost was changing DNS and somehow they reverted to a backup from a week ago before anything was on this page...so I think I have restored everything.

Tuesday, November 20, 2001

Xbox Dev Info - SiliconIce @ 23:01 CST
Some links to some Xbox developer info:

http://www.xbox365.com/stories/xdkoverview.shtml

http://www.xbox365.com/stories/xdkcomplete.shtml

Thanks CmdrGrunt!

Full Screen Visualization Effects - SiliconIce @ 22:10 CST
A tip from Divalent:

If you want a full screen visualization of the sphere that has colors and designs based on the music you're playing on your xbox, then quickly press Y then X (when you're on the play menu) and it will enlarge to full screen.

Xbox DVD Remote = RCA - SiliconIce @ 17:58 CST
Saw this on Van's Hardware:

Victor Caro writes:

Well, I finally managed to get the DVD Playback Kit today, and tried something... The remote kinda looks like an RCA brand remote...so I took it to my RCA DVD player.....and it worked!!! PERFECTLY!!! So then I took my RCA brand remote to the X-BOX.....it works like a charm....so technically for DVD playback, all you need is the receiver (or if you break/loose yours) and a generic RCA remote with DVD compatibility, and you're in luck.....

Now, if we only knew what that little IR-eye add-on did to enable DVD playback...I don't have one, they are all sold out by me. Anyone want to cut theirs up and inspect :)

Source: Van's Hardware

Monday, November 19, 2001

Play Halo ONLINE! - SiliconIce @ 21:03 CST
Saw this on a message board, describes a quite plausible way to play halo online!

First of course, you have to have broadband at home (dsl, cable, ethernet connect). Then you get a HUB. anyway, connect your xbox to the Hub, along with your computer, basically your computer and Xbox will be sharing your broadband connect now. Now the xbox can play against any other xbox that it detects on the same subnet, i.e. I can play against anyone whose connected their xbox to my university ethernet connect. Now, using a program that makes a VPN (virtual private network) like this one and you use your computer to make a LAN with someone you know (you have to know their ip) and BAM! You have a what looks like a LAN to anything connected to your HUB, with anyone over the net. Since there are tons of boards and irc channels devoted to Xbox, it shouldn't be hard to find ip addresses to make VPNs over the net. Supposedly xbox developers have been doing this for a while to play with eachother over the net, and when you think about it there's not reason it shouldn't work, the Virtual network is indistinguishible from a real LAN, your computer can't tell the difference, and neither should the xbox.

Source: FunXbox Forum

Sunday, November 18, 2001

Even MORE Pics, and Differing HDDs... - SiliconIce @ 19:28 CST
Microsoft is actually using two different kind of hard drives in the Xbox. One is a Seagate ST310211A U Series 5 10GB hard drive. That's right - 10GB, not 8GB like Microsoft claims. The second kind, which is the kind we got, is the Western Digital Protege WD80EB, which is a 5400RPM 8GB drive. The Western Digital drive is not listed on Western Digital's website. It appears some people are getting the 8GB Western Digital drive, while others are getting the 10GB Seagate drive. We tried plugging the hard drive into a normal computer. No operating system will recognize it. No surprise there, it's probably a proprietary filesystem. This will be pretty easily circumvented, however, and you should be able to hook the Xbox hard drive into your computer and get files off of it. I'm working on a program to do this.

Source: icrontic

[Hard]OCP Cracks Open Xbox - SiliconIce @ 19:23 CST
[Hard]OCP has up many pics and some info on the Xbox. Hehehe, glad all these guys got pics up, saves me bandwidth :)

The CPU is likely a mobile Celeron 733MHz (low heat) and probably runs on a 133MHz FSB.

Source: [Hard]OCP

Format XBOX HDD - SiliconIce @ 18:49 CST
To format the XBOX HDD, the following controller sequence should work:

Y, Y, (on the left analog stick) down, down, up.

A look inside the XBOX - SiliconIce @ 17:38 CST
Van's Hardware has cracked open an XBOX and put up some pictures of the guts.

Here are some interesting things to note:
-Extra memory pads on the motheboard...
-HD not really usable in Windows...custom firmware?
-CPU mounted on mobo, not removeable

We pulled out the drive and connected it to a PC to attempt to read its contents. Win98 saw the drive, but reported that it was not partitioned. Win2k could see the drive in Device Manager, but could not see it in Drive Manager so the drive could not be mounted. Linux would either lock-up or report an error when attempting to read the partition table.

Our experience suggests that Microsoft is using a standard IDE drive, but that it is has proprietary flash ROM firmware that sends back erroneous data when the partition table is scanned.

Although the Xbox's hard drive was expected to be 8GB, Win2k reported it as 10GB in size (the Xbox's OS does not reveal the amount of space on the drive). The drive also appears to be ATA100 compliant although it will not operate as such since it shares a 40-wire cable with the DVD-ROM drive.

Interestingly, the Seagate hard drive is set up as "Cable Select" instead of "Master" on the IDE channel it cohabits with the DVD-ROM drive.

We tried to upgrade the hard drive, but the Xbox gagged on it, telling us that our console needed service. Considering that the bundled drive appears to have proprietary firmware, it may not be possible for end user hard drive upgrades that use conventional PC hard drives.

Source: Van's Hardware

How to open an XBOX - SiliconIce @ 17:26 CST
There are four screws on the bottom of the XBOX hidden under the rubber feet as I suspected after some examination. There are also two more under some stickers. Crack open your XBOX and let the hacking begin!

Saturday, November 17, 2001

Mini-Review: Project Gotham Racing - SiliconIce @ 17:55 CST
In PGT, the graphics are quite nice. The cars are very detailed and the "replay" movies are quite impressive. Unfortunately, I find it is often a difficult game to play. The sharp turns and narrow streets make for continual wreckage. It's also often difficult to see exactly where the next road begins with the sharp 90 degree turns. The kudos system, while I at first thought was dumb, is kinda fun. The biggest complaint I have is the tracks themselves. They are too narrow and too hard to race on (like real city streets would be I guess). Again, it's a decent launch game, but I think I would prefer a more pure racing game where driving, and not sliding, is the key factor to success. I would rent first to make sure you like it.

Rating: 7/10

Mini-Review: Halo - SiliconIce @ 17:54 CST
Halo is the first game I played. Here are my thoughts:

The graphics are nice. Not spectacular. Honestly I expected more. The gameplay is pretty good once you get used to the controls. The water in the game sucks really bad...it's no different than the ground when you walk into a river. A good PC could play this game fine, it's fairly low-res. Still, it's a decent game and not too shabby for a launch title. Deathmatches are always fun and the cooperative missions are really cool too.

Rating: 8.5/10

Got my Xbox... - SiliconIce @ 16:16 CST
I got my Xbox on Wednesday evening, I waited at Wal-Mart until midnight to get one. I bought Halo and Project Gotham Racing to play with in addition to hacking this fine piece of hardware.