[HN Gopher] Modifying the OG Xbox to have 256M of RAM [video]
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Modifying the OG Xbox to have 256M of RAM [video]
Author : indrora
Score : 38 points
Date : 2024-07-06 01:22 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| xnx wrote:
| Amazing that this is possible. Also saw a video of upgrading a
| Nintendo Switch to 8GB of RAM
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4oXmQGZgzU
| deaddodo wrote:
| The Switch memory expansion is probably much more useful than
| this, for general users. No standing software is able to
| utilize this memory expansion, only homebrew software
| specifically coded for it can.
|
| In contrast, the Switch OS manages memory for apps and would be
| able to allocate additional memory automatically, as long as
| it's been made aware.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Stock switch OS plays games faster / loads faster?
| skyyler wrote:
| Neat! I've been loving the Xbox Arms Race recently.
| Cieric wrote:
| Since it was mentioned in the Macho Nacho video, this was quite a
| hurdle. But it does bring up the question, what is the
| theoretical maximum possible? I know the CPU was 32-bit, so 4GiB
| is the upper limit in that regard. I don't know if the CPU has
| limited address lanes or any other physical limitation though.
| The max I've seen discussed is 1.5GB for a similar cpu on a
| normal desktop and 640MB for the test design of the xbox (the
| literal pc version, not the dev kit).
| toast0 wrote:
| I can't figure out if the xbox processor supports PAE or not.
| But references say most Intel processors after pentium pro,
| including Pentium III support PAE. Probably with 36 bits of
| physical addressing. But it's a mobile socket; no idea if they
| put all the address pins out on those.
| wk_end wrote:
| OT: Like you mentioned PAE was introduced with the Pentium
| Pro in '95. That was the same year my family got its first
| PC, with a whopping 8MB of RAM. It's wild to think that Intel
| was looking at 4GB and saying, "This probably isn't going to
| be enough."
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> It's wild to think that Intel was looking at 4GB and
| saying, "This probably isn't going to be enough."_
|
| Not really. While consumers at home had 8MB, Intel was
| already looking to compete with PowerPC, DEC Alpha, MIPS
| systems where 4GB wasn't really out of the ordinary, so
| they knew where things were going.
| kimixa wrote:
| As the pentium 3 used the chipset for the memory controller,
| it's likely limited by that, though you'll likely struggle to
| find specs at that sort of level publicly available. Though
| assuming it's the same as contemporary consumer nForce chipsets
| may be a good assumption [0], which may be where the 1.5gb
| limit discussed came from.
|
| And the p3 also supported PAE [1], so _technically_ could
| address more than 4gb of ram. Though software support may be
| lacking - I think on the original xbox the app ran in ring0 so
| did things like page table management itself, rather than the
| "OS", so would likely require _significant_ per-game
| modifications.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_nForce_ch...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
| Cieric wrote:
| True, I didn't know PAE was a thing till now. I figured
| something like that was possible, I just didn't know we had
| it around the time of the xbox. I guess that raises the
| current theoretical limit to around 64GiB? And yeah even the
| chip presented in the video was also noted that even 256mb
| wouldn't provide any benefits to games, only to homebrew or
| game mods and even that was overkill for anything that
| currently exists.
|
| Thanks for the info, I'm going to look more into it later and
| see if I can come up with anything more concrete.
| boricj wrote:
| > I know the CPU was 32-bit, so 4GiB is the upper limit in that
| regard.
|
| Not necessarily. Just because a CPU has a 32-bit virtual
| address space doesn't mean it has a 32-bit physical address
| space. PAE (Physical Address Extension) is a paging mode for
| x86 CPUs that offers a 36-bit physical address space on 32-bit
| CPUs.
| WhiteDawn wrote:
| In theory the chipset max is 2GB, but the physical motherboard
| does not have enough address lines traced to support more than
| 256MB. Adding more memory would require a PCB redesign
| Dwedit wrote:
| The real question is if this will stop Morrowind from secretly
| rebooting the XBOX at certain load screens.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Modders have done some incredible work optimizing and bug-
| fixing Morrowind over the years. I'm curious if someone could
| mash all of that together and 're-pack' an Xbox version of the
| game that ran way smoother.
|
| Completely pointless? Yes. Interesting? Also yes!
| jsheard wrote:
| Probably not, at least not without hacking the game. Typically
| only things which were built to use the extra RAM see any
| benefit, whether that's homebrew, leaked game betas which rely
| on the extra RAM that devkits had, or games made for the Sega
| Chihiro arcade platform which was basically an Xbox but with
| double the RAM.
| hermitdev wrote:
| Are you kidding? It's a Bethesda game, of course it won't fix
| any bugs. It's 2024 and the exact same sort of issues exist in
| Skyrim and Fallout 4 (even after the remasters/anniversary
| editions)!
|
| I've run into issues recently (in June) with Fallout 4 where if
| your saved game data starts approaching 2GB on Xbox One x,
| saving the game will fail in weird ways (may hang the game, may
| crash the game). Once the game gets in this state, I'm not even
| able to launch the game without it hanging. Have to delete
| local game data, resync your saves from Live and pray you
| didn't lose more than a few minutes of gameplay.
| donatj wrote:
| I mean in this case, it's not a bug, it's a feature. The
| original Xbox had a feature where you could reboot and
| directly launch a binary while an image remained in the
| framebuffer.
|
| Throw up a loading screen and secretly reboot.
|
| Morrowind used this to silently reboot the Xbox to free
| memory.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0TKwPnHc-M
| malobre wrote:
| I remember buying Skyrim VR, only for it to be unplayable
| without modding because the physics is tied to the FPS and
| anything above 60 Hz would send objects flying everywhere
| (including the carriage in the intro sequence).
| DaoVeles wrote:
| Being Morrowind, this xbox is only about 2TB away from handling
| the memory leaks. ;)
| widowlark wrote:
| https://kotaku.com/morrowind-completely-rebooted-your-xbox-d...
|
| For those who don't know
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