[HN Gopher] JTAG 'Hacking' the Original Xbox in 2023
___________________________________________________________________
JTAG 'Hacking' the Original Xbox in 2023
Author : transpute
Score : 182 points
Date : 2025-01-16 17:01 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.ret2.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.ret2.io)
| Dwedit wrote:
| I remember watching the XBOX talk. The one thing that really
| stood out was how the Flash ROM happened to contain a previous
| version of the hidden ROM sitting right there. While it didn't
| exactly match the release version, it still provided a whole lot
| of information on how the boot sequence worked.
| thijson wrote:
| The CPU choice was changed last minute from AMD to Intel. Andy
| Grove and Bill Gates had a last minute phone call. The demo on
| the stage was still using AMD.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| How last minute was this? This wasn't exactly socket 7 Days
| anymore, so I guess you still needed to change quite a bit of
| "stuff" to make this work, for example the Nvidia chip as it
| was the south bridge iirc.
|
| Did any of these amd prototypes ever pop up on ebay? Would be
| another cool project 20 years later to try and get them to
| run...
| hn3er1q wrote:
| The engineering teams were probably running both programs
| in parallel. I've had this happen to me several times.
| Sometimes, project B is just leverage [1] so that a better
| deal can be negotiated, so you half-ass project B, and
| that's fine and just business. But sometimes it's not, and
| that situation sucks.
|
| [1] Factory resources are scarce, so it's obvious to the
| engineering team how serious management is about things.
| Word spreads.
| hn3er1q wrote:
| "Seamus Blackley apologized on Twitter to the AMD
| engineers who worked with Microsoft to create the
| prototype Xbox consoles that the company used in the
| lead-up to the OG Xbox's release in November 2001. To AMD
| CEO Lisa Su, Blackley said, "I beg mercy."
|
| "I was standing there on the stage for the announcement,
| with [Bill Gates], and there they were right there, front
| row, looking so sad," he said of AMD engineers in the
| room. "I'll never forget it. They had helped so much with
| the prototypes. Prototypes that were literally running
| the launch announcement demos ON AMD HARDWARE."
|
| "I felt like such an ass," Blackley said."
|
| https://www.gamespot.com/articles/20-years-later-xbox-
| creato...
|
| Wow. I mean there's a colloquial "last minute" but that
| sounds like a literal, last minute.
| 6SixTy wrote:
| Given that this was circa 2000, could have had provisions
| for 2 more prototypes for Transmeta and VIA. I doubt they
| would have gotten far or even start given that they
| likely wouldn't have very competitive options, but it's
| fun to think about.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Phenomenal piece of engineering, especially the soldering and
| figuring out why it wouldn't boot with the debugger attached.
| nelsoch wrote:
| Projects like this has always inspired me to learn new things
| that just so happen to help me grow professionally.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Designing a custom interposer is crazy
| wildzzz wrote:
| CPU interposers in the OG Xbox community isn't uncommon. You
| can drop in a retail PII with double the clock speed but it
| requires an interposer.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Within three months of launch, this secret bootrom was
| infamously dumped by Andrew "bunnie" Huang blowing the console
| wide open to further research.
|
| TIL. I never knew about that one - I always thought him being
| famous came of his various work surrounding the "gongkai"
| ecosystem.
| pjc50 wrote:
| He has a whole book on the subject! Great hardware hacker.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| https://nostarch.com/xboxfree
| pjc50 wrote:
| > The most critical part of the install was nailing the alignment
| and reflow of not just one, but BOTH ball-grid-arrays for welding
| over a single rework profile.
|
| Oof. For someone who describes themselves as a software engineer,
| this is an extremely nice piece of work.
| gaasedelen wrote:
| I wrote this post. March 1st I'll be giving a related
| conference talk at RE//verse (https://re-verse.io/) about my
| journey from software reversing into the realm of ludicrous
| hardware research while re-visiting the Original Xbox. It will
| be recorded and available online at some point after the
| conference.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| This has been reposted a few times with more commments:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=JTAG%20%27Hacking%27%20the%20O...
| Graziano_M wrote:
| Funny timing, I just finished (re) readong "Hacking The Xbox" two
| days ago.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-01-20 23:03 UTC)