XBox Chip With Legal BIOS

Lours writes "OzXChip, an Australian company, has a new Xbox chip which comes preinstalled with the new (Cromwell Linux BIOS. Previous chips came without (or simplistic) BIOS for obvious legal and hardware-related (HD-key) reasons you had to go through a lot of manipulations in order to install a patched version of the original Microsoft BIOS or ask the vendor to do it which obviously he was not willing to do for free (when he was willing to). Since the new Cromwell BIOS is fully open source it can be shipped with the chip without any legal risks, gaining you a lot of time, sweat and money. Plus the chip has a very useful feature: by using software based on Andy Green's -- one of the maintainers of the XBox Linux project -- Raincoat, it lets you flash a new BIOS very easily: burn the BIOS file onto a blank CD, put it in the Xbox, boot and you are done. With such beasts there is not much left in the way of want-to-be Linux Xbox hackers who might have been affraid until now to have to deal with delicate hardware intricacies or reluctant to run the whole town for a vendor willing to mod their Xbox at the smallest fee. With important linux distributions also incoming (Debian and Mandrake are underway if not completed) it won't be long before everyone can write code for (and on!) the machine only a few minutes after receiving the chip in his mailbox. Hopefully we are going to see a zillion things running on the machine that Microsoft would only have dreamt of making (and selling)." Update: 01/23 16:07 GMT by T : The company's name is actually OzXChip, rather than OzChip (as originally rendered); thanks to reader Michael Muir for pointing this out.

About time...

[Goldberg's Pants]

Cool. A reason to own an Xbox.

Re:Good for MS

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone will still buy the bad ass xbox games.

Haven't most xbox owners already got both of those?

Just in time!!!

[PasteEater]

Sweet! And the "Matrix" chip that I ordered last week should be here tomarrow.

In other news, I buy all of my Apple hardware the day before a Macworld Expo.

What's with the parentheses?

[AlphaHelix]

What is this guy, a Lisp programmer?

Wow!

[YellowElectricRat]

Wow!!! And without spending a bazillion gajillion years [theneoproject.com] of CPU time!

Hmmm... I wonder which one took/will take more effort...

ooh

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow yeah now you'll be able to run all kinds of fun stuff that a high end pc will be able to run on a low res tv set and celeron. The joy is overwhelming.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[FS1]

Actually microsoft loses money everytime someone purchases an xbox. So just buy the machine use it for a media box or whatever just don't buy any games, and microsoft will lose about $50 on you.

Gains

[0x20]

gaining you a lot of time, sweat and money

Well, one of those things I have plenty of, but I could always use more of the other two.

ugh

[gatesh8r]

So someone went, did an Open-Source BIOS to replace the main functions of a gaming console expecting to make a General-Purpose PC all because it runs on the x86 arch with a modified GF3? Feh:

"Yeah! Check this out! I'm uber-l33t because I hax0r3d my X-Box just like my Dreamcast -- Oh hold on a sec... *nervous laughter* uh, that wasn't Halo you saw; that was uh... ah... The Torque Engine! Yeah! I'm working on a FPS for my Linux-enhaned X-Box that I modded. Oh the Dreamcast? I ended up putting NetBSD on it, but it's been slashdotted ever since I put the URL in my sig."

What wrong with you?

[jeanjean83]

What's the fun part in running anything on an x-box? Have you forgotten that it's made by microsoft? It's like saying that it's cool to run programs in windows, which it obviously isn't. Stop the madness!

Re:Build it, the (apps) will come?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for Sony's Linux kit.

Re:About time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool. A reason to own an Xbox.

Here's another reason to own one: DoA Xtreme Beach Volleyball [gamespot.com]
All us imbalanced geeks will love it. :)

huh?

[CaptainSuperBoy]

When new OS and BIOS is installed, it gets another PC

Yes, but only after it puts the lotion in the basket.

And then what

[Anonymous Coward]

Install Linux and then what, who cares. It is a game console. People are so busy hating MS they forget to look at the big picture. It plays video games.....Hey look there is a toaster, let's put Linux on it, what about that can opener, put Linux on it, how about that mixer.......

Re:Good for MS

[machine of god]

yes, but they should have to keep buying them damnit.

Re:yes but

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's a fraction of the machine my laptop is"

Yeah, but its loads better for games, and costs about 1/10th as much. My mobile phone is a fraction of the machine my desktop is....so what?

Re:The price of the Xbox will rise

[nusuth]

The solution is to buy it used. Microsoft makes NO money from used sales.

NO! The real solution is buying used Apples. That way, MS neither makes money from the used sale nor made money from the original one. That will surely make MS go under.