Mac OS X Running On Xbox 343
PasteEater writes "The good people over at XBox Scene have the scoop. Mac OS X has been successfully installed on a modified Xbox. What does this mean? Well, it's no Xbox Media Center, but it does prove that nerds are at the forefront once again!"
Debate (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Debate (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Debate (Score:2)
Duplicate or confirmation ? (Score:2)
I just didn't know their next PDA would be Xbox sized 8)
Re:Debate (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt one is worse than the other in their view. They want people to buy games for the machine, not bend over backwards to make it some sort of PC.
MS's moves to stop putting Linux on these machines has little to do with trying to supress it, rather they don't want to be footing the losses over it. I mean, let's be serious, if MS was making a profit on the XBOX systems, would they really be threatened by using Linux on it? Hardly. It's too isolated.
Games... (Score:5, Funny)
-T
(not a troll, just making fun of them)
Re:Games... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Games... (Score:2)
Re:Apple or Pear? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, I think it's pretty well been established that it's a lemon.
Fable on Mac please... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fable on Mac please... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not quite as well known as Columbus incorrectly naming the Native Americans as "Indians", but another useless bit of trivia, none-the-less...
An Apple First (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh, not an Apple first... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:An Apple First (Score:5, Interesting)
That would be the Apple Pippin [wikipedia.org].
Something odd about the MacOS Xbox screenshots - the last one has the 'About' window reporting 128MB of memory. Doesn't the Xbox have 64MB, then there's the overhead from the x86 operating system, PearPC etc.?
All I can think of is that it's not all allocated, and PearPC will be swapping stuff to the hard disk in a frenzy of IDE activity. The word 'particularly' comes to mind when thinking how slow the system will be.
(Oddly, I'm typing this while installing Windows 98 on my iBook, thanks to QEMU [bellard.free.fr]...)
Re:An Apple First (Score:5, Informative)
At least one company is selling xboxes with modded CPUs, that you can adjust from 1400MHZ to 700MHZ by flipping a switch.
Re:An Apple First (Score:4, Informative)
So, even if the box had 128MiB of RAM, it's still going to be thrashing hard.
It's still COOL though.
Not too bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not too bad. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not too bad. (Score:2)
Which means PearPC will run like a 5mhz PPC rather then a 3mhz PPC. This is freakin useless.
Re:Not too bad. (Score:3, Funny)
XBOX2 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:XBOX2 (Score:3, Interesting)
There's always the VMware-like, non-emulating Mac-on-Linux [maconlinux.org] - if Linux gets ported to the Xbox2, I wouldn't be surprised if other software gets ported too.
Re:XBOX2 (Score:2, Informative)
If? When GNU/Linux gets ported to the XBOX2...
"If" was correct (Score:4, Interesting)
If? When GNU/Linux gets ported to the XBOX2
"When"? The whole purpose of this Palladium/NGSCB/TCPA/Nexus thing is so that Xbox 2 doesn't get cracked and turned into a GNU/LinuXbox. Even without a full Treacherous Computing setup and with just the separation of executable and writable pages similar to that introduced in Windows XP SP2, version 2 of the so-called Windows XB can prevent MechInstaller style exploits from overwriting the kernel.
Re:XBOX2 (Score:2)
Re:XBOX2 (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, if OS X would check for the presence of approved chips, how the hell would Pear PC be able to boot OS X, except by duplicating the functionality of said chips which would be a) a lot of work b) probably illegal.
To run OS X on a XBox 2, you would basically need the following things:
Very suspect ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Very interesting, but I'm going to call foul.
Why out of all the screenshots is this one [gatech.edu] obscured? It's the most important of the screenshots out of the lot that was provided in the article.
I also thought TechTV had made it pretty clear that pearPC was almost unuseable on a machine below 2.5 GHz.
Re:Very suspect ... (Score:5, Informative)
I also thought TechTV had made it pretty clear that pearPC was almost unuseable on a machine below 2.5 GHz.
May have been true once, but PearPC has made significant enhancments. I use it for testing websites under Mac IE quite successfully (and more or less usably) on my lowly 1.2 Ghz Duron machine.
Re:Very suspect ... (Score:4, Interesting)
You should be more worried about Safari than MacIE. The only people using MacIE nowadays are those stuck in OS 9 or lower.
Then again, I'm not sure how similar Safari and Konqueror are when it comes to rendering, since they both are based on KHTML. Would Konqueror provide a pretty good estimation of how a page looks in Safari, if one had no access to a Mac?
Re:Very suspect ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Very suspect ... (Score:3, Informative)
From the parts of the megahertz number that are showing, we can tell it's a 3-digit number ending in 7 with the first two digits having rounded tops, so the insinuation is that this screenshot could really have been taken from OS X running on something like an 9877Mhz PPC G3 rather than PearPC on an XBox.
Random conspiracy
Re:Very suspect ... (Score:3, Informative)
Depends on what you mean by "almost unusable". (Score:4, Interesting)
The slowest machine I've installed Mac OS X on is a Power PC 604e at 132 MHz. It took 20 hours to complete the install. The resulting system was responsive enough in a Terminal window, but even pulling down a menu took tens of seconds. I wouldn't call it "usable". Mac OS X is optimised for the G3, and later versions than the one I tried (10.1) won't even run on a 604e.
On a G3/233 it took an hour or so, and it was usable.
If they took 10 hours on an Xbox with 128MB of simulated RAM, then they're emulating a G3 that's performing like a 604e... it may be a bit faster than my 604e/132, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Usability is in the eye of the beholder.
pearPC was almost unuseable on a machine below 2.5 GHz
10 hours for a Mac OS X install? Yeh. That's a good definition of "almost unusable".
Wake me up when they do it on the Power PC based Xbox-2.
Oh, and the speed the "About" box reports is totally unreliable, particularly on an emulator.
PearPC (Score:4, Informative)
come on! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is sadder than those MacOSXP (people trying to change their windows into a Mac)
Stop torturing yourself with this. Get a real mac!!
Re:come on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hint: it's not really meant to be used
Re:come on! (Score:2, Insightful)
I intend to make full use of the added horsepower and torque!
Re:come on! (Score:2)
Re:come on! (Score:2)
World's cheapest Apple (Score:5, Funny)
OS/X: $130
Look on Bill's face: Priceless
(Seriously, that's one cheap Mac)
Re:World's cheapest Apple (Score:5, Informative)
best sales pitch ever! (Score:2)
That is just fantastic! =)
Re:World's cheapest Apple (Score:2)
£200-£300 = $350-$530 USD
Obviously the used XBox and MacOS X is still cheaper, not bright mind you.
Re:World's cheapest Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:World's cheapest Apple (Score:5, Funny)
Re:World's cheapest Apple (Score:2)
Re:World's cheapest Apple (Score:2)
Re:World's cheapest Apple (Score:2)
Upgrade to 5400/200: Free. I stripped the logic board and other bits out of a 5400/200 sitting on the curb, awaiting the trash pickup.
Of course, I got greedy, I wanted more, MORE, I say!
Since then, I have invested some money in the computer by buying a 5500/225 logic board for US$30.00, maxed out the RAM for US$40.00 or so, got a cheap USB PCI card for my USB multibutton/scrollwhe
It's slashdotted ! Here's the text of the article (Score:5, Informative)
PearPC and Mac OS X Installation
Downloading, configuring, compiling and installing PearPC
* You have software modded your Xbox and put Xebian Linux on it. You have purchased a copy of Mac OS X and made an image of it.
* Download the source code for PearPC at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/pearpc/pearpc-0
* Use tar to decompress the file with tar -xzvf pearpc-0.3.1.tar.gz. A directory called pearpc-0.3.1 will be created.
* Go into this directory configure PearPC by running the configuration script as
* Type make && make install. If all goes well then
If you are unable to get a successful compilation of PearPC or do not understand the above instructions, you may download a precompiled version for the Xboxhere.
Editing the PearPC configuration file and formatting the hard drive image
1. Download the following: a blank hard drive image filehere, a Darwin image file at http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/image s/darwin-701.iso.gz, a PearPC configuration filehere, and a PearPC video driverhere.
2. Decompress the image file using gunzip macosx_2gb.gz. Note that this file expands to approximately 2 gigabytes. Additionally, use gunzip to decompress the pearpc video driver and configuration file. Decompress the Darwin image with the command tar -xzvf darwin-701.tar.gz.
3. Make a directory called macosx. Move the decompressed hard drive image, Darwin image, video.x video driver and macosx.pearpc configuration file into it. Then, go into the macosx directory, run the command pwd and write down the full path to it.
4. Open the macosx.pearpc configuration file with the plain text editor of your choice. Xebian by default comes with both vi and nano. If you have never used vi before, you definitely want to use nano.
5. I will refer to the path that was written down in step 3 as PATH. Make the following changes to the macosx.pearpc configuration file:
* a. Change ppc_start_resolution = "800x600x15" to "640x480x15".
* b. Change redraw_interval_msec = 40 to 200.
* c. Remove the # in front of #memory_size=0x8000000.
* d. Change pci_ide0_master_image = "test/imgs/linux.img" to "PATH/macosx_2gb.img".
* e. Change pci_ide0_slave_image = "/dev/cdrom" to "PATH/darwin-701.iso"
* Save your changes and exit.
6. Start PearPC by typing ppc macosx.pearpc. You should see the following screen:
7. Soon after this screen disappears messages will begin appearing in the PearPC window and you should eventually see the following:
8. Mirror what is typed in this screenshot. Then, type: q, q, and finally reboot. PearPC should exit.
9. Start PearPC again. Eventually you should see the following screen:
As in step 7, mirror what is typed in this window. In addition, when you see "Uncompressing Apple16X50Serial," shut down PearPC.
Your hard drive image is now properly formatted, and you are ready to install Mac OS X.
Installing Mac OS X
1. Once again, open the macosx.pearpc configuration file. Change pci_ide0_slave_image = "PATH/darwin-701.iso" to the location of your Mac OS X image. Save the changes and exit out of the text editor.
2. Start PearPC in the us
Re:It's slashdotted ! Here's the text of the artic (Score:4, Funny)
What happens, though, when mirrordot gets slashdotted?
SiO2
what it means... (Score:3, Interesting)
It means somebody has more time on their hands than I do. Yes, this is probably a useless hack, but I'll restate my theory on why modding consoles is a Good Thing(tm).
Rumor has it that the Xbox2 is in the works. Once the Xbox2 ships, the price of the Xbox will drop dramatically. At some point, you'll probably be able to pick up a used Xbox in a pawn shop for $50. $50 makes a nice price for a second computer like an internet terminal for the kitchen or some other similar appliance. So, some will say it's a waste of time to hack then and mod them in this manner, but once they're dirt cheap in pawn shops and Ebay, you'll thank the modders.
Re:what it means... (Score:2)
I highly doubt that enough significant advances will be made in Pear to make OSX usable on a P3 700. The best we'll be able to do at native or near-native speed, no matter how cheap the xbox gets, will be linux, or possible Windows XP once Microsoft Research finishes the modified Windows XP kernel for Xen.
This particular "mod" (If it even qualifi
Re:what it means... (Score:3, Funny)
Rumor? You must not get out much.
So that's what AT&T is switching to! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So that's what AT&T is switching to! (Score:2)
Lucky stiffs (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Lucky stiffs (Score:2)
Not really what it seems (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words, they are emulating a Mac for it. That is like me telling people I got my Xbox to play SNES Games when all I am really doing is pulling up an SNES emulator on my xbox with Linux.
Re:Not really what it seems (Score:2)
Re:Not really what it seems (Score:2)
Re:Not really what it seems (Score:2)
Re:Not really what it seems (Score:4, Informative)
So, your X-Box _WOULD_ be playing SNES games. Are you confused as to exactly how emulation works?
caches, just in case (Score:2, Informative)
thanks to mirrordot.org
Emulated? (Score:5, Insightful)
This was done through emulation. The blurb seems to imply that something incredible was accomplished, when all that was done was loading it into an emulator.
It may be pretty funny to see OSX running off an XBox on a TV, but it's hardly usable as it is. Call me when it runs natively.
They skirted around 1 legality when they wrote (Score:5, Interesting)
My money, my copy (Score:2)
I don't see this as any different than buying a DVD. If I want to play the DVD on my linux box that's OK with me, I bought it. The implicit license with CSS scrambling just doesn't make sense.
Same here. I love OSX, but if I paid for it I ought to be able to do with it as I please, if I'm not violating Apple's rights. The "Right to Profit" doesn't count. Does Microsoft stipulate (yet) what kind of hardw
Re:They skirted around 1 legality when they wrote (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple has yet to respond to PearPC at all so far. We'll deal with it when it arrives, then we'll remind them that we didn't do anything but build our emulator toward the documented standards that are freely available on the internet.
What for? (Score:5, Funny)
Do you smell that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Do you smell that? (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe it's different where you went to school, but my university had more available bandwidth than most small companies or ISPs. There's nothing about academia that's inherently more slashdottable than any other type of site.
Re:Do you smell that? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I recall hearing some years ago that Tech actually routes about 25% of the data that passes through Atlanta, so it would take a lot more than slashdot to pull us down, bandwidth-wise.
PacMan, Donkey Kong and Tempest Running On A G5 (Score:2)
Re:PacMan, Donkey Kong and Tempest Running On A G5 (Score:2)
Uhh, forefront of what, exactly? (Score:5, Funny)
Not to sound like a dick, but nerds are at the forefront of what exactly? Nerdiness? Big surprise there folks.
Big surprise...
Re:Uhh, forefront of what, exactly? (Score:4, Funny)
What it proves (Score:5, Insightful)
What it proves is that there are some people with some serious free-time on their hands...
There seems to be an inordinate focus on hack this, crack that, emulate the other and port an OS to the most outlandishly unlikely hardware possible. (Hey, look! I'm running OS/2 on my toaster!)
As a stunt this is really amazing.
As a project resulting in something useful, it is dubious at best.
I find myself in the same category. I'm just getting into PocketPC programming and my first thoughts are about emulators. Are we so lacking in imagination that we can't come up with any original ideas?
I guess the truth is that almost all the "low hanging fruit" has been picked, and now we must work much harder to come with an original idea. Shoulders of giants, etc, etc.
Just so I don't sound like too much of an old curmudgeon, I will say that it looks like these are students, and it is of course a great learning experience.
link bonanza (Score:5, Funny)
freaking hypertext junkies... go play on a wiki.
Honestly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The XBox hardware is dated now, anyway. You could probably buy all of the components and build yourself an XBox-equivalent PC for about the same price (P3 processor.. GeForce3.. 10GB HD.. not too expensive, nowadays..)
Now, if PearPC would work at decent speeds on recent hardware.. THEN I'd be impressed (I've always wanted to try out OSX, but I'm not going to spend thousands to buy a Mac..)
Re:Honestly.. (Score:5, Informative)
How about one thousand? E.g. $799 (eMac) $1099 (iBook) $1299 (iMac) [apple.com]
Re:Honestly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is, I don't want to buy any new hardware just to run some software. My Athlon64 is running quite fine now, thank you.
Re:Honestly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is, I don't want to buy any new hardware just to run some software.
That is to say, if you really don't buy hardware to
Re:Honestly.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Old Mac Martin regularly sells G3/233-300 desktops and minitowers for $30-$50 plus shipping, and they run OS X fine. You might want a better video card, and Old World Computing has some PCI Radeon 9200s for under $150, but you could get a feel for it for a lot less.
My Mac at home is one of his, upgraded with a Radeon 7000, a G4/533 CPU (from OWC, again), and a 10/100 ethernet card.
Go to lowendmac.com and subscribe to the swap list, and watch what comes through.
Revenge (Score:2)
News Flash (Score:2, Funny)
MAC OS X/Linux Modchips (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the answer to that question would be that you need to have a Xbox, obviously, and a way to run unsigned code.
In my experiences I have found that www.xbox-modchips.com [xbox-modchips.com] provides quality tech suport, a good warranty, and overall great prices.
Right now the most Compatible chip in the market is the Xecuter 3 modchip [xbox-modchips.com]. This can let you run the unsigned code required for a Mac OS X install.
In my opinion though, OS X needs a lot of proccessing power to run it's OS and requires a good bit of memory too, but the 733mhz proccessing power and the 64mb of ram that come with the Xbox may fall short behind on the minimal basis of running OS X on an Xbox.
Linux on the Xbox can do some great things such as, connect to your email server, browse the internet, run Linux apps, and even daisy chain several Xboxes together that are running Linux and make a 10,000 mhz machine. Linux on the Xbox has progressed very far, but how will Mac's OS X hold up like the current Xbox-linux Os's out today?
Only time will tell.
meta-emulation (Score:2)
This is VERY misleading article title ... (Score:5, Informative)
1. Linux has been running on the XBox for a while.
2. It has already been demonstrated that PearPC can emu PowerPC on x86 and run Mac OS X (albeit slowly)
All they did was give instrux on how to compile PearPC for the XBox, which any seasoned Linux user could have figured out if they tried. Beyond that, wouldn't this be SLOW AS DIRT?!?! Even on a very fast x86 desktop machine, PearPC crawls like a gimp sloth w/ no hind legs. And wouldn't most XBox-Linux users probably also have a faster x86 PC that they could run OS X thru PearPC on?
I fail to see how this is interesting in the slightest. Maybe I'm jaded, but to me it seems there's nothing new here. Please move along
Yes Turing was right and any computer ... (Score:3, Insightful)
We have known this for over half a century.
It's been done and but I wonder if it was worthwhile distraction from doing real work.
Re:OSX (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Actually EMULATED on LINUX! (Score:5, Informative)
They're emulating PPC hardware, they're not emulating OSX.
Re:Is it actually usable? (Score:2)
NarratorDan
Re:Is it actually usable? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Is it actually usable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hahaha. Oh please, CISC/RISC are old 90's buzzwords. The REAL reason why running a PPC on an x86 is harder than the opposite is that emulating a target CPU with more registers than the host occurs a serious performance penalty because you constantly have to swap register values to compensate.
Re:Is it actually usable? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is it actually usable? (Score:2)
Re:Forefront (Score:3, Funny)
Re:huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:cheaper then an Emac (Score:5, Informative)
Xbox (as used in this article) with a modded 128MB RAM and larger/faster hard drive + $300 retail (+ mod time)
Xbox = $149
HD = $100
Memory and mod kit = $50
Mac OSX 10.2 (as used in article) = $50
Keyboard = $20
Mouse = $10
Other materials such as soldering iron, wiring, CDs to burn Linux and Pear PC onto = $50
17" Screen or 19" TV $75 (minimum)
At this - you don't get easy wireless, iApps, a combo drive that burn CDs AND view DVDs and minus a whole host of other features.
You can get a nice refurb eMac 1Ghz and sometimes 1.25GHZ directly from Apple for $529 shipped on a regular basis in the special deals section.
Re:Feh...I prefer the MS OS (Score:2, Interesting)
Plus, you get the humor of running a Mac operating system on a MicroSoft product.
Re:What?! (Score:2)