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Games Entertainment

MAME On Xbox 259

Posted by Hemos from the wowsers dept.
Potato Demon X wrote to us with the story of getting MAME ? running on the X-Box. Heh. The levels of irony in this amuse me greatly.
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MAME On Xbox More

MAME On Xbox

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  • Let the games.... (Score:2, Redundant)

    by keepper ( 24317 )
    ..begin....

    will NetBSD be next :-D

  • Look at the computer in the photos... that box sure looks quite nice. Is it part of some sort of special dev-kit, or how does one get a chassis like that? I want one.. :-)
    • That's one of the early dev kits. Later revisions looked identical to the current XBox but were clear (controllers and all).
    • The one on the right is an Alpha XBox devkit. Pretty old, and probably should be shipped back to Microsoft, if it hasn't been already.
      The nice looking one is the one on the left... A PS2 "Tool" DevKit. They don't half make a racket, though. It's when you turn them off and you can suddenly hear people talking again...

  • For reference... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dicky ( 1327 ) <slash3@vmlinuz.org> on Monday November 19, 2001 @08:32AM (#2584070) Homepage
    The last time this page was reported on slashdot was back in August. The story is here [slashdot.org]
    • ...and we *still* can't get our hands on either the PS2 port *or* the XBox port. This kind of tease is just plain cruel.
      • probably because at least for the XBox port, the guy had access to a dev kit, and releasing his work to us would cost him thousands of dollars in licensing.

        the alternative, having done the work without the dev kit, would probably put him in prison if he were to release it.

        it is quite muddy waters just showing pictures and claiming that it can be done.

        -sam
        • If someone with access to a DevKit can pull the same stunt and is NOT a meta-karma-whore looking for recognition, then he/she can release the result anonymously as let's say an ISO image on a p2p network and then it's for the rest of us lamers to just keep shareing it and enjoying it.. :) ..

          Cheers...

          • that is a band-aid (TM) on the problem - i agree it will work in the short term, but the obvious solution is to not buy into their licensing and proprietary crap to begin with. you can probably build a better/good-enough MAME machine for less, or even slightly more, which has been said many times over the threads on the XBox, and then be able to simply release openly your kits so everyone can improve them and benefit from them.

            -sam
            • i'd like to back up what i said about being able to build a good-enough DVD Player/MAME machine for slightly more than the XBox:

              motherboard (ECS K7VZA), processor (Duron 750), case, fans. 3D sound, ATA-100 disk controller): $150
              256 MB Ram: $30
              64 MB AGP 4x video card with composite TV-Out (Abit Siluro GeForce 2): $70
              20 GB ATA-100 Hard Disk (Maxtor): $60
              12x IDE DVD-ROM drive (LGE): $50
              USB gamepad (Logitech WingPad Precision): $10
              PCI 10/100 Ethernet card (Netgear): $15
              Your favorite GNU/Linux system: $0

              TOTAL: $385

              borrow your keyboard and mouse from an existing machine for installation/setup, otherwise these are all brand new components. you have sound, TV-out, DVD, ethernet, and even a gamepad. i know i'm forgetting something, but hey, it's close. the machine could handle being an MP3/Ogg jukebox as well.

              -sam
              • A Box to put it all in?

                I wonder if it would work as a home entertainment system?

                DVD player, MP3 Ripper/Player, MAME Game box. I suppose you could write some sort of "Menu" interface so you an control everything via a game pad.

                I wonder how much it would cost to make, and how much you could get away with selling it for.
                • A Box to put it all in?

                  well line item 1 included a case - unless you mean a nice black cool looking box or a cabinet box i think that'll do.

                  with a simple Tcl/Tk interface, you could use the game pad or even hook up an IR port for a remote control to the thing.

                  it would be about a half hour of hardware setup per box, and about a half hour of software setup per box (of course you could be doing the software side many at a time). even basic monkey wage like $10/hr would find you many college students who would love the job, so you're looking at around $10 per box in labor costs.

                  feasibly you could build the box for $399 very, very easily, including labor and shipping. now you need some marketing and an internet presence and a store. again, do this in a college town, check your zoning laws and if possible run it out of your house or garage for very low cost. otherwise you're looking at mall space ($1000 a month on the very very low end of crappy mall space) or office space.

                  your marketing could be very, very simple in the early stages. get involved with the local LUG and gaming/anime groups, hopefully with your student monkeys (er... employees) chosen well. you could probably drum up 10-20 box sales fairly easily that way - and then 'hope it spreads' or get some CHEAP ads on local alternative radio - go for your audience, don't waste time on soft rock or '80s' music stations. if you've chosen your monkeys well (darn it, i meant to say employees) one of them is a DJ at the campus radio station and will shamelessly plug it for you.

                  anyway, you won't be making any money on this thing unless you get a lot more marketing than you can probably afford. you'd be looking at BEST at 10 or so boxes per month per city - you'd better enjoy running the shop as a hobby, and an expensive one at that. your best bet would probably be to also sell hard to get anime/underground/cult DVDs and import games, which you could cut a small profit with. it would be possible to fund your tuition at a state school with the work, and it would be both your job and a very interesting line on your resume.

                  serious business people (Read: adults) probably would not want to touch this kind of business. profit margins are tiny and variable, and your market is very, very small. but for the young or interested party (Read: local LUG) this would be an interesting way to fund your group's activities. have LAN parties with the boxes and raffle one off. run a small shop with repair/upgrade services and your little LUG would be learning a LOT and bringing in a little money for future outings/projects/guest speakers.

                  -sam
                  • I suppose if you were starting a business the you would need much more than the fuzzy stuff here.

                    1. Its a DVD player, that plugs into your TV.
                    2. Its a MP3 Ripper and Player that can plug into your sound system - Hmmm, maybe a "pro" version that allows burning .
                    3. You also get to play all old MAME games.
                    (4 if you really wanted too, you could turn it into a computer with a Kboard+Mouse+Printer etc)

                    Costwise would you need so much power?

                    Distribution, well I suppose you would have to look at independant games/electronics retailers, or maybe the "Gadget Shop" type places.

                    Target demographic? Probably 23+ (people who remember Hypersports & have a bit of spare cash).
  • I don't understand what Hemos meant by many levels of irony. The only piece of irony I can see is that you're using an XBox (really beefy fast graphics hardware, etc) to play old arcade games. What are the other levels of I irony? I'm not seeing this obviously.

    • Re:Wild stab (Score:2, Informative)

      by mESSDan ( 302670 )
      The irony is that you're using a "bad" (Microsoft) machine to do cool (Mame, open source) stuff. Now if only we could play this without a development kit/box, which I think you will need.

      • Other Irony (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Alien54 ( 180860 )
        Plus the fact that every ex-box you buy stabs MS for a 100 bucks if you only use MAME on it, using it to play only games that do not support MS.

        I am sure there are other levels as well, depending on you sense of humor.

        • Plus the fact that every ex-box you buy stabs MS for a 100 bucks if you only use MAME on it, using it to play only games that do not support MS.

          Er, yeah, but it also stabs you for 400 bucks (or whatever it is) so if you use it to run something you can already run on a P60 this is a bit of a cutting off your nose to spite your face situation. But if that's how you get your kicks - 'YAY, I'm, like, TOTALLY screwing a billion dollar organisation by 100 bucks'. Spank away, boys.
        • Plus the fact that every ex-box you buy stabs MS for a 100 bucks if you only use MAME on it, using it to play only games that do not support MS.

          Where is your proof of this? I see no reason to believe that the hardware Sony/Nintendo or M$ loose money on hardware... its slashbot assumption. I think you VASTLY underestimage the power of volume pricing/manufacturing and what a device like this costs to make in the MILLIONS of units.

          • Re:Other Irony (Score:2, Informative)

            by joshsisk ( 161347 )
            That's standard operating procedure for consoles.

            It's a well-documented fact that Sony does this:

            "However, the market leader Sony are set to cut the price of their Playstations to £69 in response. This would be a loss leader, but the bulk of Playstation profits come from software." - full story [bbc.co.uk]

            For a more historical perspective:

            "The NES introduced three very important concepts to the video game system industry:

            Using a pad controller instead of a joystick
            Creating authentic reproductions of arcade video games for the home system
            Using the hardware as a loss leader by aggressively pricing it, then making a profit on the games themselves            "
            - full article [howstuffworks.com]

            It's the way the industry works. Do a little research.
            • well documented for IRS purposes. Even then it takes into account R&D, marketing, executive salaries, and the price of sodas for developers.
      • Hey, Xbox is only a PC in disguise and PC-based MAME has been here for ages. I wonder how ironic is this.
    • I agree totally. Getting MAME to run on the X-Box was a pretty logical step. It was a matter of time. To be ironic there would need to be an incongruity between what is happening now and what one would have expected to happen. But since pretty much everybody would have expected this it is not ironic. At all.

      But it is cool.
  • This has been on Slashdot before, http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/22/144622 4&mode=nested

    It's pretty old news. This is only running on the XBox developers kit. Even if it was running on an actual XBox, I don't think they'd be allowed to release it.
    • I don't think they'd be allowed to release it.

      Intresting...
      What do you think will stop "them" from releasing it? Personally I don't see any problem at all with releasing it. Even the amazingly stupid DMCA that stops all fun things can't stop this one. I don't understand how it is any different to release a MAME port for the XBox than it is to release it for the PC or the DreamCast.

      Ballmers Monkey-Boy Dance [www.idg.se]
    • "I don't think they'd be allowed to release it."

      I dont think anyone cares. If theres a demand for it, it`ll exist. The roms are out there, source code is free speech, what are they going to do about it exactly?
      • source code is free speech

        hahahaha. yup, that's been proven time and time again in the courts, hasn't it. if you've developed for a game console before, you'd know that for each game you ship, you get to pay the console a nice royalty. i doubt the MAME port author wants to be responsible for thousands of dollars in licensing costs.

        -sam
        • Uhhh, only if you charge for it, you can give the MAME emulator away and MS gets nothing.
          • again, have you read the microsoft XDK licensing? i know i have NOT, but i would seriously doubt that you would be allowed to redistribute XDK code or IP (which a MAME emulator release would certainly do) without paying a license fee back to MS. if you could, i would hope MS would fire their lawyers and get ones with a clue, because that is what their business model with the XBox is centered upon, game licenses. i seriously doubt the MAME emulator author received his XDK under any kind of free license (again, MS shareholders would demand the MS lawyers be fired if this were not the case).

            -sam
            • Never hold up in court, we've allready been through this years ago with Nintendo trying to sue some company that was releasing games for their machine with no license,... they lost.
  • Does anyone have anything to add now the final machine is available? This link is the one given the last time the story ran here [slashdot.org].

    It would be nice to know someone has got this going on a final release machine, not just a devbox.
    • Oh well, I see others can look up the story faster than I can. Still, my question does stand - can someone get this running on the standard shop-bought hardware, rather than on a dev-box where the issues of bootdiscs etc aren't present?

  • Cabinet Choice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by alister667 ( 254980 ) <alister667 AT hotmail DOT com> on Monday November 19, 2001 @08:35AM (#2584076) Homepage
    Looking at this story I have to agree with Otaku - the XBox would be an ideal choice for a MAME cabinet, as it uses a standard TV out, has a HD, comes with controllers etc. Now how can we get the ported application? Can MAME be ported to the XBox without using the MS developers bundle? Will this allow XBox MAME to be released? Anyone have any ideas?
    It's noticable that about 1 year after the same guy ported MAME to the PS2, there is still no way (I'm aware of) I can get MAME on my PS2 at home.

  • Who can run it? (Score:2, Informative)

    by andylaurence ( 233927 )
    I suppose it's a pity we can't run this legally on our retail X-Boxes. I won't be buying an X-Box, but I would consider it if it coould make a decent MAME cabinet...
    • Can anyone explain this?
      Now if only Microsoft would let me legally distribute this software I'd be a happy person. Unfortunately, only registered XBox developers can legitimately obtain this software (okay, apart from the fact that only registered XBox developers actually have an XBox that can run the software).

      I understand if only the XBox dev kit would run this software, but where does the law come in? Is it the licensing of the dev kit? Does this mean that you're required to pay MS to write software for this platform?

      Of course that's beside the fact that MS had to pay game companies to write games in the first place.

      • Re:Legality (Score:5, Informative)

        by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Monday November 19, 2001 @11:31AM (#2584743)
        I understand if only the XBox dev kit would run this software, but where does the law come in? Is it the licensing of the dev kit? Does this mean that you're required to pay MS to write software for this platform?

        The law comes in, and I absolutely shit you not when I say this, in this capacity:

        If you release software for the X-Box without Microsoft's approval, they will come after you with the DMCA, whether or not it will legitimately hold up in court, and they will appeal any rulings against them endlessly until they either win or deplete your assets with court fees until you are bankrupt.

        That's exactly what it comes down to. Some states in the DOJ case actually settled just to recoup their legal assets from the multi-year battle against Microsoft. If Joe Average tries to release unapproved software for the X-Box, Microsoft will use the DMCA to either intimidate them into shutting down their software distribution or, barring that, go into a court case with them that could last almost infinitely (because Microsoft has an almost infinite amount of money), and definitely bankrupt the person that released the software. Most likely, though, intimidation would work pretty well, because after all, these guys outlasted the US government. Joe Average doesn't stand a chance.

        (I am not anti-Microsoft, but their intention to use the DMCA against people that relese unapproved software for the X-Box and their unbelievably large cash flow are FACTS, not the usual Slashdot visitor anti-MS bias.)
        • That's a pretty bold statement. Care to provide a reference to back it up? WHY would they come after him for releasing a game that help sell their boxes and fills their coffers? Yeah, they may come after you for having used an XBox dev kit and not paying royalty fees (if you didn't pay the fee) but that's NOT a DMCA violation! That's a licensing issue and perfectly legal even though it sux. Hell, sell the software, pay MSFT their fee, make money. He may not have the XBox license but he obviously has a good friend that does...

          As for his statement about no one being able to play these games without an XBox dev kit check out the date that it was posted. At that time no one HAD an XBox unless they were devleoping for it. (duh) Now that the XBox has been released perhaps this has changed and it could now be played by others IF it could be released?

          I have to wonder what sort of trouble he'd get into releasing MAME like this though. Sure, MAME itself isn't illegal but the RIPped ROMs can be. What sort of license is MAME devleoped under?

          To date not many people have been persecuted for having ROMs but releasing code like this might just be enough to wake them from their slumber - especially if money were being made from the sale of the software. No way could they release with ROMs so folks would HAVE to go to the 'net to get them. Not quite the same as Bleem! (RIP) but close enough in what might happen after the release. He would probably win in court but those who hosted ROMs might not find the climate quite so nice afterwards. Just a guess though....

          Anyway, you seem awful sure MSFT would go after them with the DMCA - show me something that proves this. A press statement to that effect would be nice but don't ASSume they would do this and state it as if it were fact please. If someone has a legal license to the dev kit and pays royalties what control exactly does MSFT have? And why exactly wouldn't they "approve" of this?
          • Microsoft makes money by providing the dev kits, selling their own software, and licensing third party software for use on the X-Box from vendors that submit their software to Microsoft for approval. Because of this, unlicensed software has only rarely appeared on consoles. There was only one unlicensed game for the SNES, I don't believe there were any for Genesis, and I can't think of any for the PlayStation, Dreamcast, or N64. If someone were to try to release an unlicensed program for direct use on the X-Box, Microsoft would not be happy. It would be a threat to their business model and their profit margin.

            I had heard that Microsoft had direct intentions to use the DMCA to stop the dissemination of unlicensed software on the X-Box. I actually remembered reading an article about it, as well. But so far, Google has turned up nothing. If anyone has more information on that side of the story, I'd actually like to hear it, because I remember it rather clearly, but the proof seems to be gone.

            Either way, however... doesn't it seem logical? I don't foresee Microsoft shying away from legal action when someone releases a program for the X-Box that's basically dedicated to the use of illegal ROMs. I wouldn't foresee Microsoft shying away from legal action toward ANY sort of unlicensed software, for that matter.

        • and this is exaclty why I reccomend to everyone I know to never buy an X box and to be sure to "diss" it at every chance.

          I'm sure the hardware and games are top notch. It's just that the company that backs it is the largest group of butt-wads on the planet.

          X-box? dont waste your money, get a N-cube or PS2

  • on the same note, i think it would be more interesting to run bleem. mame games dont really take advantage of the hardware components of the xbox... and now that bleam is dead [slashdot.org]
    there's really no one who could get sued in case anything happens...
  • at least those who haven't kept up with all the latest games and skills needed to play them can get something usefull out of that Xbox other than the dvd ad on.
  • Now the question is: could it be possible to play XBox games on a PC. After all, the if the XBox is basically a PC, why would someone buy a XBox if games could be played on a regular PC, assuming that one already has a powerful PC?

    Is there any intrisical problem that would prevent to do this or not?

    • Re:The other way round (Score:4, Informative)

      by Weavus ( 123505 ) on Monday November 19, 2001 @09:05AM (#2584150)
      There seems to be a common misconception that the Xbox is just a pc console. Every slashdot story about the Xbox has numerous posts abotu this. The Xbox may have some standard pc components inside it (x86 cpu, hard disk, geforce etc) but there is a lot that is different.

      The biggest difference between the two is that the Xbox uses unified memory. This means the cpu/graphics/sound all use the same memory and dont have to contend with the pc memory bottleneck of getting stuff to the graphics card. Emulating that is going to take a lot of time/effort and cpu power.

      Apart from that, i'm sure Microsoft have put in plenty of other measures to stop people emulating the Xbox on a PC. BIOS checks, DirectX differences, Stripped OS etc...

      Dont expect a game playing xbox emulator for a long time.

      Weavus
      • > The biggest difference between the two is that
        > the Xbox uses unified memory. This means the
        > cpu/graphics/sound all use the same memory and
        > dont have to contend with the pc memory
        > bottleneck of getting stuff to the graphics
        > card. Emulating that is going to take a lot of
        > time/effort and cpu power.

        The Amiga also has this (and a load of other differances) and UAE emulates this. Although emulation is pretty slow.

        But anyway you won't have to emulate that much. Something similar to vmware or plex86 would be enough.

        /Erik
      • Unified memory architecture actually aggravates memory bottleneck issues as now there's only one memory available for all devices to talk to. That bottleneck of getting information to a PC's graphics card isn't much of a bottleneck at all. It has the full AGP bus to itself and doesn't have to compete with the cpu or other devices for main memory bandwidth.

        Unified memory is about cost. By having a common pool of memory, you need fewer electronics and you don't have to mirror sections of memory to other memory-bearing devices like video cards. You can also grow&shrink each device's usage depending on need to make more memory available for other uses.

        Other consoles get emulated rather quickly, and they aren't nearly as similar to a standard PC as the xbox. The unified memory is probably the easiest thing to emulate; just remap memory accesses to the proper locations. I'd expect that it's DirectX doing all the actual work of handling the memory, though. In that case you'd need only remap the game's xbox DX API calls to the appropriate Windows DX APIs.

        I wouldn't expect an xbox emulator to take long to surface.

      • Re:The other way round (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dasunt ( 249686 ) on Monday November 19, 2001 @11:02AM (#2584589)


        Weavus writes:



        Apart from that, i'm sure Microsoft have put in plenty of other measures to stop people emulating the Xbox on a PC. BIOS checks, DirectX differences, Stripped OS etc...


        Sorry. There is only one console that I know of that's a bitch to emulate on the PC, and that's the lowly NES. Not the N64, not the SNES, but the original 8 bit NES, and that was due to mapper support. No NES emulator that I know of has full mapper support, bioNES, fwNES, and NESticle were the best when I was in the emulation scene. Arcade games also tend to be a pain, due to anti-piracy measures implimented in a few of the games, and the relative scarcity of arcade games when compared to most console games. The Atari Jaguar has also been slow to be emulated, although I don't know if this was due to technical difficulties or a lack of interest.


        That being said, the following have been successfully emulated on the lowly PC (running DOS/Win for the most part): Arcade (which is technically many different platforms, even if the systems are JAMMA compliant, they have different hardware. MAME roms [www.mame.dk] alone list over 3000 games (including clones, and there are other multi-arcade emulators out there). The NeoGeo (some games that have been successfully emulated by MAME) adds a hundred or two more. Looking at old school stuff, the C64, Amiga, and Apple II have all been emulated, according to Zophar [zophar.net], as well as the Trash-80's and Tandy's. For consoles, we have Atari, ColecoVision, Dreamcast, SMS/Gamegear, Intellivision, NES, SNES, N64, Dreamcast, Playstation, Saturn, Turbo Grafix 16, and the Vectrex, among others. The Gameboy, and the NeoGeo pocket has also been emulated (as well as the aforementioned Game Gear, which is really a SMS with better graphics). We also have both HP and TI calculators emulated.


        With all of this emulated, I don't suspect that Xbox will be that much of a problem, especially with the demand for an emulator that we will see.

        • Take a look at the guts of a Saturn some time, dude.

        • Not the N64, not the SNES, but the original 8 bit NES, and that was due to mapper support. No NES emulator that I know of has full mapper support

          It's possible for 20 different cartridges to contain 20 different mappers. In order for an emulator to support every single mapper made, every ROM image would need a complete description of the logical structure of the circuit board and all parts on that board in some machine-readable language such as Verilog.

          That said, the vast majority of games released in North America used one of these five well-supported mappers: NROM [everything2.com], CNROM [everything2.com], UNROM [everything2.com], MMC1 [everything2.com], or MMC3 [everything2.com]. Some other mappers exist such as MMC2 for Punch-Out!!, Sunsoft 4 for Return of the Joker, MMC5 for Castlevania 3, etc. Most games that use obscure mappers (90, etc.) were released only in Japan or in Hong Kong for the Japanese Famicom console.

          Anything with a copyrighted BIOS (such as Apple II, Mac, Amiga, or GBA) that came from a single source (unlike PC BIOS) is harder to emulate, as software often relies on undocumented behavior (hard to reimplement), exact timing behavior (really hard to reimplement), and even patented behavior (impossible to reimplement in software libre) of a BIOS.

      • I thought I had seen some department store PCs over the years that used some sort of shared memory, eMachines and the like?
      • You've got it backwards. Think about it for a second: you need X much bandwidth to send textures to the screen (for instance, this is where PS2 has a 128-bit bus, much harder to emulate), Y much bandwidth to handle sound, and Z much bandwidth to run the actual game off system memory.

        Now, some of the time, you gotta copy textures from Z to X, which of course is the big win you think you're getting with UMA. But... how often are you doing this? And meanwhile- on the XBox you have to deal with XYZ all at once over the same bus. You don't get to offload video stuff onto its own memory subsystem- everything is fighting for the same RAM. That's not a win- that's a lose.

        My hunch is that very likely state-of-the-art gamer PCs can ALREADY completely handle anything that's happening on XBox- the only reason you're not seeing the same games as PC games is because (a) they were never developed for general PC use and wouldn't work on a wide spectrum of PCs and 3D cards, and (b) Microsoft won't let you have them on PC, because then it would be obvious that the PC is already a superset of XBox.

        And I'm a Mac dude, not given to blathering on about how wonderful PCs are- but seriously, it's the XBox that has the bottlenecks, and that is shown by frame rates as poor as a tenth or twentieth of what PC gamers are used to seeing. I'm hearing that XBox drops to 10 fps routinely in demanding games like DOA and Halo, when the scene complexity gets heavy. It's already hitting its performance limits- it's NOT like people don't know how to program for DirectX, and future years will see wonders as the programmers figure out the mysterious new machine. It's dead familiar, that's how something like DOA was possible at all. But it's also hitting absolute peak right out of the box with DOA and Halo- there will not be future games that are more impressive, unless they are impressive in an artistic sense, which is of course possible. Like if 'Thief' was done for the XBox... but of course that developer is dead.

  • ....we won't ever get to see it. It's nice and all to know that this guy can sit in his living room and play MAME, but it's not much use to the rest of the world if it's never released.

  • In related news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by nob ( 244898 ) on Monday November 19, 2001 @09:09AM (#2584162) Homepage
    kids across America see this, complain about the xbox's crappy graphics, and buy a gamecube.
  • But this REALLY HAS [slashdot.org] been posted before. Not even over 4 months ago at that... [shake] You know you read /. too much when you can remember articles and point out repeats...

  • Oh, the possibilities! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Forager ( 144256 ) on Monday November 19, 2001 @09:32AM (#2584204) Homepage
    This is dated July 20th, 2001; it was, needless to say, done on a development box. Anyone know the difficulties between running it on a dev box vs running it on the actual consumer box?

    Thought this paragraph was interesting:

    So I've found the computer I want to put in the M.A.M.E. cabinet I am still trying to find time to construct, it's going to be an XBox, it's got a built-in hard drive, Ethernet connection, and supports analogue & digital controlllers, and only costs a few hundred American dollars, plus it already supports a standard TV signal so I can wire up any decent TV instead of an expensive Wells Gardner monitor.

    What I'm curious to know is how many other people will find applications like this? Hook up a USB keyboard and mouse, you could have a $300 linux box, or a $300 quake server, or a $300 mail server, or a $300 SETI@home bean counter. Point is, the potential for the XBOX BEYOND its original purpose is pretty big, if only people can get around Microsoft's software.

    ~Aaron.
    • IIRC, the binaries need to be certified and encrypted, and then pressed into final CD form for them to run. AFAIK, XBox doesn't run CDRs (yet).
    • And for $400 you could build a 900 MHz Athlon. $100 for mobo and slot A processor, $25 for 256M RAM, $100 for HD, $10 for ethernet, $50 for case. You could spend the rest on nice video and sound or be cheap and limit yourself to a $300 budget. Get yourself a Debian install and put what you want on it. Look ma! a general purpose computer. Why torture yourself to figure out M$ hardware?
    • Yeah, you could... if the XBox had USB. As is, you've gotta use their controllers. Not a big deal for MAME (just take it apart and rewire the button contacts to some arcade buttons) but it obviously wouldn't work on a keyboard.

      And contrary to popular opinion, the XBox is NOT standard x86 architecture. Yes, it does run off an x86 CPU, but the memory bus is WAAAAY different than your run of the mill PC. It's sorta like the difference between an old Macintosh and an old Amiga. They both used the same CPU (M68000, which, incidentally, is used in a lot of other stuff too, including microwaves, SCSI cards, and many, many others) but obviously didn't run the same software (it was years before NetBSD would work on both of them.) XBox does support DirectX and Windows, but only because Microsoft has ported them to this new platform. For Linux to work, it would have to be ported as well.

  • From the pictures... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Spackler ( 223562 ) on Monday November 19, 2001 @09:37AM (#2584214) Journal
    If you notice in the pictures, he only has one cup of Starbucks on the desk. If he was truly 1337, he would have had one for each hand. Then we could have seen this running on a normal Xbox!
    • he only has one cup of Starbucks on the desk.

      You mean none. Anyone who is *TRUELY* 1337 dosnt drink Starbucks *anything*. Starbucks is consum-o-drone level trash. Anyone who is 1337 will understand that Starbucks is a homoginized-vanilla reproduction of a vibrant coffee shop. Starbucks carpet-marketing-bombs the "vibrant coffee shop" industry, making diversity in the marketplace impossible - and thus DESTROYS the coffee-shop industry.. you know, the independant "my neighbour owns this store and employees intelligent/interesting people based on their value not on their ability to wear a uniform well and act 'bubbly' (read: starbucks-ish and predictable)"

      People who are 1337 are also above being snookered-in by the thinly veiled facade of anything remotely starbuck-ish.

      • Display adaptability (Score:3, Insightful)

        by smileyy ( 11535 )

        If you need caffeine, and the closest source of caffeine is a Starbucks, then the reasonable course of action is to display some adaptability, and buy from the damn Starbucks.

        • No way. Real geeks would never take the easy way out on caffeine-- they'd rather use AOL. Besides, who drinks coffee? That's like drinking Jolt or Mt. Dew, but where you have to add the sugar by hand!
  • I'm going to admit something here. I've always had a soft spot for Microsoft games and thier re-branded hardware... Now I'm slowly swaying away from the PS-2 towards the X-Box. Some of the games look truly cool (of course, no GTA3 yet).
  • until they get linux on the x-box. i'm sure you that'll give you a fucking heart attack.

  • My own Xbox notes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Monday November 19, 2001 @09:45AM (#2584235) Homepage

    For those who don't have an Xbox, here's my own notes on this system. I want to apologize, as this is very long, but it's everything I've discovered about it after playing with it since Thursday night.

    First, there's no USB ports. The Ethernet controller doesn't work yet (more on that in a second).

    Now, let me get to the meat of the Xbox.

    The Xbox is like a hobbled warhorse. You can see how big, how powerful it is, the sleek, black muscles with the power to crush anything else around it. You can feel its energy, its need to break out and use that power.

    But the creators, fearing its power to much, fearing those that rode it might use it for what they wanted instead of what the creators wanted, have attached thick, iron chains to its back legs, so matter how fast or how powerful it is, it will never reach that ability - unless the creators finally see that its power is not something to be feared, but something to be celebrated in, and to let the rider use that power for what they see fit would be the greatest use of this powerful animal.

    The Xbox is truly one big box. It's made to stand up one way - with it's bottom on the surface. You're not going to stand it on its side at all, and to do so would be folly.

    It feels powerful, solid. Everything about it says its solid and strong, from the weight (almost 10 pounds), to the hard, black plastic on the outside, and even the wires. The RCA plugs are thick and meaty, and the ends are covered in thick, black plastic except for the colored ends. On top is the gigantic black X with the rounded circle stating that this is the Xbox.

    It's also brutally simple. On the back there are three slots - one for power, one for media output, and the Ethernet port. Let's leave the Ethernet port alone for now - we'll come to that in a moment.

    In the front we've got 4 input controller slots, the eject button, and the off button. That's it. No USB, FireWire, or otherwise. I can understand why there's no USB, and it's going to be a recurring theme. With USB, Microsoft might have given keyboard/mouse access to the Xbox, and above all that, they can't have that happening, because that would encourage hacking, and above all else, Microsoft cannot allow that to happen.

    Why no hacking? Well, because this is as close to a computer that plugs into your TV as most people will get without building their own - and for $300 dollars, the idea is temping. It has an Intel 733 processor. An Nvidia graphics/chipset controller. 64 MB RAM. A 8 MB Seagate HDD (Hard Disk Drive). After finding the screws so I could get the pictures inside, I want to find the tools to dig deeper, to unplug the hard drive and find out how its partitioned, how to make it do what I want it to do.

    But we'll get to that in a little bit.

    When I first turn it on, I can hear the hard drive crunch for a moment, and it's obvious as I move around the settings and listen close that the operating system is probably stores on the HDD. (Again, if somebody figures out how to hack this thing open and start messing around, we might see something like LILO or Partition Magic in the works for dual-booting).

    The menu system is very green, not "Daikatana annoying green" but more cool and high tech green. Looks very nice and I could find what I wanted in a few moments. The text was clear - perhaps the clearest text I've seen from a computer anything on screen.

    First, let's hit the settings. Sound (mono, stereo, Dolby), video (normal, wide, etc) - then the DVD and Game rating section. You can use a parental lockout for both the movies or games, which for parents can at least offer some help to make sure they aren't going to find their copy of La Blue Girl in the machine while they're away for the night.

    But there is one thing that absolutely kills me. I refer to Page 15 of the Xbox Instruction Manual:

    Do not connect a telephone line to the Ethernet connector on the back of the Xbox console.
    Broadband compatibility is scheduled to go live in the summer of 2002." (Emphasis added.)

    That's right, the Ethernet controller is like my gall bladder - it's useless. It does nothing. There is no reason for its existence. I was actually interested in plugging this into my home network (I use DSL and have a Linux box providing NAT) and going online for...well, some reason. After all the crowing the Xbox guys did at E3, I was expecting to do something on the Internet with the damned thing.

    Now I know that's not going to happen until - when? Summer 2002? What's the problem here? Last I checked, Microsoft had a TCP/IP stack. They couldn't put some simple FTP/Telnet/SMB protocols on the box? DHCP can't be that hard - let me get this guy doing something. Multiplayer for Halo? Not over the Internet - which, at least in my head, was going to be one of the cool things about the game. How about Metal Gear Solid 2 X and finding out how well I did online instantly? Nope - not gonna happen.

    But I know the reason why, and it comes down to hacking. Once they open this thing on a network, it's going to become a mini-PC, and down goes the $$$ from game selling. Folks are already working on MAME (an arcade game emulator) and SNES (Super Nintendo) emulators for the Xbox. If that becomes a reality, you've got yourself a $300 PC that runs all the games you want, and with a Ethernet IP connection - well, you can put the pieces together. For those who can't, that means that Microsoft could be losing money every time they sell an Xbox.

    Personally, I think they can capitalize on that. I think they should say to themselves "It's going to happen, one way or the other. So we'll hope that people do buy the Xbox for reasons we don't want them to - because they're also going to want to play the games that are coming for it, and if they've already got an Xbox, no matter what the reason, they'll come around to the games - and we'll make out money once we get that Killer Application, the one game nobody can live without. And from that one game we can make more, and eventually win."

    For now, I'm wondering about that Ethernet port. How is the broadband going to look come Summer 2002? Are we going to be forced to play MSN (Microsoft Network), or are we going to be allowed to use our own local systems for Internet capacity? We'll just have to wait and see what happens, but for now, I'm disappointed. After all the hype about the 100 MB Ethernet port - and it turns out its as useful to me as my gall bladder. You could take it from my body, and everything would work just the same.

    The music system alone is almost worth the purchase. A good MP3 player is around $300, and the Xbox could compete with them, thanks to Mr. Hard Drive.

    When you stick in a music CD, you can listen like normal. Or...you can copy it to the hard drive. I tried Phantom of the Opera out. Waited about 23 minutes and 20 seconds before it was done. It took long enough that the screen saver kicked in (well, it just turned the screen blank), but it was about as long as converting the CD to MP3 would have been.

    Any bets that its in WMA (Windows Media Audio) format instead of MP3? (Someone at Xbox tech support said it was, but since they weren't an official company rep, I'm holding out on that one.) But once again, just as I start thinking something about the Xbox is cool, something else gets in my way. Remember that useless Ethernet controller? Well, already this could have been useful. By plugging it into the Internet, I could have used a CDDB (CD Database) to pull the CD's name, the name of all of the tracks, and had the Xbox store that automatically.

    As it is, I'm forced to do it with the controller. Now, I might not have minded that, except that if we're talking, say, Phantom of the Opera, we've got 4 CD's with 15-17 tracks apiece, and I'm going to t-y-p-e-i-n-e-a-c-h-l-e-t-t-e-r-o-n-e-b-y-o-n-e - well, you can already see how annoying that is.

    The first CD I used was Disk 1 of "The Phantom of the Opera". The disk contains 475 MB of musical data, and by the time it was done, the Xbox reported that it used up 3209 blocks. If you figure that each block is 16.3 kilobytes (calculated by the 8 MB memory module being 503 blocks), then it's been reduced down to 53 MB.

    Sound difference? I played Phantom of the Opera through the same speakers on my computer (a pair of flat-screens with a sub-woofer), one with the PC, one with the Xbox copied. Sounded the same.

    So I decided to take the test an extra step further, and plug it into the stereo system. speakers are 3" infinity. I still couldn't hear the difference, and I've had 7 years of band, so I'm pretty sure I know what I'm hearing.

    Once on the hard drive, you can make up your own playlists, copy tracks around, and so on. It's still clunky with just the controller instead of using a mouse, but the capacity is there. Of course, you can't just copy the MP3's you've already got on your hard drive, unless you converted them back into WAV format, copied them into a CD-RW (seems the Xbox doesn't accept CDR's, but CD-RW is fair game), then had then re-encoded on the Xbox.

    Still, the potential for having a great digital music player, with all of your CD's on the Xbox plugged into your stereo system is a temping one. I'm already considering it as I look over all of my Final Fantasy Music Collections on CD.

    You know the whole thing about having to purchase a DVD remote controller to watch DVD movies on the Xbox? It's true. I stuck in a DVD movie to see what happens, as was politely told "Nope - you need that DVD remote controller". I'm assuming that MS is making folks buy the remote to pay for the DVD license, and to avoid Sony's initial problem (folks in Japan buying the PS2 for a DVD player rather than a game system).

    I don't get this part. Maybe they can claim that since folks can't watch movies they don't need to pay the DVD license, and by making people buy the remote (then using that money to pay the DVD licensing) they can make sure they don't pay for it - but it's still annoying. I know it's another $20 Microsoft would have to pay out, but, dang, it's still annoying.

    Like the box itself, the controllers feels like you could take a hammer to it, and it would come back for more. The cord is interesting. First, it looks like a FireWire cord, which if it is would mean you put put a lot of bandwidth down the pipe. Then the controller can have the end plugged in - perhaps the idea is that you leave one part plugged into the Xbox, and if you want to plug in a new controller or a different one (keyboard, mouse, steering wheel) you don't have to pull the jack from the Xbox itself.

    The controls are obviously inspired by the Dreamcast line. The memory cards go in there (not that you really need them, which now that I know I could have saved myself $35 at Toys R Us, unless you want to copy things to the memory card and from there to someone else's Xbox system).

    And yes, damn it, the controllers are too big. The controller runs like this:

    • Two finger triggers
    • Two analog sticks
    • 1 Dpad
    • 8 buttons - a, b, x, y, black, white, Start and Back.

    At this moment, I'm looking at the controller for the GameCube, and it's almost the same - 2 analog sticks, one D pad, 4 buttons, and three finger triggers along the back - but I can get to every single button without having to stretch.

    The black and white are too far from the analog sticks (assuming you've got both thumb on an analog stick) to be able to reach without physically moving my hands. My hands can span 1.5 octaves on a computer, so I'm no small dandy man - but I would have preferred either two more thumb controllers for black/white, or they be moved to the left instead of up.

    And...the big green X on the controller. Get rid of it! I know it's an Xbox, and the useless, gigantic center spot does nothing but take up real estate. Make it a tiny little green X if you must, but then you'll have room on the controller for something important, like...my thumbs.

    Here's a short gut level review of the 3 games I've been playing with the system. The scores are not final, may change, but these are my "gut" feelings after spending some time with them.

    First, each game takes a long time to load. Some games, like Dead or Alive 3, mask this by having cut scenes/messages, and by the time that's done, the game is done loading up. (The initial "copy this software and we'll break your head" message is just perfect for this). Others just say "loading" as you wait, and wait, then get up, walk to the bathroom, "take care of business", and by then it's ready. Then again, once it's done loading, you usually don't see any delays until the next time it has to load. What's going on here?

    Well, that hard drive is what's going on, which is both a crutch and a blessing. DVD seek times (the amount of time it takes the DVD to find a specific area of memory on the disk and read from it) is around 150-200 milliseconds. Hard Drive seeks are around 10. So if you copy the information to the HDD (that's Hard Disk Drive), you can quickly access it during gameplay for better performance.

    But that means you're spent waiting for the game to start as the developers have decided to copy all that information to the hard drive instead of jumping right to the game. Compare this to Metal Gear Solid 2 - looks great, and I wait 3 seconds for a scene change, and there's no hard drive. Or Soul Reaver, which even on a simpler system (like the Dreamcast) had practically no load times at all. So I can't say the HDD is really giving any benefit, except in the fact that you don't have to shell out for memory cards all the time.

    So, without any further ado, here's the games:

    Dead or Alive 3:

    It's Dead or Alive 2...with better graphics. Same controls (different controller), same gameplay, same nonsensical "stories" that are really characters saying things to each other for some reason - but it always leads to somebody's ass getting kicked. But let's face it - the women are incredibly hot, and that reason alone makes me keep them in the ring.

    Except the last boss. For some reason, they felt the need to change the camera angle for some dumb ass reason, so it was harder to figure out what I was trying to do. Then again, I usually don't like fighting games except for Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore, so I'll have to keep playing and see if it grabs me.

    Gut score: 7-8

    Halo

    First person action that reminds of Half-Life, looks like Half-Life after the high resolution pack. Actually, it looks pretty damn good. Until you reach the planets surface, then I was truly impressed by how beautiful this game could be. Surrounded by the hills, the waterfalls, looking at the sky above me - granted, a rather static one with the Halo running up into the sky - but still, for the first time I've placed my hands on the Xbox, all I could say was "Damn! That's just pretty.".

    I have that "new babe" feeling in the beginning - here you are, dropped into the middle of a situation, learning on the fly what's happening as fast as you can while learning the controls (but it's in a good way, since it gets that fear feeling from the start without actually putting you in risk). The controls are interesting. Left analog stick moves you forward/backwards/left shift/right shift. Right analog button "looks" about. Thumb triggers fire weapons.

    The game itself feels like it's going to be pretty cool and fun, with Bungie's own sense of style working for it. But I still find myself reaching for the keyboard/mouse to get that precision that I need. (Note to game makers for consoles: if the console allows you to use a keyboard/mouse with the system, and you don't program your game to take advantage of that, I will come over and teabag your keyboard.

    Teabagging a keyboard: (verb). Describes going to an opposing geeks computer system, lowering one's pants, and (assuming the teabagger is mail) dropping their scrotum upon the keyboard. Usually used a sign of disdain, or can be used for flirting (see Romero/Killcreek).

    Gut Score: 8-9

    Munch's Oddysee:

    Munch's Oddysee: I've spent the least time with this one, and that's something I plan to fix. First, the humor is already there (the Almighty Raisin got lots of kicks from my co-workers). Abe and his world are rendered smoothly, and it looks good.

    Then again, I'm wondering if this is just the previous Abe games in 3D. Oddworld has time to prove otherwise, and I'm willing to give them that chance.

    Gut Score: 8-9.

    So far? I have to say that based on the games, the system, and everything else, I'm underwhelmed. The graphics are good, but the only thing that impresses me is the lack of jaggies and the clearness of the text. Maybe its because I don't think visually (ask me about that sometime and I'll explain it to you), but I'm not impressed by the graphics.

    It's like looking at a good Dreamcast game, or worse, like a game I'd play on the PC. The music thing is cool, but the games themselves are - well, like anything else I'd see, and even worse, like anything else I'd play once on the PC and move on to something else. I'm not feeling the "Must-Keep-Playing" I get with Metal Gear Solid (1 or 2), or the "My god!" of Devil May Cry, or even the "Damn!" from playing Rogue Squadron.

    I played Halo - and could put it down. I played Metal Gear Solid 2 - and I couldn't put it down. I got finished playing Super Monkey Ball, and I'm already wanting to go back.

    Microsoft needs to get those killer apps - and fast. Right now they're playing catch up, and while history has proven that MS can play catch up as well as anyone by throwing money at it, they have to remember that they're up against opponents with brand names, exclusive deals (Pokemon, Final Fantasy, etc), and, in the case of Sony, a company with more than enough cash to take the long haul - and enough at stake that they'll fight tooth, claw and nail to keep it.

    So here's the ultimate deal. If someone were to ask me, right now, if I'd recommend they buy an Xbox for Christmas, I'd say no. Between the 3 systems, it's in last place, and unless we see something impossibly cool (like Panzer Dragon Saga II, Sakura Taisen, or something we'd all have to buy), it'll stay there.

    Of course, this is all my opinion - I could be wrong.

    • for a little more dough you can get a comparable box - see my comment in another thread [slashdot.org]. DVD/CD player, MP3 jukebox, MAME, games, etc, plugs into your TV and the ethernet works NOW, not in summer 2002 :)

      -sam

    • That metaphor if freedom (Score:4, Informative)

      by StrawberryFrog ( 67065 ) on Monday November 19, 2001 @10:34AM (#2584424) Homepage Journal
      unless the creators finally see that its power is not something to be feared, but something to be celebrated in, and to let the rider use that power for what they see fit would be the greatest use of this powerful animal.

      It's business, not fear - if you could do anything with it, MS would have to stop selling the hardware at a loss to subsidise the software that they want you to buy for it.

      I'm sure that there'll be a linux port, filesystem decoders and all kinds of hardware hacks anyway.

    • When you stick in a music CD, you can listen like normal. Or...you can copy it to the hard drive.
      Just as a matter of interest, will the XBox play "copy protected" CD's? If not it's pretty lame.

  • Absolutely! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hkka ( 142132 )
    >Unfortunately, only registered XBox developers can >legitimately obtain this software (okay, apart from >the fact that only registered XBox developers >actually have an XBox that can run the software).

    And I'm pretty sure you've got a legal copy of every rom you're running on there to right?

  • Killer App (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Carbon Unit 549 ( 325547 )
    If the interfaces work nicely--now we're talking killer app! Now that's irony.
  • After reading the article, It would be nice to see what MAME actually looked like on the X-Box, but egads - the glare! Just who the heck uses a FLASH to take pictures of a TV screen!? Does he think he'll light up the electrons as they hit the picture tube?
  • OK, what about a PC-Engine [pcengine.de] port?

    and, BTW, how easy is this to remove the DVD region lockout from the XBox? How easy is this to run standard PC software on it?

    What kind?
    • DVD EEPROM modifier
    • DVD Genie [inmatrix.com]
    • ...
  • Whoa, someone is really asking to get sued for DMCA by good old Microsoft. Though I would be happy to mirror all the data for this site should that be the case, namely cause Microsoft sucks.

  • When I can do this without a dedicated "DevKit" from Microsoft. (Last time I checked there were no devkits next to the big ass extra controllers, DVD Kits and $50 dollar games on the shelves at best buy.) Plus with no Keyboard port, it would be kind of hard to hook my encoder board and arcade controls up to this bad boy....)

    P.S. -- Is it just me or have all the Kiosks that are hooked up to X-box's gone belly up since the release date. (I would be a bit hesitant to purchase a system when the demo machines can't stay in the fight so to speak.....)
  • Make an .iso of a CD with every nintendo, super NES, genesis, Neo Geo, N64, and arcade game you can find on it. Make something that will be just a matter of burning, and sticking in the xbox, and make some instructions for the alterations that need to be done to it, with well documented images every step of the way. Not only does it cost to sell Xboxes, but it will also substitue for games (where the money is made). If this became common Microsoft would be really screwed.

    If enough people jumped on board, it might just give MS more market penetration and be good for them in the long run. Who knows? But I want 4 player retro nintendo games!

    I am already addicted to Super Monkey Ball for gamecube. It rocks my monkey balls.
  • from IGN [ign.com]

    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 [cnet.com]

    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.
  • I mean, if software can be deemed illegal because it can be used to do things that are illegal, doesn't this also apply to hardware? If the Xbox can be used to play "stolen" games, doesn't that make it illegal?

    (Yes, this assumes that MAME is "stealing" old games. See DMCA for references.)
  • The actual owners of all these arcade ROMs -- the companies that hold the oft passed-on copyright for all these classic games -- could simply clean up MAME and release their old games with little or no further effort. $19.95 for a set of a dozen old arcade games would be 90% profit.

    If they wanted to be particularly nice they could dig up some old photos, scan promotional literature, etc and build a museum like Namco's.

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