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X-Box Emulated (Not)
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sat Jan 12, 2002 12:26 PM
from the surprised-it-took-this-long dept.
from the surprised-it-took-this-long dept.
evilpaul13 submitted linkage to news about an X-Box
Emulator. It requires a pretty high end video card and a DVD
player, and doesn't yet support joysticks, but it does emulate 3 of
the X-Box games (which is what, half the games available for the
system yet? :) Todays PS2 Addiction: Tony Hawk 3. But I still am
tempted to get an MSX-Box if only to handle my DOA addiction. UPDATE by HeUnique:Is this emulator a fake? according to these messages
in the XBox Hacker web site - this is a fake one. Could someone actually try it?
Update: 01/13 by J : The consensus in our comments is that this is a hoax, and the paranoid would do well to treat it as a trojan or virus. Sorry.
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X-Box Emulated (Not)
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FAKE !! FAKE !! FAKE !! (Score:5, Informative)
The PC DVD drives cant even read XBOX disks. i tried it out and it has a fancy splash screen and shit but it doesnt do anything with an XBOX DVD loaded. DONT DOWNLOAD IT. it seems to modify files (possibly). i whacked up a ghosted image of win on a spare PC and ran the software. it didnt do anything with an XBOX DVD and it seemed to modify a few files (i ran sentinel on the partition before and after running it). i dont knwo if it is a trojan..i just reghosted the entire machine in case.
Re:FAKE !! FAKE !! FAKE !! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is general true for emulating a console game machine based on a different processor than your native machine. So to emulate a PSX you have to emulate a MIPS R4400 processor on your x86 PC. And it could be very slow. However in the case of XBOX, it uses X86 processor just like a PC. So there is a potential huge saving for not needng to emulating the foreign CPU. In addition, it is likely that the XBOX uses a bastarded version Windows/DirectX (MS is preaching Windows Everywhere (TM), don't they?). So once the difference could be configured out, it is possible to write a layer to map the XBOX calls directly to the PC Windows/DirectX environment.
I am not saying that it could be easy. But there is a hugh pool of knowledgable people who are very proficient in low level details of Windows API. So I am pretty sure that eventually we would have an XBOX emulator that runs at decent, maybe even native speed.
IT IS A TROJAN (Score:4, Interesting)
Call me a coward if you like, but I'm not installing it.
SEVERAL OF THE FILE IN THE ARCHIVE ARE PART OF THE TRILLIAN MULTI-INSTANT MESSENGER APPLICATION
Check it out for yourself -- open up the archive, and then the individual files in your favorite hex editor. Scroll to the end and start looking through the strings.
Oh, and it also has Wolfenstein 3D embedded in it as well -- or so it seems.
Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
If Microsoft is smart, they'll ignore this. Why? Well, they're losing around $150 USD per console, and they make the money from the games. If you buy your own high end PC, pay full sticker, and then buy their games, you're saving them money, and they're still getting their cut from the development fees for the game.
Best of all, since no method for copying DVD games exists (well, not for under $5,000) it's not like piracy will be the issue.
By the way, for those of you who think Apple Superdrive or the HP DVD+RW machine will help, think again; they don't have a capacity to store most of the XBox games; as they only support 4.7gb DVDs, and the majority of XBox games are dual-layered (i.e. 8gb+)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
- All Xbox games are made on dual layer (DVD-9) discs, and the OS & game are booted from the second layer. As no DVD writer (under at least $5k anyway) will write dual layer discs, coping the games is not an option (unless the firmware is modified to bypass this restriction).
- All Xbox executables are encrypted & signed using public-key encryption (don't know what strength). This would have to be broken, or the key(s) obtained before any executables could be patched or even executed.
- A filesystem driver/emulator might have to be written (it's a modified form of FAT32).
- There's still the matter of the unified memory architecture. Some games will require this, in order to directly modify textures or polygon data, or simply to get the data throughput required. At best, a regular-PC-based emulator will run such a game quite slowly; at worst it wouldn't run at all.
- There is already an Xbox hardware "emulator", made available by MS to lower-tier developers. However, this is more a set of instructions about what PC hardware to use (i.e. GF3, DX8) to make something that approximates final Xbox hardware. It will certainly not run final Xbox games.
Alternatively, an emulator could be made to work at the hardware level (intercepting register calls etc from the monolithic DX/driver dll), running all system software unmodified - which would restrict it to GeForce3/4 hardware at least, possibly on an nForce chipset (which has the same sound hardware) - or raise the CPU requirements considerably to emulate these.
Hmmm... Nope. (Score:5, Informative)
Xbox games MUST be dual layer; the Xbox boots off the second layer. You might be able to squeeze a movie onto a single layer disc (though not the extras - there wouldn't be room), but even then you'd have to decrypt it with DeCSS or similar first.
DVD-Rs are made to the DVD-General standard, which has an unwritable key data track, precisely so you can't just bit-copy CSS-scrambled content to them. DVD-Authoring discs allow this, but they're unusable by consumer DVD-Rs (and the drives are a LOT more expensive).
Re:uhoh... (Score:4, Informative)
This appears to be one doozy of a hoax. I just snagged the file and uploaded it to Mr. Web Server - I haven't even virus-scanned it. Which, since the "xbox.vxd" file appears to come right outta Quake 3, you may want to do.
I don't know if it does ANYTHING, much less anything good or bad. I don't have a Windows box to test it on.
Exercise caution...
Re:Does this actually work? (Score:5, Redundant)
It's Fake (Score:5, Interesting)
The xboxkrnl32.dll is a file from the Trilliam messenger program.
I'd run a virus scanner if you ran this fake emulator.
Re:It's Fake (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's Fake (Score:5, Informative)
"snd3d.dll" and "xboxkrnl32.dll" appear to be some sort of messaging program dll's.
The actual exe seems like it just loads BMP images when started.
Oh well, nice prank..
As an Xbox developer... (Score:5, Troll)
--
Sartori
Linux boot disc for XBox coming soon? (Score:5, Informative)
of protection scheme on both the games and the hardware so that
1) You can't play games without the proper key on
them in the XBox.
2) Games won't play without the XBox's key.
I might be wrong, or oversimplifying it, but
this is my understanding. The Games require the XBox key, and the XBox requires a Game's key.
It is apparent that these people who made this,
provided that it works (I haven't tried it yet, since I've got no XBox games), must know SOMETHING about this if my understanding is correct.
Some people on
Either that or it was cracked. Neither would
surprise me.
If this is the case, then I'm wondering if this
information could be used to make a Linux install
disc for the XBox, one that had a valid key to be
played.
Can anyone with any more knowledge of the XBox give
any insight on the possibility of this?
Hoax? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://mediaviewer.ign.com/mediaPage.jsp?media_
Damn that long link.
- icemind
Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. (Score:5, Informative)
At the moment, no computer on this planet has enough juice to emulate the Xbox (No, not even the supercomputers which have 9,600 CPUs - because multiple CPUs don't make it any faster to emulate a single CPU), not to mention that nobody has been able to dump the contents of the HDs, the DVDs nor has anybody been able to crack the encryption of the Xbox BIOS. Additionally, the unified memory architecture makes it impossible to emulate the Xbox on a PC like a virtual machine. An interpretive or dynamic recompiling CPU core with everything else re-implemented is the only way, and that simply won't happen during the next decade because of the sheer complexity of such a project and because of getting sued to hell by Microsoft.
They've just renamed a bunch of common files to make it look neat. But no matter how much you want it to be true, it is just a poor fake.
In a related matter, no much how you want the Xbox MAME [otakunozoku.com], you will never get it. The developer cannot release his port, because software developed on the Xbox dev kit can't be released to public domain. Just stick with the good old PC versions [mame.net], which are also available for *nix / Linux [mame.net].
The contents of the files are.. (Score:5, Informative)
snd3d.dll is from MSN Messenger
xbox.vxd is a data file from Return to Castle Wolfenstein
xboxkrnl32.dll is from Trillian (another messenger program)
xbox_emulator.0.35.exe is a Visual Basic program compiled to .exe form that uses the c:\con\con trick to induce the Blue Screen of Death on unpatched Win9x systems.
Re:Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. (Score:5, Informative)
The XBox uses the IDE password mechanism to prevent you from dropping the drive into a PC and reading it, but if you connect the drive to the PC *after* the XBox has unlocked it (without resetting the drive), then you can read from it. Course your PC BIOS didn't see it at boot so you need to write custom software to talk to it.. but that's been done..
The folks at xboxhacker are very determined. It's fun to watch.
Re:Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. (Score:5, Informative)
That is absolutely false. The XBox's CPU is just an Intel CPU, which most home computers have something similar to, so not much needs to be done to emulate that (maybe emulate a few instructions, or shift opcodes). The video is handled through DirectX and an nVidia video chip; again, most people already have something similar, and minimal translation is necessary.
People said that emulating the Nintendo 64 was impossible, but that was done, not by emulating the hardware at a low level, but through high-level emulation. Compatibility is slightly less, but it's orders faster.
The fact that the XBox hasn't been fully reverse-engineered yet is an obstacle to making an emulator, yes, and this particular "emulator" is clearly a hoax, but it is by no means impossible.
Currently Xbox emulation is infeasible. (Score:4, Flamebait)
FYI, emulating x86 on x86 does not make it any simpler than some other CPUs on x86. In fact, it is one of the most dreadful tasks one can imagine. Writing a CPU core for MIPS chips is a breeze compared to emulating a complete x86-based system with all its quirks, strange behaviours and design stupidities.
Emulating a Nintendo 64 was never impossible, as Mike Tedder (aka Breakpoint) proved years before the high level emulators - which, if I may say so - are essentially real-time ports of the games to PC code and not emulation at all. The MIPS opcodes are dynamically recompiled into x86 code in memory, the graphics chip calls are trapped and translated into native 3D API calls, the sound chip playlists are simply thrown at the sound card. This is also why the high level emulators will never run more than Mario 64 and Zelda 64 without ugly hacks, since both the CPU, graphics and sound chips can be reprogrammed and none of the current emulators can handle this. Your compatibility estimate of "slightly less" is several magnitudes wrong. Of course there has to be an exception - I've understood that Project64 actually emulates the RSP microcode (3D manipulations, audio functions) instead of faking it on a high level. But it also requires a lot faster computer.
I never said emulating Xbox will always remain impossible. At this time however, because of current CPU speeds and the sheer complexity of the Xbox system, you cannot expect to see an emulator. Not for at least five years, probably closer to ten.
Re:Currently Xbox emulation is infeasible. (Score:4, Interesting)
As for the N64, the UltraHLE emulator runs a large percentage of games; yes, it does so with some hacks, but on consoles, the only programs you need consider are the successful commercial ones, not thousands of freeware programs with thousands of different sets of quirks. DirectX HAL comes to the rescue here; the games shouldn't be touching the hardware except through DirectX, to which calls can be trapped. I've gotten the distinct impression that Microsoft started with a PC and modified it until they had something suitable to sell as a console. Yes, it will certainly take time to reverse-engineer the thing to the point where it can be emulated. However, Microsoft's laziness may well mean that the XBox and PCs are surprisingly similar. I also think that the hardware of five to ten years from now will be absolute overkill for emulating an XBox.
Of course, until someone cracks the XBox BIOS, we're both on speculation, which makes this argument rather pointless.
WARNING: POSSIBLE TROJAN OR HOAX!!! (Score:3, Redundant)
Running strings on some of the files revealed a bunch of QuakeIII/Team Arena/Wolfenstein strings, and on another of the files a whole bunch of Microsoft Messenger/Trillian stuff.
This made it appear as though the software was a hoax of some type, and some of the files were just filler.
I tried logging connections at my Linksys while running the software but didn't see anything going on. At all.
I'd suggest to every interested party that they download the software - just in case it is proven to work later and Microsoft goes ballistic and forces people to take it down - but don't run it until someone posts a proper disassembly of the program. Please also keep in mind where this is coming from - some random site in Russia. Not to say anything bad about our frozen neighbors, but there's been a lot of scams from that area.
Caveat Emptor.
JackAsh
Slashdot Editors forgot about their comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the comments on your own website! Plenty of people have tried it, it is a simple application designed to give a video error message (Unable to initialize display, or something)... to make people think it's just their box. Read the comments above me, and giving a few more minutes, below me as well... A majority of them are people's personal experiences.
You people just don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ninety percent of the articles put up as "news" on /. are just to generate post volume.
The vast majority of the "news" that gets posted is really "olds", and the rest is just bait.
Take it from someone who's been on here a *long* time...
t_t_b
Re:way to go! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Emu X-box (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong.
"the directX libraries are the same on the XBOX and a PC"
Wrong.
- An XBox developer
Re:way to go! (Score:5, Informative)
The console industry defined itself from its inception as an arena for hard-core capitalist corporations to milk maximum revenue from content providers and customers. Microsoft deserves a place in that wonderful market segment as much as any other.
If you want to exercise some philosophical consistency, remove Windows and Microsoft Office from every machine you own and/or use (no, you don't deserve to use stolen M$ software just because you disagree with their criminal business practices) and feel comfortable owning both a PS2 and an Xbox. If you want to gripe indirectly about the way a relatively free capitalist economy works, try making a difference [habitat.org] for a change.