Linux Distros
davisr
old 'nix distro? I guess my question is this: if you boot from a
standard xbox-linux distribution into the xbox's RAM, such as X-DSL, and
eject the disc, can you input a standard linux live cd and install it to
the hard drive?
prashant
Hey i am thinking this the other way round. I think Xbox is just a
computer with 3 core cpu. 512mb GDDR3 ram. I am thinking writing a
linux distro. That could boot of like an Xbox OS (may not look like or
be like it.) but people could actually emulate xbox360 on pc.. yeah i
am talking a bit about screwing MS as it would be involving some kind
of Reverse engineering as no one knows whats the Arch of An XBOX
CPU :/ ""Before the launch of the Xbox 360, several alpha development
kits were spotted using Apple's Power Mac G5 hardware. This was due to
the system's PowerPC 970 processor running the same PowerPC
architecture that the Xbox 360 would eventually run under IBM's Xenon
processor."" (Quoted from Wikipedia)
Jukka Aho
> I was thinking...If the xbox is an IBM computer, why can't it run any
> old 'nix distro?
Primarily because the hardware has some special quirks in it. For
instance, there is the watchdog chip (PIC) which needs to be dealt with,
and the system timer runs at a different tick rate than its equivalent
in a normal PC. Probing for PCI peripherals causes the system to hang...
so that should be avoided. The video hardware needs some special
initialization, and even when initialized, you cannot change the video
modes as freely as on a normal PC, because all video is piped through a
special video encoder chip (a "TV out" chip, if you will) whose settings
must be kept in synch with the current video mode, etc. Here's a page
which lists all those things where the Xbox (ever-so-slightly) differs
from a normal PC:
<http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Porting_an_Operat
ing_System_to_the_Xbox_HOWTO>
Secondarily, the Xbox cannot boot "normal" Linux distributions because
it does not come with a "normal" PC BIOS... Unlike on a "normal" PC,
there is no (PC-style) boot code on the Xbox that would try and find the
master boot record from the HDD and run a bootloader contained
therein... much less probe for removable drives for "normal" boot
blocks. Neither the original MS BIOS nor the hacked versions of thereof
do any of those things, but rely on (Xbox-specific) custom methods and
conventions for booting.
The Xbox Linux project has come up with something called "the Cromwell
BIOS" which allows booting the Xbox free of any MS code, but that's no
ordinary PC BIOS, either, and does not support the conventional boot
block-based boot mechanism...
> I guess my question is this: if you boot from a standard xbox-linux
> distribution into the xbox's RAM, such as X-DSL,
> and eject the disc, can you input a standard linux live cd and install
> it to the hard drive?
Nope. "Normal" Linux distributions won't run on the Xbox, for the
reasons described above. They can be _modified_ to run on the Xbox,
though.
Here's a guide which lists what needs to be done in order to make a
random Linux distribution run on the Xbox:
<http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Making_a_Linux_distri
bution_Xbox_compatible_HOWTO>
--
znark
Jukka Aho
> davisr <davis.rem...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I was thinking...If the xbox is an IBM computer, why can't
>> it run any old 'nix distro?
> Hey i am thinking this the other way round. I think Xbox is just a
> computer with 3 core cpu. 512mb GDDR3 ram.
I think he was referring to the original Xbox (which indeed _is_ just a
normal IA-32 PC with a couple of quirks)... not to the Xbox 360.
--
znark