Topic: Get It Running Efficiently! (Read 2014 times)

h8raid · « **Reply #30 on:** October 06, 2004, 02:04:00 PM »

With regard to the bios source floating around. We should definately have somebody looking at this. Scan-C I know you said you are on it, lol, keep us posted on it. I will agree that bios seems like the best way to get the job done, but will also be the most difficult. If the Cromwell source can be extracted and the Award source can be extracted, we may be able to get somewhere like that. So basically extract the source then, break it down and compare differences. Then go ahead and do what Scan-C said and use bits and pieces of the different source to build yourself a nice modified Cromwell bootloader!

Now if only it were that easy. Anybody feel like trying to get a clipping up on X-S with the latest news, they would probably let us post a news clipping on the homepage. That would be cool because with a link to this thread, tons of traffic because X-S news goes out on tons of RSS feeds, and other sites have it linked to the high heavens. Lots of advertisement to coders needed! Well, whoever wants to take on this task just let me know.
Regards,
-H8raid

Scan-C · « **Reply #31 on:** October 06, 2004, 04:26:00 PM »

i already looked over code i extracted from an award bios. doesn't help much i think. we need an award bios that's used on a nvidia nforce motherboard and my researches brought up that amibios is used everytime. if someone knows of a motherboard using the nforce chipset together with an award bios let me know!!!

btw cromwell is open source so it doesn't need to be extracted.

betaluva · « **Reply #32 on:** October 06, 2004, 06:35:00 PM »

i have 2 apps if you want them ,app1=IND BIOS 500,

Release info:
-------------

We are a group of xbox enthusiasts that just wasnt satisfied in how far BIOS
development has come, and decided to take matters into our own hands.
Basically, we went through the current bioses feature lists, and the requested
bios hacks thread on forums.xbox-scene.com, and implemented all that we could.
We are open to most feature suggestions, especially if you feel that you can
help implement them. We are aware of 2 of the most requested features that we
have not done; xbox live hack, and embedded ftp. The former we will not be
touching, sorry. As for the later, never say never!

We know how many people love to customize their bios to fit their exact needs,
and we made an effort to make every option that we could configurable. All of
the configurable options are controlled by a .cfg file (ini style) on the
xbox hard drive. We have included a win32 application that will edit this
file for you, which should eleminate user error for the most part.

Loading the config file from the disk requires a short delay while the IDE is
initialized. If you don't like the delay you can inject your config file into
the BIOS with our ConfigInjector tool. Note that an injected config does have
its disadvantages. Please see the ConfigInjector readme.txt for more info.

Please remember that this is our first public release, and bugs are expected.
Please report all bugs in the bios forum, on forums.xbox-scene.com, or #ind-bios
on EFnet.

betaluva · « **Reply #33 on:** October 06, 2004, 06:01:00 PM »

and app2 =KernelBasher 1.0

Instructions
O.k launch kernelbasher and open the bios you wish to edit. 4981,4983 & M7 are supported in this release, might work with other bioses, might not. Select Patch to save, outputted bios is called bashed.bin.

Improvements/Additions

- RGB Sliders
- Improved xfile & bios validation
- Random Camera Animation
- Lots of X files to play with

betaluva · « **Reply #34 on:** October 06, 2004, 06:30:00 PM »

all motherboards that use the nforce chip,http://www.nvidia.com/object/motherboards.html

h8raid · « **Reply #35 on:** October 06, 2004, 06:46:00 PM »

Nice work Scan-C! I did a little googling and the very first page I saw seems like it has at least the information you are looking for about an award bios based on the nforce chipset. What exactly are your thoughts here? I am assuming you are going to see if you can extract pieces of the bios and fit them into the Cromwell, but doesn't Cromwell already have this? I honestly don't know myself, but it would seem like it would already be there, unless you want to modify what's already there so it will pass the checks? I am a little lost on this one, but I get the general idea of what you are trying to accomplish. Anyway, here is the link to the site, close to the end it says the bios is based on Award 6.00 or something like that.

Hope this is what you need!

Regards,
-H8raid

EDIT: Here is an excerpt from that site that is actually quite interesting for our purposes and seems that it would prove very useful if we can obtain the source.

The BIOS is based on the v6.00 from Award and includes a great deal of possibilities for adjusting memory timings, AGP and PCI buses operation and a possibility to distribute manually interrupts among PCI slots. The FSB frequency can be changed from 100 to 200 MHz in 1 MHz steps. The core voltage can be changed +/- 0.1V in 0.025V steps and the memory voltage can be lifted by 0.7V from the rated value in 0.1V increments.

Scan-C · « **Reply #36 on:** October 07, 2004, 02:57:00 AM »

duh -.- i must've used the wrong keywords or something.
thanks i'll look if my idea is possible with this one. i'm thinking how hard it is to modify a bios to start the xbox. the nforce boards seem to be nearly the same so i wanted to at least look at it.

h8raid · « **Reply #37 on:** October 07, 2004, 05:51:00 AM »

Great! I am looking forward to hearing your results. I got really excited when I read this part "The BIOS is based on the v6.00 from Award and includes a great deal of possibilities for adjusting memory timings, AGP and PCI buses operation and a possibility to distribute manually interrupts among PCI slots." If you could elaborate on this a bit, to me it looks like it is exactly what we need. Control over the PCI operation because we know the PCI bus scan Windows does causes the Xbox to crash. Depending on your results of whether or not we can use anything here or not, that should at least get us over one major hurdle. Scan-C, you should send me a PM I just realized something funny that I am guessing you are realizing too. Anywho, if this works out it will be exactly the kind of progress we need to get more interest and get other experienced coders on the project so you won't be by yourself anymore, haha. Alright well it's 8:00 am here now and I have not been to bed yet so I am out like a fat kid in dodgeball.
Regards,
-H8raid

Code-X · « **Reply #38 on:** October 08, 2004, 05:22:00 AM »

Anyone thought about using OpenXDK to develop a free BootLoader. I Have a lot of Experience in Win32 if this project gets going.

I think we should make a list of ToDo's.

fire2501 · « **Reply #39 on:** October 08, 2004, 11:11:00 AM »

got a little progress! the kid at the university wants his xbox modded this weekend so hes bringing it to me.. hes also been looking at embedded quite a bit and i might have him on the team in the next week! im going to some more research on embedded this week and see what i can come up with by tuesday.

oh by the way if anyone wants to hear something postive

off the MS website, an embedded discussion

h8raid · « **Reply #40 on:** October 09, 2004, 05:44:00 PM »

@Code-X, welcome to the team. We are working hard to get things moving here. As you can see from the thread, we have been doing our homework before starting anything so we don't end up going down a dead-end road. To get more details on the progress, contact fire and scan. Scan-C is on a business trip this week so he will most likely not be heard from until he is back from that. We talked before he left and he is hoping to get in touch with some people on his trip that would be able to help us out so we might have a few more on board when he gets back! I am pleased to be able to say we are getting things done, if you want to start on a todo list, that is an excellent idea. We could also use a site if anybody wants to allow us to use a server. Unfortunately, my internet is down for the moment, modem crapped out two days ago. So in order for me to do anything, I have to use other peoples connections. Also, please note that we are doing everything possible to keep this project legal, the bios ideas that were discussed are not going to be used for any public releases, the only reason this would even be attempted would be if it would be easier to get it to work initially so we can go ahead and get through the process and learn from it then go ahead and tackle the rest of the bootloader.

@Fire, glad to hear that we are not attempting anything in vein. I know for sure I would be able to run it when my box gets back from Friendtech. The next time I see her, she is going to have 128Mb ram and a nice 1.4Ghz processor. Sucks for game compatibility, but for our reasons, it is perrrrrrfect. After they get more of these boxes out to the public, I look for somebody to do some developing and fix at least some of the game compatibility issues. Any ideas on this would be awesome, but that would be another project altogether, and in the meantime, I will certainly just get a new box and use that one for my games and my faster box for my media server/Windows/whatever else would need the extra power. Anywho, once again, glad to see the progress and updates here.

Regards,
-H8raid

betaluva · « **Reply #41 on:** October 10, 2004, 05:31:00 PM »

i thought this site might be helpfull,http://www.xfactordev.net/

betaluva · « **Reply #42 on:** October 13, 2004, 03:22:00 AM »

i was just thinking,we need a name for this project,how about WinBox or Windox?

fire2501 · « **Reply #43 on:** October 13, 2004, 07:52:00 AM »

yea winbox is alright good enough for me..

h8raid · « **Reply #44 on:** October 13, 2004, 01:11:00 PM »

Agreed, I like winbox

Author Topic: Get It Running Efficiently! (Read 2014 times)