Xbox goes RTOS in Xenium OS(info) 2.0
We've promised you it was coming. We promised you it would be groundbreaking. We told you it would be 'soon'.... and it's taken longer then even WE expected. We've promised you there was good reason. Now, it's time for us to lay it all on the line.
It is coming... In fact, it is nearly here. Within 2 days, the first round of betas will make their way out of the innermost circle of OzXodus, and into the hands of our friends and supporters.
It is groundbreaking... In fact, it could change the face of the scene forever. We've told you this before.... now let us take a moment to explain what we have done.
Several months ago, the entire OzXodus team sat down together to discuss the future development of XOS. We decided we had 2 options. We could either stay with a Cromwell(info) based "os" or completely re-implement XOS, from the ground up, as an entirely new operating system. We weighed both options very carefully before making our decision.
Cromwell was a great advancement in Xbox development. It's innovators and core supporters (Andy, Milosch, Ed, Oliver, DMP, etc..) brought the first legal firmware replacement, and it will have it's place in both Xbox and open-source history. However, Cromwell, as a basis for an operating system, is severely limited. It was never meant to be anything more then a firmware, and Linux loader. Designing and programming around that fact has proved a difficult and slow process. So, instead of continuing to work in a restricted and inappropriate environment, we instead opted to rewrite XOS, from the ground up, Cromwell free.
As a true, independent, microkernel operating system, XOS2 provides a complete basis for potentially ANY utility, tool, application, or service to be written to run directly on XOS. It provides an extensive set of low level and mid level functionality to any higher level applications and services. It has a full driver subsystem, to support current and future hardware. (Thankfully, this made v1.6 support rather easy!) It has a full graphics API, including UI primitives, a feature rich text rendering engine, a loader for various image formats (jpeg, gif, png, bitmap, etc) and preliminary GPU hardware acceleration. There is a complete Berkeley sockets TCP/IP implementation, including support for BOOTP, RARP, ARP, ICMP, UDP, TCP, and DNS protocols, allowing extensive network applications and services to be created. We've implemented a complete embedded scripting engine based on Lua 5.0 from TecGraf. The list of CORE functionality goes on and on.....
What does this mean for you, the end user? It means that, now, the potential of XOS is LIMITLESS.
Here is a list of just some of the things we've been able to do under our new environment, already, which you will see in the beta:
* Greatly improved user interface, combining crisp graphics with intuitive navigation, utilizing menus, popups, file selectors, alert/information/question dialogs, and task-specific dialogs such as an IP keypad and straightforward onscreen keyboard
* Brand new video drivers, providing a much cleaner, clearer picture
* Built-in FTP server, without relying on launching a second app or OS
* Full client/server SMB (Windows Networking) support, integrated directly with the file system drivers, allowing you to copy files Xbox->pc and pc->Xbox, from either XOS or your PC
* A preliminary telnet server (very much a work in progress, but something we hope will become a valuable tool in the future)
* Full DHCP support, with static IP fallback
* A new "Virtual Bank" system, eliminating the need for selecting bank modes, and greatly simplifying the flashing process
* A straightforward HDD upgrade wizard
* A detailed exception handler, which will generate an error report file to help us diagnose problems and fix bugs more rapidly
* Full no-copy, asynchronous (read: FAST) USB device support, including support for USB keyboard and mouse (UI integration still in progress)
* USB "Pen drive" support, allowing you to flash a bios and copy files from a USB memory stick or other mass storage device
* Improved HDD support, covering a wider range of drives and setups, including LBA48 and multiple hard drives
* UDMA support (disabled for beta) for maximum HDD performance
* File system cache for efficient file operations
* Raw I/O support for HDD operations (potential for utilities such as defrag, scandisk, etc)
* Vastly improved flashing speeds. (Erase, Flash, and Verify 256k in 6 seconds, 1 meg in 25.5 seconds!)
* Fully preemptive, multitasking kernel, supporting threading, semaphores, mailboxes, message passing, critical sections, etc.... with a task switch overhead of under 0.2 microseconds... allowing all services and applications to run concurrently and efficiently, without stability concerns
* DLL support to load add-ins and additional future functionality from HDD or flash
* Flash Unconstrained Core Kernel Initialization Technology, allowing you to load bioses directly from HDD, without flashing them to a bank
And some things which will not be in the beta, but which are being developed currently, and will be in an XOS-dev (unstable/testing) release shortly after:
* Full Web server for flashing and remote operation
* UI Skinning/Scripting (This actually exists in the beta, and is how we do all our UI, but the API will not be exposed at first)
* Screensavers
A couple of things that are "on the drawing board." Initial testing and proof-of-concept implementations have been done:
* Dash-In-Flash, allowing you to use XOS as your dashboard
* Bios Cooking... live bios configuration and extension, done in a way completely unlike anything that's been done or demonstrated before!
* Live update
Finally, we will be developing a series of applications and utilities to run on xos2. One of the most amazing things about XOS2 is that it opens the door to a whole new world of development and distribution methods for legal applications and utilities. For our first application, we're considering a port of a popular emulator..... More on that to come.
I'd like to apologize for the fact that "soon" has become such a long time. That time has passed very quickly for us, as we've been buried under this heap of code for awhile. For you, it must've seemed like an eternity. My only hope is that now you can perhaps see why this amazing feat has taken so long. Now, within the next few days, you'll be able to appreciate the results of all of the time and effort we've put into this, and why we believe it is the best work any of us have ever done.
Stay tuned for some more exciting news, and an extensive video showing some of our favorite features in action, which should be ready in the coming hours.
We will be contacting our initial beta testers individually, starting within the next 24-48 hours, increasing the number of beta testers as results come in, and going to a public beta, and then release, over next week. Please bear with us, as a beta test and release of something this massive is a stressful and time-consuming process.
--Artifex, and the rest of the OzXodus team
P.S. Just a friendly reminder that users with clone chips should use XOS2 only at their own risk. We will not support any "problems" with xos2 running on non-authentic Xeniums.
|
Author
Topic: 2.0 Out Next Week! (Read 751 times)