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How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

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Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#201

Post by cesarb »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #108
anonymousiam wrote: post #105

This is the same sort of bullshit that HP has done with their computer hard drives, but with an even more elaborate lock-in by Microsoft in this case. The HP computers came with an OEM Windows CD so you could re-install the OS after replacing a bad hard drive, but if you chose to replace the hard drive with anything other than a "genuine" HP replacement part, the Windows installation would fail. Note that the HP repl…

> Dell has its own problems these days. I am honestly very annoyed that my 2019 XPS 15 will refuse to negotiate anything higher than 65W over USB-C PD on a non-Dell charger. Their dock does 130W, yet every third party dock, brick, or monitor I use it refuses to exceed 65W.

> I am honestly very annoyed that my 2019 XPS 15 will refuse to negotiate anything higher than 65W over USB-C PD on a non-Dell charger. Their dock does 130W, yet every third party dock, brick, or monitor I use it refuses to exceed 65W.

Until 2021, the official maximum power for USB-C PD was 100W (5A at 20V), and your notebook is older than that. Dell has a non-standard extension for higher power, which uses a higher current (above 6A) and the same voltage (20V); the newer standard instead keeps the same maximum current (5A) and allows for higher voltages. It makes sense that third-party devices implement neither Dell's non-standard extension nor the newer standard (which your laptop could not use anyway), and so are limited to 100W, or 60W if you're not using a 5A cable.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#202

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

IntelMiner wrote: post #154
aftbit wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's shocking is Sony knew this from the PS2 era and gave it up! This applies to the whole early XBox story. Microsoft learns the right lessons... Sony learns the wrong ones. XBox vs PS2: XBox was faster, but PS2 launched earlier, was cheaper, and had more games, so won the generation. XBox 360 vs PS3: Sony reacts to Microsoft by making the PS3 more powerful than the 360 and more expensive. Microsoft reacts by ge…

FWIW the "PS3 is faster" is still debated to this day, mainly due to the Cell's "weird" architecture If you remove the SPE's from the equation (which many developers did) the PS3 has a much slower 2 Ghz Dual Core PPC64 CPU, while the Xbox has a 3.2Ghz Triple Core (6 thread) PPC64 The extra threads aren't directly as useful as games back then were almost entirely single-threaded, a trend that has only begun to really…

>PS3 has a much slower 2 Ghz Dual Core PPC64 CPU

IIRC it's not even a dual core but a single core with two threads.

Sony really dropped the ball with the PS3 chip.

It's a shame they invested hundreds of millions or even billions in this new, hot, complicated to use chip, only for it to be completely surpassed by off the shelf x86 parts.

Sony though the chip would be so good they could sell it to be used in super computers for years to come, but by the time it was out, x86 had basically caught up and no customers cared about buying their cell processor.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#203

Post by pjmlp »

gymbeaux wrote: post #181
jchw wrote: post #56

Microsoft really seemed to be ahead of the curve with console security. They really thought this through back in 2005 or so, to the point where clearly, they knew people would hack the drives to rewrite the serial number. It's probably for the best that they never actually did anything about the knowledge that gave them, but they clearly stayed a step ahead of the game. As much as I hate it, their actions show a grea…

I don’t think Xbox Dev Mode is really worth a damn. You can sideload apps but it’s not a vector for piracy or running Windows or Linux. PS3 Linux was about as useless as PS2 Linux, because the PS3 had only 256MB of RAM. I put Ubuntu Server on one and used it as a Squid proxy server to route P2P traffic through to the university’s college of computing since P2P was blocked in the dorms. For some stupid reason I totall…

The idea was for gamers to get a feeling what it meant to be a game developer, and as former PS2Linux user, having so many instead trying to make a PC out of Playstation is what killed the fun for Sony.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#204

Post by pabs3 »

transpute wrote: post #199
nine_k wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PC will eventually lock up more. Free general-purpose computing will remain on things like Raspberry Pi (and many other variants). There will be Windows computers, like we now have Macs, and Windows-incapable computers to run Linux (or whatever else open OS).

RPi boot path includes the GPU/VPU, which runs a binary blob based on an older version of ThreadX RTOS, whose upstream is now called Azure RTOS ThreadX . Work on an open-source replacement has been slowly inching forward for a few years. Arm, including the quirky RPi, is not comparable in openness to x86 general purpose desktops, which were a happy confluence of accidents, determined individuals and scrappy businesse…

The open replacement for the RPi boot blob:

https://github.com/librerpi/

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#205

Post by Teknoman117 »

cesarb wrote: post #201
Teknoman117 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dell has its own problems these days. I am honestly very annoyed that my 2019 XPS 15 will refuse to negotiate anything higher than 65W over USB-C PD on a non-Dell charger. Their dock does 130W, yet every third party dock, brick, or monitor I use it refuses to exceed 65W.

> I am honestly very annoyed that my 2019 XPS 15 will refuse to negotiate anything higher than 65W over USB-C PD on a non-Dell charger. Their dock does 130W, yet every third party dock, brick, or monitor I use it refuses to exceed 65W. Until 2021, the official maximum power for USB-C PD was 100W (5A at 20V), and your notebook is older than that. Dell has a non-standard extension for higher power, which uses a higher…

I mean, I'd take 100W. I never used the dedicated GPU so I never get that high. However, standard usage still drains the battery while on a 65W supply.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#206

Post by aesyondu »

jchw wrote: post #144
Waterluvian wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Steam Deck has sold fewer than 1% the number of Switches sold, which tells me there is far more to selling a console than the technology. Well, that’s an obvious statement, but I think many of us tech people commonly under-appreciate all the “non-engineering” components to making a product successful. I think “optimize the UX a bit” is what they did, and it falls very woefully short of what they need. Especially…

Huh? I don't even think there Are official Steam Deck sales numbers. The best I can find was that they shipped over 1 million last October, not sold. But that was actually not long after they BEGAN shipping units. Not only that, but we're comparing it to the Switch, which is one of THE best selling game consoles ever . However, in its first year, IIRC, it actually "only" sold around 10 million units. That suggests th…

For what it's worth, I've never owned a console of any kind in my life, but I would really like to own a Steam Deck.

Though I could buy the Steam Deck now, I am eagerly waiting for Steam Deck 2 just to see if there are lessons-learned-improvements from the first iteration.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#207

Post by Jorengarenar »

aftbit wrote: post #148
psychphysic wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this. Hacking was huge on the 360, as was piracy that JTAG thing using the cooler runner and browning out the processor after slowing it, there were multiple mod chips and finally the ODEs coming out the wazhoo. The funny thing about security is it's about the weakest links they find. So you can harden link A as much as you want if link B is a dud all the extra work on A was wasted energy. What's most imp…

> What's shocking is Sony knew this from the PS2 era and gave it up! This applies to the whole early XBox story. Microsoft learns the right lessons... Sony learns the wrong ones. XBox vs PS2: XBox was faster, but PS2 launched earlier, was cheaper, and had more games, so won the generation. XBox 360 vs PS3: Sony reacts to Microsoft by making the PS3 more powerful than the 360 and more expensive. Microsoft reacts by ge…

>XBox wins the generation.

The winner of 7th generation was clearly Nintendo with their Wii: over 100 million units.

And the funny thing is 2nd place: PS3! Just at the end of the generation it managed to outnumber X360.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#208

Post by Jorengarenar »

gymbeaux wrote: post #181
jchw wrote: post #56

Microsoft really seemed to be ahead of the curve with console security. They really thought this through back in 2005 or so, to the point where clearly, they knew people would hack the drives to rewrite the serial number. It's probably for the best that they never actually did anything about the knowledge that gave them, but they clearly stayed a step ahead of the game. As much as I hate it, their actions show a grea…

I don’t think Xbox Dev Mode is really worth a damn. You can sideload apps but it’s not a vector for piracy or running Windows or Linux. PS3 Linux was about as useless as PS2 Linux, because the PS3 had only 256MB of RAM. I put Ubuntu Server on one and used it as a Squid proxy server to route P2P traffic through to the university’s college of computing since P2P was blocked in the dorms. For some stupid reason I totall…

>I don’t think Xbox Dev Mode is really worth a damn. You can sideload apps but it’s not a vector for piracy

That's the point

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#209

Post by indrora »

gymbeaux wrote: post #181
jchw wrote: post #56

Microsoft really seemed to be ahead of the curve with console security. They really thought this through back in 2005 or so, to the point where clearly, they knew people would hack the drives to rewrite the serial number. It's probably for the best that they never actually did anything about the knowledge that gave them, but they clearly stayed a step ahead of the game. As much as I hate it, their actions show a grea…

I don’t think Xbox Dev Mode is really worth a damn. You can sideload apps but it’s not a vector for piracy or running Windows or Linux. PS3 Linux was about as useless as PS2 Linux, because the PS3 had only 256MB of RAM. I put Ubuntu Server on one and used it as a Squid proxy server to route P2P traffic through to the university’s college of computing since P2P was blocked in the dorms. For some stupid reason I totall…

> You can sideload apps but it’s not a vector for piracy or running Windows or Linux.

Rephrasing:

> You can sideload apps so it's not a vector for piracy

Most of the piracy scene depends on hackers figuring out how to break security so that they can run [SWEET DEMOS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8JaG6hQVbA) and homebrew apps on it. By saying "yeah mate here, toggle some settings, pay $90, and we'll even help you break the seal" it completely eliminates the drive that most experienced attackers have to actually attack it.

From what I understand there's an informal bounty among the Xbox and Hyper-V teams that increases on a regular basis for unsigned executables on the Xbox One platform.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#210

Post by zppln »

Jorengarenar wrote: post #207
aftbit wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's shocking is Sony knew this from the PS2 era and gave it up! This applies to the whole early XBox story. Microsoft learns the right lessons... Sony learns the wrong ones. XBox vs PS2: XBox was faster, but PS2 launched earlier, was cheaper, and had more games, so won the generation. XBox 360 vs PS3: Sony reacts to Microsoft by making the PS3 more powerful than the 360 and more expensive. Microsoft reacts by ge…

>XBox wins the generation. The winner of 7th generation was clearly Nintendo with their Wii: over 100 million units. And the funny thing is 2nd place: PS3! Just at the end of the generation it managed to outnumber X360.

Yup, MS really threw it all away with their Kinect play.
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