Is Anyone Seriously Trying To Get A Full Windows Kernel Running?, seriously, i'd do it myself if i were legally allowed Options

[torne]

Yes, I have read the stickies, and other long tedious posts filled with criticism.

It would be amusing to see a full Windows boot on the Xbox, and there doesn't seem to be that much to do tbh: poke the kernel/HAL/etc to not touch the bits of the address space and PCI bus that kill the machine, and then write a couple of drivers (graphics, mostly, much of the rest of the hardware should be supported). The latter is pretty easy; the Linux port's drivers are there as a reference for how to program the hardware.

Is anyone seriously looking at fixing the kernel/HAL to avoid the hardware bugs? It's only a couple of megs of code, with full symbolic information available...
I'd do it myself but I have access to, and have spent a lot of time working with, the Windows source (legally under signed NDA) and thus it's extremely dubious for me to reverse-engineer the Windows kernel - I am 'tainted' and would get the project in legal difficulties =(

If the fixes to the existing binaries are done I'd be interested to help write the few required drivers, which would not be subject to such restrictions..

[x-fox]

Well if you are saying you have access to the windows kernal source, I have a few questions for you.

Which specific windows kernal build do you have access to?

What specific patches would apply to the kernal to make it stable enough to run on the xbox hardware?

What bios would you use bearing in mind a standard pc bios would not work?

What graphics driver would you use bearing in mind that the nvidia source has never been released?

Seriously if you cannot provide meaningful answers to the above there would be no point continuing with this thread. Its all been said before.

[torne]

Well if you are saying you have access to the windows kernal source, I have a few questions for you.

Sure.

Which specific windows kernal build do you have access to?

Windows XP SP1, no post-SP1 patches. I forget the build number as I don't have access to it from this computer. I have access to the entire Windows Shared Source distribution, not just the kernel - everything from HAL to device drivers to Explorer and so on, though I've never worked outside of the core code (kernel, hal, devices, NTDLL, etc).

What specific patches would apply to the kernal to make it stable enough to run on the xbox hardware?

Based on what I've read about the xbox so far, and looking at the changes required for xbox-linux, it would be neccecary to amend which parts of the memory and IO map are probed for devices (disabling support for finding SuperIO chips and other legacy controllers, since it appears that some of those probe locations cause the box to lock), and to amend which parts of the PCI bus space are probed (as probing 0.00.1 or 0.00.2 cause crashes). The only other issues I'm aware of from the Linux code and from general discussion is the eject fix to stop the box resetting on DVD eject, and the nonstandard poweroff/reboot sequence, but those could both be left until later.

What bios would you use bearing in mind a standard pc bios would not work?

You don't need a BIOS - only NTLDR requires BIOS services, and very few at that - it gets into protected mode as soon as possible. Someone would have to write a new loader to get the kernel, HAL, disk driver, registry and the few other bits that NTLDR is normally responsible for loaded, and appropriate virtual address space mappings set up, but I've done that before so it must be possible. The entire process is well-documented by publically available books on Windows internals.

On non-legacy hardware the kernel needs no BIOS services and simply accesses devices via the PCI space. No sensible modern OS uses the BIOS for anything other than first-stage bootloading and perhaps initial hardware detection in the early boot.

What graphics driver would you use bearing in mind that the nvidia source has never been released?

I'd get the required details from the open source 'nv' driver for X.org under Linux, and write a new driver from scratch based on nv as documentation. It doesn't support 3D but it can bring up a 2D framebuffer on the xbox just fine, with no binaries or source from nvidia (all reverse engineered).

Seriously if you cannot provide meaningful answers to the above there would be no point continuing with this thread. Its all been said before.

Meaningful enough for you? I can't answer any specific questions on any unpublished details of the Windows code, but anything else is fair game.

You sound like you think you know what you're talking about.. I assume you've implemented device drivers and other kernel-mode code in Windows before? Or have at least read MS Windows Internals?



As for you, "nt authority", suggesting doing anything based on the leaked code is a relatively bad plan, plus you don't seem to know an awful lot about what would actually be required...

[nt authority]

As for you, "nt authority", suggesting doing anything based on the leaked code is a relatively bad plan, plus you don't seem to know an awful lot about what would actually be required...

I take your constructive criticisim onboard torne and admit I dont know an awful lot about this subject yet am willing to learn; I furthermore acknowledge that it appears you do know an awful lot (compared to most other persons in this forum anyway) and I appreciate your input as it is the most logical approach I have seen in a thread on this site. By the way, my expertise is not in code but in neuroscience, cognition, and artificial intelligence.

I am currently working within a team of consultants with a Private Corporation who require massive computing power for processing specific tasks I can not mention as this company's client is a Government Department and, as I am under a NDA with secrecy provisions, doing such would be breaking the law.

The construction of a cluster has been made a sub-project and we are considering using the XBOX conoles as nodes for this cluster and are looking for persons willing to assist in the creation of a true and proper and complete XBOX native Windows operating system. If persons are detected in this forum to have sufficient knowledge and are interested we are prepared to negotiate to employ them under contract.

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This Windows-XBOX-OS would be created by the exact methods torne has stated:
modified NTLDR/OSLOADER.EXE, NTDETECT.COM, NTOSKRNL.EXE, HAL.DLL, NTDLL.DLL etc to avoid the system being locked and drivers specific for the XBOX.
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The only further modification would be the inclusion of project specific APIs that are required by my program's end result: these include Message Passing Interface, Terminal Services Device Redirector, and Vitual SMP code written into the NTOSKRNL itself so that such is executed within privileged RING 0. This code is required to make all the cluster salve node XBOX's devices (CPU, HDD, RAM, DVD, etc) "divert" transparently to the primary domain controlling server. Ultimately we want the end machine to seemlessly "see" these devices as being local and for the server to have full ownership. Using 9 XBOX slaves for example, and 1 Windows 2003 Compute Cluster Server/Windows 2000 ADS, the Server Machine would see it had 10 CPUs (Virtual SMP code into kernel) as well as 10 DVD drives and 10 HDDs etc... I am presuming a combination of MPI,SMP,and Device Redirection code written into NTOSKRNL could allow such to be achieved by initing these as described during phase 0.
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May I please ask torne why do you state using Windows leaked source would be a bad plan -
are you stating this from a perspective of computer science or law and ethics ?

furthermore,

what made you state that it appears i dont know what needs to be done to start ?

am i misunderstanding your concept of modifying the NTLDR, NTOSKRNL, and HAL to make windows boot ?

did you understand the WinCE-OS as "superBIOS-on-LPC" concept was to act as nothing more than an extended firmware device providing a layer to STOP windows' PCI scans reaching the XBOX hardware and to report back to the LDR/KRNL/HAL that such scans were completed ok ?

is this not possible - to use an intermediate layer (winceOS or even XBE application) to "trick" windows into moving on past the PCI scan phases through a null emulation as such ?