yup embedded dont care about your bios, thats why i mentioned using it ages ago.

but finding those skilled in programming and setting up embedded installations and also knowledge of xbox's can create a bit of a challenge.

i think i might give my buddy a ring on the phone in a little bit, see if he is up for the challenge.

Wait, isn't this project trying to get a standard Windows running, like 98/ME? XPe is Bios independent, but dosen't that mean it's point is so you can run it on a Non PC device? BIOS coding would not even be nessary, it ciuld just be booted as an XBE, like what they did with WinCE.

I would rather see Win ME running on my xbox, then XPe.

yeah, 'proper windows' is what were aiming for here. not xpe

and, why isnt this damn thread pinned yet?????????

I agree, it should be pinned since it is pretty much the only feasible project for Windows on XBox.

i cant the forum mods name,if i could i would ask them to pin this topic, HELLO MODS,CAN YOU PIN THIS TOPIC PLEASE.

Since ReactOS was mentioned a few times in this thread, let me share some of my notes with you. I'm a ReactOS developer and have been working on getting ReactOS to run on the Xbox. Please let me clarify some misconceptions about ReactOS I read on this thread: ReactOS is NOT based on a Linux kernel. We've written our own kernel, compatible with Windows NT/2000/XP, from the ground up. So we are also NOT emulating Windows, we're trying to be Windows. I think some of you might be confusing ReactOS with Wine (Wine is a project to let you run Win32 apps on Linux). We do plan to have DirectX support in the future, but at the moment this is not implemented yet. One thing is correct however: ReactOS is still in early alpha, some apps work but most don't. However, ReactOS does kind of run on the Xbox, it's just that you can't use a mouse or keyboard yet

From reading the thread, I've been unable to determine what your target is, Win9x or WinNT/2000/XP. If the target is Win9x (or Embedded), I can't give you any advice, I know next to nothing about those. The following is specific for the NT family (which includes NT4, 2000, XP and 2k3).

There's basically two sets of problems to solve: how to get Windows loaded and how to run it. The sequence of events on a normal PC is: the BIOS loads the Master Boot Record. The MBR determines which partition is active and loads the boot sector for that partition. The boot sector then loads NTLDR which will do the bulk of getting Windows loaded. It does so with the help of the BIOS. For example, to read a sector from the harddisk it will generate a (real mode!) INT13. It will also call upon a lot of other services of the BIOS, most of which are invoked by issuing a real mode INT. Note that a normal PC BIOS is very different from a Xbox BIOS, about the only thing which is the same is the name BIOS. The Xbox BIOS mostly runs in protected mode and is incapable of providing the real mode services which NTLDR needs. So, if you want to use NTLDR you have no choice but to develop a PC BIOS implementation for the Xbox. This is a pretty huge undertaking.

NTLDR will load NTOSKRNL.EXE (the Windows kernel), HAL.DLL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), SYSTEM registry hive, boot device drivers indicated in the system registry hive and some NLS files. It has built-in filesystem support for FAT and NTFS and those will be the only filesystems it will understand. Furthermore, NTLDR will do device detection and build a basic list of devices present in the system. Oh, and by the way, NTLDR expects to be started in real mode. It will switch the CPU to protected mode. Finally NTLDR will transfer control to the kernel.

For ReactOS we developed our own bootloader named FreeLdr. Most of the initial work was done by Brian Palmer. Our FreeLdr handles the same tasks as NTLDR. FreeLdr already runs on the Xbox. Unfortunately, I don't think it can be used to launch Windows. When passing control to the kernel, the boot loader passes a block of parameters. The NTLDR parameter block is not compatible with the FreeLdr parameter block.

When the Windows kernel starts, it will not call the BIOS anymore (with small exceptions, see later). It will enumerate the PCI bus itself, using INP and OUTP instructions. As you know, this process will freeze the Xbox.
Another problem is the video driver. I don't have to tell you that the GPU is very much like the Geforce 3. However, it does have a different PCI id. This means that the standard Nvidia driver will not recognize it. So, Windows will fall back on its default drivers. For older Windows versions, that's a VGA driver. Alas, that driver expects a standard VGA card to be present, with video memory at 0xa0000 and I/O ports. It simply will not work on the Xbox. Newer Windows versions can use VBE based drivers, which depend on the presence of a VGA BIOS (this is the exception I was talking about earlier). So that's another BIOS to write....

For ReactOS, we circumvented the PCI enumeration by writing a customized HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), which is the component which actually issues the INP and OUTP instructions. The customized HAL simply refuses to do I/O to some "blacklisted" PCI slot numbers (0:0:1 and 0:0:2 to be exact). The rest of the OS interprets the results as "nothing to see there, let's move on". The video driver issue was solved by writing a video driver for the Xbox.

The biggest challenge for me when porting ReactOS to the Xbox was the boot loader. The OS itself was actually pretty easy. I think the same is true for getting Windows to run: if you get NTLDR to do it's job you're almost there.

I've probably left out lots of details, if you have questions please feel free to ask, I'll drop by every now and then (or you can email me: gvg@reactos.com). The source code for ReactOS is freely available, just remember that it's under the GPL, which means that if you use any part of it you must also publish your source code.

wow.... so reactOS is possibly another alternative... or at least using FreeLdr is...

Very well put GvG, this has been known amongst those involved in the project, but has not yet been voiced in the thread. Thank you for the post, it will definately be a help to those interested in the project. Our primary focus right now is Windows 98, the thought is that once we have a bios that will allow you to run one version, it won't be an overly huge task to make it compatible with other versions. Scan-C is taking on the project as a single developer for now as I have not heard anything back from anybody I have contacted about the project. People do not take it seriously because of all the effortless attempts to get Windows running. I am very interested in the project you have going on, perhaps you could start a thread about it as well and we can work together and help eachother along the way. Anyways, thank you again.
H8raid

GvG, can you join pretty please

or get ReactOS running really really good. i wouldn't mind using ReactOS, it looks good and will have an easy interface.

jimmsta: FreeLdr won't work for Win9x. It will probably also not work for WinNT since the parameters passed to the kernel are different between ReactOS and Windows.

h8raid: Sorry, didn't want to imply that this wasn't known, at least by the "inner crowd". It's just that I hadn't seen a list of items to be done.

total_ass: You guys have a nice challenging project going here. I love a good challenge but ReactOS is already providing that for me.

GvG how active is the xbox development for ReactOS?

I would really love to be able to use it on my xbox.

I don't want to hijack this thread, so I'll answer here

Good luck!

I hope that finally people will be able to run windows 98 especially on the xbox gaming console

hmm were abit in react os's shadow at the moment lol - u all seen the main page?

reactOS is just as good as windows from the info i've gathered. and it's a much more realistic goal.

but keep trying to get windows working!!!

nothing is impossible.

Let me be totally, absolutely, completely clear about this: at the moment, ReactOS is NOT as good as Windows. Now, ofcourse, we expect ReactOS to be BETTER than Windows in the future but count in years rather than months before we reach that goal.

this topic is now PINNED woo-hoo, thanks mods.

I think we should try to focus on Windows, not ReactOS (no offense GvG). I for one would prefer to eventually have Windows running natively on my box.

ReactOS only runs, you cannot do anything with it at the moment. It is going to be a long time before it is even functional. Our project on the other hand will work once it runs, thats the beauty of the way we are doing this. We are not in anybody's shadow, they took a different route, in fact their project is going to be much more difficult than ours and much more involved. We need to code a bios from scratch that will boot and install Windows, once that's done it is just like running Windows on your PC. By the way, whats the word Scan-C, haven't heard any new news in awhile.

yes that would be extremley cool.

I agree with you GvG. I think ReactOS is a great Windows Alternative, it just needs some time so that it can match windows performance while maintaining compatability with all windows software. Good Luck GvG, I can't wait to see how well this turns out.

reactos only runs win2k and up wont that take up a lot of resources? I wont be able to do much with only 64meg or even 128 on win2k

also when i installed quadro drivers for my geforce2 i changed the the video drivers id will this work on the xbox?

ENOUGH, this thread is not about ReactOS, if you want to start a fucking thread about that then start one and go there to chat about it, I am tired of seeing this subject in a thread about Windows running, we are running a project here! GvG I am not pointing any fingers so do not take offense to this I just want to put an end to the problem. This thread is getting way the hell off track and the conversations are somewhere in the middle of fucking nowhere!

any news???

ive been reading up on how windows works and boots, soon i should actually be able to help with this project lol.

umm.... any progress?

i dont know what anyone else is doing but im giving this a break for a few days, merry xmas to all.

Hi!

I hope that u guys will get windows 98 running on the xbox without any hardware modding needed!


Since the xbox does not have a floppy disk drive,how is it possible to boot from a non bootable windows 98 cd?


Good Luck and Merry CHritmas and a happy new year!

how about you read the thread they arent going to do 98 they want ot do XP Embedded which when set up properly is smaller than windows 95 and runs like XP.
you can make an embedded XP install with mobo drivers video and network thats under 100megs

im keeping the light of for these boys, hopin they come home soon with a butt kickin Embedded install.


oh fellas i talked to my buddy that program's Embedded installs, and he dont have and xbox and work has him pulling insane hours since he is the IT manager and the Develpment Dept Manager, so he wont be able to offer much help.

he keeps telling me though that its not as hard as you guys are making it, i sent him an xbe file just to look at and see what an xbe file does, and he didnt look at it immediately but he simply said that installing E,bedded is the simply stuff, just install what you need on a partition, or cdrom and run it from there. i kept telling him that the bios is blocking it cuz its not xbox code,
he said ther eis a way, its MS code there are holes all over in their code.

he keeps saying just create an embedded CD and run it.

meaning load the components of embedded you want, load the drivers for the xbox video audio and network and others, run the Embedded setup tool burn it to cd and run it. but again he's not understanding the xbox bios.

ill push him harder to grab a bios file and see what he can do.

so i apologize for not being able to get him to join up he's just to busy right now.

Hi there!

Windows 98 is the best option as it supports many programs and it has a very little system requirement.Lets focus on Windows 98 and not some other embedded os first. After that, we can work on the embedded os'es


Win 98 min requirements:

• A personal computer with a 486DX 66 megahertz (MHz) or faster processor (Pentium central processing unit recommended).
• 16 megabytes (MB) of memory (24 MB recommended).
• A full install of Windows 98 on a FAT16 drive requires 225 MB of free hard disk space, but may range from between 165 MB and 355 MB, depending on your computer configuration and that options that you choose to install.
• A full install of Windows 98 on a FAT32 drive requires 175 MB of free hard disk space, but may range from between 140 MB and 255 MB, depending on your computer configuration and the options that you choose to install.
• One 3.5-inch high-density floppy disk drive.
• VGA or higher resolution (16-bit or 24-bit color SVGA recommended).


Xbox specs:

An Intel Celeron (Coppermine) based processor clocked at 733 MHz
An nVIDIA NV2A graphics processor which in terms of its PC brethren lies somewhere between the GeForce 3 and 4 lines
64 MB of system RAM.
A DVD-ROM drive
An 8 or 10 GB hard disk
10/100 Ethernet.
Stripped down version of Windows 2000 kernel


So Windows 98 is perfect to run on the xbox.
But you need a bootable windows 98 cd as the xbox has no floppy drive.You can copy its contents to your pc harddrive and use nero or some other burning tool to burn the contents again as a bootable cd.
We also need to format the xbox fatx partition as fat32.
I hope all these will be possible without needing a modchip.
If the project is successful, then the xbox can be used as a websurfing pc!!

So GOOD LUCK and give your best shot!

UPDATE: Scan-C and I have both been having some family emergencies which has not left much time to work on the project, but it has not been abandoned. I have not been on this thread in awhile to see what's going on so I appologize for the delay. Anyways, that's the news, no breakthrough as of yet, hopefully things will start looking up and we will be able to get things rolling again. If anybody knows any programmers that could help out, please encourage them to check out the thread and we can get them up to speed on what is done.

@LESTAT, thank you for trying to get your buddy involved. Things are crazy everywhere right now so it's not surprising he has a lot to deal with. Once things calm down for him, talk to him again and make him sit down with you and show him on your box that we are not dealing with a "normal" system. There are securities in place which prohibit us from just installing embedded on the Xbox. Also, what we have been working on is a bios from scratch that will allow us to install whatever version of Windows we want. Basically, it is a PC bios for the Xbox to oversimplify what it is.

Regards,
H8raid

He may be good at what he does on PC but knows nothing about Xbox. A Xbox may looks very much like a PC(on spec) but it is not one, the closest analogy is a chimp and human being :-)

I agree that win 98 is a great os for the xbox, but why not concentrate on unsing 98 se or ME. I know 98 se is based on 98, and I am pretty sure that ME is too. In my opinion, 98 is not the most stable os, I would rather use a more recent os. Although, i believe that they are all unstable, but since 2k/XP are out of the question, why not just go ME?

Hi there again!
Windows Millenium is not a good choice as i've been using it for three years with so many problems.I had to format my hard drive and reinstall it almost every week.Sounds incredible but it is true.Windows 98se supports many programs and does not need so much ram but windows xp needs at least 128mb ram.So Win 2000 & Win 98se are the best choices

alot of people agree that 98 SE would be a fair choice, because it will run on 64 megs of ram and it will run good.

but its a troublesome OS. too many issues.
i said use 98 cuz we already have DOS or at least a dos emulator for the xbox so go further and load 98 into it.

but you have to understand that Windows XP EMbedded is in incredible operating system. i said it before and ill say it to you gentlemen again, XP Embedded is designed to run on flash rom chips ots designed ot run on VERY VERY wierd mchaines, like factory computers that have a few 8 meg rom chips in them, with hardware you will never find in a PC.
remember how linux can run off a floppy, using a very tiny linux kernel ? well think of a very similar thing using XP.

Windows XP also does not care about your BIOS. or your hardware the xbox bios is where the problem comes in. it does care what you try and run. if its not xbox code , it wont run it.

XP EMbedded will scream if they use it properly on 64 megs of ram.

let these fine gentlemen use their programming talents, they will get it running but it will take time.

The BIOS in Xbox is in fact some form of XP embedded, the only catch is it only runs games. With hacked BIOS or exploits, more interesting things can run, like XBMC.

So instead of spending effort on trying to run Windows on Xbox natively(almost impossible and of not much use even if it works due to the poor TV display), why not help out openxdk so that apps can be built with it and run natively on Xbox ?

I only mentioned ME, because you would think that MS made improvements before they made ME, i personally have no knowlege of ME. If ME is good, then I would rather take 98 SE than 98.

@LESTAT, we don't want to run Embedded, that could be a separate project, but it was mentioned before, we want to run a standard windows version, something that does not require above normal PC knowlege to run.

@Xbox2005, right now, the project does not have enough of a base to run 2k. Windows 2k and Windows XP have alot in common. If we were able to run 2k, then XP would be possible. In my opinion, 2k is better for the xbox than XP, but seeing that both are not possible, we should not worry about 2k right now.

Sorry about the double post, but I could not edit the previous post, anyways, it should say:

If ME is not good, then I would still rather take 98 SE than 98.

INstead of

If ME is good, then I would rather take 98 SE than 98.

Hi!

I think that you should work on windows 98 se.It can support 16bit and 32 bit programs and can run old dos games with no problems.It only needs very little ram so it would be a good choice.What actually is windows xp embedded?Does it need at least 128mb ram?Please tell me.If it is good,then i think you should also try to work on it too. Good luck anyway! Windows 98se is 45% better than windows millenium.I wouldnt recommend windows me!

xp embedded is the version of windows u find on pocket pcs. so no it doesnt quite need 128mb ram lol.

we are going for 98se.

Why? Why do I keep reading the same things about what version we need to start working with? Why? This has already been decided and does not need further discussion. If you are going to post in this thread please post something helpful or informative. No sense in flooding the thread with messages over something that has already been discussed and decided on. We are not the type of people that will renig on our final decisions. Once it is finalized and has been decided on, we stick to it unless WE find something unexpected that we cannot work around. The only way we will abandon our decision is if we encounter something that forces us to. Posts from people arguing back and forth when half of them clearly have no idea what our goals for the project are will not change our minds. Once again, please only post if you have something to contribute.

me is the most HALF BRED PIECE OF SHIT EVER

its unstable
it crashs alot
no major updatse to fix crashs
my pc died twice when i had winme (not able to boot into windows)

I got winxp and have never looked back.

IMO 2k is the best OS but quite expensive..

-BxN

I think that we all should donate to the tsunami victims and help them as they are suffering a lot.Im sorry for posting on this board but please help the 100,000+ victims and their families and others by donating clothes,food,money and other items.This is a good way to start the new year.

Happy New Year, guys.

yes, lets all hope its good one

Wrong.. XP doenst need atleast 128 to run...
I am currently on a PII400MHz with 96MB ram running Windows XP.

And in my opinion XPEmbedded would be the best system to get running.
As everyones said.. its designed to run on less than ideal systems.
Also, as far as 'not being good because youre output is to a TV' doesnt XP support out to TV and make the res. look better? I dont know.. I just thought I heard that somewhere.

I am also in agreement with just about everyone here.
95 - sooo outdated, no USB support
98 - see above
98se - better because of USB support but still old
ME - ew.. unstable, horrid idea by MS, just bad..
2000 - better choice than the above.. IMO resource hog..
XP - maybe a little less stable (in some cases) than 2k, but more 'old system' friendly

[Edit:] Oh and Happy New Year!

hmm h8raid, has scan-c got any further with the bios?

Alright, I have had it with these dumbasses in this thread. WE AREN'T DISCUSSING WHAT VERSION WE WILL BE WORKING WITH ANYMORE! What part of that do you not understand? It is really simple, we are no longer talking about it simple as that, no need to post useless shit that we will take on look and say, "Oh look, another dumbass posting about what we told them not to, skip it!" Thank you for your cooperation!
H8raid