Vivendi was the parent company of Blizzard, which merged with Activision to become Activision Blizzard, which was recently bought by Microsoft. So they full circled xD
Former Xbox engineer here - though they probably won't come after you for the devkit, they could look up the tag and see who it was last assigned to, which in this case would probably be someone at Vivendi Universal, given the other sticker.
@@ErebuBat This late? I'm guessing practically non-existent. If a current generation devkit popped up online somewhere I imagine someone would check it out. I know that some prototypes/alpha kits would be requested back as soon as more production-ready models were widely available. The X1 alpha kits were also in these beastly 70lb. PC towers we had to have chained to our desks. No one was more grateful than I when they needed to be returned and we got "normal-sized" beta and production devkits instead.
Man I always geek out over dev kits. Back in the end of the PS2 lifecycle and early PS3 lifecycle I was working for Sony in their first party QA department, and I handled / used so many devkits and testkits there. It was actually so fun that on my lunch breaks or even after work I'd sit in my office plugging away at "homebrew" (would it even be homebrew at that point?) on the official sdk's. I could burn a few DVD/BD-R's and share it with the people working on whatever my project was at the time. I really miss those years.
I just remembered how this thing had screenshot functionality, and you could reboot other Xboxes on the network. I would mess with my art director by resetting his machine randomly, man I was real turd back in '01
i love imagining that. just, you rebooting the art director's xbox and then you hear em shout across the room "GOD DAMN IT THIS IS THE THIRD TIME THIS WEEK"
Such a beautiful piece of hardware. I’d like to think it influenced the crystal Xbox in some way. I just finished a softmod and HDD upgrade on an OG Xbox 1.6 that I picked up from a thrift store as “not working”, and as far as I can tell the only issue with it was that it didn’t have cables. A $10 set of cables and about $50 worth of other hardware and it’s quite the machine. I have a lot of respect for the community surrounding softmodding and the things you can do with the original Xbox these days.
Lucky. I grabbed a ps1 at a thrift store that said "not tested" on it and it was a fucking nightmare trying to get a game to boot. Two replacement disc drives and it still wouldn't read anything. Not even a normal CD.
Mine is 1.1, hardmodded with TSOP flash and with a 2TB SATA HDD + the optical disc drive still works just in case. Got 85% of the entire official library of the OG Xbox inside the hard drive, if you could have some extra hundred GBs (maybe 200-ish GB) on the HDD, you could actually have 100% inside.
Since I watched MVG's first big hit video (about soft modding an OG xbox) I've modded and sold/given away around 10 of these bad boys. It's been sweet.
I was buying xboxes for $10 each a few years ago and giving them away. Now there's a store near me giving $150 each for them. I could've made s killing if I'd known they'd be worth that much now.
Yeah I remember that post 911 propaganda about a hacked ps2 being powerful enough to launch a missile. When suddenly you couldn't find a codebreaker at gamestop because it was the most popular way of getting the M Brown exploit on the memory card. I had to sort mine out with a gameshark and a save converter iirc. Thank god for Free McBoot when it came along. Got into xbox late but it was still a struggle at first. JRocky is the goat though, although I still need to find an old enough usb stick. My current setup uses my modded psp to hold the xbox exploit on a 1gb pro duo. It's no pretty but it works.
One strange and rather counter-intuitive thing is that there was no hardware difference between the "Prototype" DVT-4s and the "Final" ones. They were imported as "prototypes" because the FCC testing wasn't complete and they didn't have an FCC ID - and you can't import stuff into the US for sale or lease unless it has FCC approval. So they were all bought in as prototypes and were technically considered to be "on loan" (which is also why so many of them have those "MS property" stickers on them - that way they never technically left the control of Microsoft). Some time later, the DVT-4 did pass FCC testing and had an FCC ID assigned - but it turned out that the original design was compliant anyway. Since pulling back all the "prototype" boxes and replacing them with ones that were exactly the same except for a sticker was clearly stupid they didn't do that and just left them out in the field. I was told by one of the guys working on the hardware that there are actually rather more "Prototype" DVT-4s out there than "Final" ones, at least in the US.
intresting :D these prototype DVT4 dont differ much from the final DVT4, but the DVT3 differed more, besides different casing, the MCP X was older. Or maybe even newer DVT4 had different PCB designs in a way? hmm
I have a DVT-4. Mine has the USB port portion of the case, essentially, "broken" out. Like, someone took a sawzall and just chiseled out some of the case. Mine also had a completely (even to this day) unknown game on it called "Invasion Hostile Intent". I've asked some of the big people in this scene on Twitter (MVG, Borman, etc.) and they never heard of it. It's not really a game, just a menu front end, but it looked like some type of Counter Strike knockoff. Getting into one of these kits is a hassle, at least for me. I have to remove the expansion card screw mounts (on the cards) because the case actually sits between them and can't be lifted up, like a usual Xbox console case. When I got my DVT-4, the first thing I did was figure out how to open it, and then busted the clock capacitor right out of there.
@@algamer6176 I backed it up myself (with a few extra copies), but again, it's NOT a game. It's barely event a front end, it's just a camera kind of flying around a generic suburban house environment with a menu that doesn't really do anything.
I’ve fond memories back in the day of upgrading standard xboxes to have 4 extra memory chips to take them from 32MB to 64MB…that made XBMC work better and did seem to give improvements on some games at the time. I think dev kit xboxes we’re all 64MB or more with all chips populated and there was an xecutor chip that could enable dev mode
I had one of these. It was great. Incredibly robust, deploy code via network, effortless, really. I had to switch to PS2 for the next project and I wanted to die.
Another reason they had to be really sure before they sent the gold image, back then console games couldn't be patched easily, so they had to get all the bugs out first. Not like today with 'day 1' patches :(
No Day 1 patches, no lying to a game community about whats in the game and having to patch a game multiple times later to still be incomplete (Looking at you CDPR). What I wouldnt give to go back to a time where games were playable on release and EA wasnt a complete wreck of a sports game company
The original Quake had a day one patch that the instruction manual told you to download before playing the game. Numerous first party Nintendo games underwent multiple ROM/ISO revisions. Stop pretending to know what you're talking about.
That was really nice and informative. I given an original Xbox Development Kit some years back (plus one for the 360) and apart from a visual inspection it had to be put away due to family obligations. Allegedly it has an early version of Perfect Dark on it so I really must get around to digging it out.
Fortunately, that kind of thing just isn't worth the effort. It's of no value to them. I'm legitimately kind of surprised, though, that Nintendo doesn't give everyone with a Dolphin or Revolution devkit a copyright strike and serve them a legal notice.
Yeah. I built my career on the Microsoft stack. When I work in other ecosystems I get really frustrated. Their development tools are decades behind Microsoft's. I really wish we had a technology like WPF that works on qt or GTK for example. Of course, half of what made WPF so great was Blend; so, we'd need something like that too.
Just the other day I bust my Dev kit by accident, had it from another life in a different career. Mod chipped it myself purely so I could get a VGA bios on it as picture is so much better via a CRT monitor. Anyway used same VGA 128mb bios as a normal v1.0 Xbox honestly thought there wouldn't be an issue but bricked it hard. Oh well I shall perceiver and not accept defeat.
They have a different MCPX chip from the retail boxes, so the boot ROM encryption is different. If it's actually a modchip then just removing or disabling it will let the system boot from the on-board flash that should have the dev boot ROM still in it. If you reflashed the TSOP (which is possible without hardware modification on a dev or debug kit) then it's a bit more difficult - the easiest way to recover it is to unsolder the chip and reflash it using an external programmer. You can use a modchip flashed with an original debug boot ROM, but you will have to flash it in a retail unit (which will apparently brick) then transfer it to the debug. This also breaks the recovery disc functionality, which is why reflashing the on-board chip is better.
When I worked at redstorm we moved buildings and I was able to get a dreamcast and n64 for free that was used to play test back in the day. All of their consoles and dev kits that had a hard drive got destroyed. My heart hurt so much.
This was really interesting. The original xbox is among my all time favourite consoles due to how versatile it is in terms of modding and upgrading, as well as the huge community behind such things. The xbox will always have a place in my TV stand.
You noted that a DevKit BIOS can be put on a retail unit, does the opposite work? Would a DevKit work with a retail BIOS, and would it utilize the full 128MB RAM?
No, it doesn't work and in fact will brick the unit. The two machines have different southbridge chips (devkit = MCPX2, retail = MCPX3) and the retail version has an embedded boot ROM that will attempt to decrypt the boot code with the wrong key, which just results in a very hard crash. The only way to fully recover the unit after this involves desoldering the TSOP on the motherboard and reflashing it. You can also use a (512kB+) LPC modchip with the debug kit ROM on it and that will allow you to boot, but since you are no longer running from the on-board TSOP the recovery disc won't work properly. You also lose the serial port because the modchip has to remain connected to the LPC header. Note that booting from LPC and then disconnecting it and trying to reflash won't work because once the on-board TSOP is paged out the only way to bring it back seems to be a power cycle.
Sega chihiro dev kit is different as far as I know. The USB port is input not output and part of the IDE emulation card. The IDE emulation card is (or was) an off the shelf part, not made by MS. Soo they might of thought it would be useful but as far as I know it's only USB 1 or 1.1 so the IDE cable is wayyyy faster. and failing that moving things via ftp is faster then sticking isos onto an old FAT usb drive.
The DVT3 or older, I think older, a pretty rare mobo pics where shared a few years back showed a (for then) unkown 4 pin socket at the back of the xbox board, seemingly to connect to this usb port (same socket). Upon further research, we (the community) think it might have been connected to the MCPX extra USB host port, the 5th (or 6th) usb host port. the first 4 for the controllers, the others disabled or never connected to the BGA balls anymore (not sure bout this part, but for sure the pins arent routed out to the back anymore). The MCPX datasheet will tell you the USB host pin locations. might have been used for a usb keyboard (which MS clearly communicated to not use for retail games (yeah, until Phantasy Star Online ?!) The Chihiro might have used the same connector for some custom FPGA mediaboard adapter during development, i mean, between Type 1 and xbox developement they miught have briefly used it for JVS, cause of this rumor? That early board im talking bout also has a black connector between the CPU and Fan, it was probably Jtag, which is disabled in DVT4 and retail. (the jtag is disabled by connecting 1 pin of the cpu to ground)
I really want to write some cool homebrew games but most of the time I just have to use c or c++ and I really find these languages difficult, though I have a lot of experience in C#, python, js and assembly
still hoping I might own one of these some day and make a cool video game for it. closest I have come is a retail xbox modded with 128MB RAM but no debug bios flashed yet.
4:25 so the kernel debugger that would only connect via RS232 is something that could not be connected to an Xbox debugging kit? (4:40) Great design Microsoft...
The DVD debug connector looks like external SCSI 68 connector, the PCI adapter looks like a IDE to SCSI card or smth very similar. It has the Sil IDE logic and what looks like a sanded down Adaptec SCSI controller.
Ok..the more i look at that Raptor card the more it looks like a mini PC card. It probably has a 486 or P1 core in that custom ASIC with external L2 cache chips + ram chips above those, a south-bridge, bios and IDE + SCSI controller chips. Would love to see that intel Flash chip dumped.
Early DVT4's said FINAL to identify them from BETA-1C DVT3's. This DVT4 is from the 2nd half of 2002 so it's clearly using final hardware. The prototype stickers are only used to bypass FCC type stickers I'd assume.
MVG: please don't come after my dev kit. Microsoft: that sounds like a challenge. Seriously though, I'm pretty sure Microsoft has more things to be concerned about than an unaccounted for dev kit from 2 decades ago.
Seeing this makes me so sad I sold my crystal Xbox. I've got a softmodded OG Xbox, but oh how I wish I could get a cheap real crystal xbox shell to swap.
Hey I’m VG are you making one of these on the PS3 tool that you have as well? I would absolutely love to see it because I have two PS3 test kits and I can’t find the software that I run on the PC to put code on the test kits when they’re in debug mode. Thanks! PS. Love the video looking forward to the Xbox 360 dev kit video as well!
I was under assumption that large silver PC tower with the XBOX name on it would be fake or something. Nice to hear it's actually real and one of the earlier devkits.
MVG I tried to message you, I found a guy on a fb group that wanted to sell that PC style dev kit. I told him to tweet you, then I tried tweeting you, not sure if you saw or not but I figured you'd want it
I can see why people would want those tower prototypes. They look cool af! Did the xbox use PCIe? (or do you mean, the release version has hidden internal pci vs an exposed bus on the tower?) It's a single core Pentium III running scuffed NT5 right? (I never owned an Xbox of any generation and most of my friends were Sony or Nintendo loyalists... I vaguely remember somebody I knew owning some kind of XBox and being impressed with its video capabilities. but that could have been a 360.)
Great video love seeing these sorts of things. Also could you port doom to Skycoin's CX programing language, its based off golang but would love to see you have a go at that.
Microsoft has done a pretty good job with X360, X One, X Series consoles except for a few embarassing hiccups, but the original Xbox was and still is really amazing. Everything from the opening logo, to the design and quality of the console and even the amazing out of the box smell of the controllers. The og Xbox is close to my heart but i don't have any attachment to a Windows 11 style interface on the Series X,
Wish I took one of every dev kit left EA back in 2008. They threw them all away anyway! I did get loads of pc hardware tho. Oh they closed down Parklands so they sent everything to the dump. Sad end to a fun time. Ea 2004 to 2008 was a great time.
It's really weird how in that old video, younger/balder/no-beard MVG looks like Brian Altano when he was mid-transformation from big Brap to little Brap.
Hey MVG - not sure - would you cover the recent gran turismo 7 update and how players then ended up using scripts and remote play on pc to start grinding credits in a full 100% auto mode? I never heard of such a thing before - and is quite a funny payback from player base
Mvg I believe I found development files for fast and furious showdown can you please reply if you would be interested in taking a look and possibly seeing if you could recreate a build with them the original build was 1.65gb and it also has a visual studio solution file in the directory please leave contact info thanks
Hello there, I have one of these I want to open but I am having a hard time getting it to open, I have taken the 6 screws off the bottom but still I cant take the top off.
Man I usually love your vids but this video was pretty weak. Besides the ports in the back I feel like I could find most the I go presented here on a Wikipedia page.
Vivendi was the parent company of Blizzard, which merged with Activision to become Activision Blizzard, which was recently bought by Microsoft. So they full circled xD
Some things will always find itself back.. Look at Nintendo with Banjo.. In Due Time what was once will always be again..
@@kenrickeason Banjo will stay with Microsoft, they're just nice enough to allow it on Nintendo's platform
Vivendi Games
Illuminati is behind this, I am sure
@@Sean-D78 Nice enough = profitable enough
Former Xbox engineer here - though they probably won't come after you for the devkit, they could look up the tag and see who it was last assigned to, which in this case would probably be someone at Vivendi Universal, given the other sticker.
What is the risk of them doing that?
@@ErebuBat the last person assigned is responsible for it not being returned to m$.
Side note: Noice Surname
You must be fun at parties.
@@BurnMoneyBeats right…. But what is the r consequences for that, especially for a defunct studio?
@@ErebuBat This late? I'm guessing practically non-existent. If a current generation devkit popped up online somewhere I imagine someone would check it out. I know that some prototypes/alpha kits would be requested back as soon as more production-ready models were widely available. The X1 alpha kits were also in these beastly 70lb. PC towers we had to have chained to our desks. No one was more grateful than I when they needed to be returned and we got "normal-sized" beta and production devkits instead.
Man I always geek out over dev kits. Back in the end of the PS2 lifecycle and early PS3 lifecycle I was working for Sony in their first party QA department, and I handled / used so many devkits and testkits there. It was actually so fun that on my lunch breaks or even after work I'd sit in my office plugging away at "homebrew" (would it even be homebrew at that point?) on the official sdk's. I could burn a few DVD/BD-R's and share it with the people working on whatever my project was at the time. I really miss those years.
"(would it even be homebrew at that point?)" Now you're getting really deep and philosophical.
Office brew maybe
Hi, do you have any DVD files from then left ? Interested
That's really cool!! Do you have any good stories of one time you went to do that or no? That's still great anyway!
Upload some of those projects if you still have them.
I just remembered how this thing had screenshot functionality, and you could reboot other Xboxes on the network. I would mess with my art director by resetting his machine randomly, man I was real turd back in '01
For what developer, if you don’t mind me asking?
@@Gold171 you are allowed to confess a sin, not a sinner heh
I love it lol
i love imagining that. just, you rebooting the art director's xbox and then you hear em shout across the room "GOD DAMN IT THIS IS THE THIRD TIME THIS WEEK"
That is one SEXY OG Xbox 😍
Cereal port would have came in handy for the devs working an early shift
Yeah breakfast is important
or *kernel* debugging. oh wait is that popcorn?
Rofl
Such a beautiful piece of hardware. I’d like to think it influenced the crystal Xbox in some way. I just finished a softmod and HDD upgrade on an OG Xbox 1.6 that I picked up from a thrift store as “not working”, and as far as I can tell the only issue with it was that it didn’t have cables. A $10 set of cables and about $50 worth of other hardware and it’s quite the machine. I have a lot of respect for the community surrounding softmodding and the things you can do with the original Xbox these days.
try hardware mods! The xbox HD+ kit is awesome
Lucky. I grabbed a ps1 at a thrift store that said "not tested" on it and it was a fucking nightmare trying to get a game to boot. Two replacement disc drives and it still wouldn't read anything. Not even a normal CD.
Mine is 1.1, hardmodded with TSOP flash and with a 2TB SATA HDD + the optical disc drive still works just in case.
Got 85% of the entire official library of the OG Xbox inside the hard drive, if you could have some extra hundred GBs (maybe 200-ish GB) on the HDD, you could actually have 100% inside.
@@Manic_Panic 85% is all you need. Can I get a link to the game files?
@@PneumaticFrog Just search for "The Unofficial Redump Hoard".
Damn transparent consoles are beautiful
It is and i love the green Xbox badge on top rather than the clear one
I can't wait for the 360 episode! I'm sure it's going to be pretty interesting just like this one
I bet too
Since I watched MVG's first big hit video (about soft modding an OG xbox) I've modded and sold/given away around 10 of these bad boys. It's been sweet.
I was buying xboxes for $10 each a few years ago and giving them away. Now there's a store near me giving $150 each for them. I could've made s killing if I'd known they'd be worth that much now.
@@jeffnickels6199 would they have bought them as modded? Some places here would not touch modded hardware for purchase.
Yeah I remember that post 911 propaganda about a hacked ps2 being powerful enough to launch a missile. When suddenly you couldn't find a codebreaker at gamestop because it was the most popular way of getting the M Brown exploit on the memory card.
I had to sort mine out with a gameshark and a save converter iirc.
Thank god for Free McBoot when it came along.
Got into xbox late but it was still a struggle at first. JRocky is the goat though, although I still need to find an old enough usb stick. My current setup uses my modded psp to hold the xbox exploit on a 1gb pro duo. It's no pretty but it works.
Thanks for showing !
I have never seen this kind of an Xbox Classic before 👍
One strange and rather counter-intuitive thing is that there was no hardware difference between the "Prototype" DVT-4s and the "Final" ones. They were imported as "prototypes" because the FCC testing wasn't complete and they didn't have an FCC ID - and you can't import stuff into the US for sale or lease unless it has FCC approval. So they were all bought in as prototypes and were technically considered to be "on loan" (which is also why so many of them have those "MS property" stickers on them - that way they never technically left the control of Microsoft).
Some time later, the DVT-4 did pass FCC testing and had an FCC ID assigned - but it turned out that the original design was compliant anyway. Since pulling back all the "prototype" boxes and replacing them with ones that were exactly the same except for a sticker was clearly stupid they didn't do that and just left them out in the field.
I was told by one of the guys working on the hardware that there are actually rather more "Prototype" DVT-4s out there than "Final" ones, at least in the US.
intresting :D
these prototype DVT4 dont differ much from the final DVT4, but the DVT3 differed more, besides different casing, the MCP X was older. Or maybe even newer DVT4 had different PCB designs in a way? hmm
I have a DVT-4. Mine has the USB port portion of the case, essentially, "broken" out. Like, someone took a sawzall and just chiseled out some of the case. Mine also had a completely (even to this day) unknown game on it called "Invasion Hostile Intent". I've asked some of the big people in this scene on Twitter (MVG, Borman, etc.) and they never heard of it. It's not really a game, just a menu front end, but it looked like some type of Counter Strike knockoff.
Getting into one of these kits is a hassle, at least for me. I have to remove the expansion card screw mounts (on the cards) because the case actually sits between them and can't be lifted up, like a usual Xbox console case. When I got my DVT-4, the first thing I did was figure out how to open it, and then busted the clock capacitor right out of there.
has the game been dumped?
Please Dump the game bro
@@algamer6176 I backed it up myself (with a few extra copies), but again, it's NOT a game. It's barely event a front end, it's just a camera kind of flying around a generic suburban house environment with a menu that doesn't really do anything.
@@Allerka Still can you at least upload it to the internet archive
MVG telling Microsoft to leave him and his old dev kit alone made me think of a dog hungry for it's owners lunch 🤣
"No, go away. Shoo"
I’ve fond memories back in the day of upgrading standard xboxes to have 4 extra memory chips to take them from 32MB to 64MB…that made XBMC work better and did seem to give improvements on some games at the time.
I think dev kit xboxes we’re all 64MB or more with all chips populated and there was an xecutor chip that could enable dev mode
Edit - was adding 64Meg more memory!, fun, hand soldering 100 pin TQSP chips with chipquic and 'drag soldering'
If you had the soldering skills you could add extra RAM to a regular Xbox, the extra RAM could be used by some homebrew software.
@@blahdelablah Why should i do this if i can just download more ram?
@@chrisakaschulbus4903 You going to download a car next?
@@blahdelablah Do i need a loaders license to download the car?
i'm so sorry...
Understandable, have a nice day.
You too! Thank you for your open-mindedness.
I had one of these. It was great. Incredibly robust, deploy code via network, effortless, really. I had to switch to PS2 for the next project and I wanted to die.
What games did you work on? If you csn/want to share of course
huh? the ps2 tool had network deploy
Another reason they had to be really sure before they sent the gold image, back then console games couldn't be patched easily, so they had to get all the bugs out first.
Not like today with 'day 1' patches :(
Ugh I miss the old days
No Day 1 patches, no lying to a game community about whats in the game and having to patch a game multiple times later to still be incomplete (Looking at you CDPR). What I wouldnt give to go back to a time where games were playable on release and EA wasnt a complete wreck of a sports game company
The original Quake had a day one patch that the instruction manual told you to download before playing the game.
Numerous first party Nintendo games underwent multiple ROM/ISO revisions. Stop pretending to know what you're talking about.
That was really nice and informative.
I given an original Xbox Development Kit some years back (plus one for the 360) and apart from a visual inspection it had to be put away due to family obligations.
Allegedly it has an early version of Perfect Dark on it so I really must get around to digging it out.
dump that drive and make it public if you haven't already.
Man I miss the early 2000s when translucent plastic cases were trendy. From Game Boys, PS2 controllers, Digivice etc.
Then clear windows and RGB LEDs became trendy on PCs...we, as a species, seem to love watching lights change.
Imagine Xbox actually comments here and says: 'You son of gun, give my property back!'
Fortunately, that kind of thing just isn't worth the effort. It's of no value to them.
I'm legitimately kind of surprised, though, that Nintendo doesn't give everyone with a Dolphin or Revolution devkit a copyright strike and serve them a legal notice.
Ah damn. I didn't send this one ;)
Seems like the toolchain was remarkably well-rounded. Impressive stuff.
Yeah. I built my career on the Microsoft stack. When I work in other ecosystems I get really frustrated. Their development tools are decades behind Microsoft's. I really wish we had a technology like WPF that works on qt or GTK for example. Of course, half of what made WPF so great was Blend; so, we'd need something like that too.
Just the other day I bust my Dev kit by accident, had it from another life in a different career.
Mod chipped it myself purely so I could get a VGA bios on it as picture is so much better via a CRT monitor.
Anyway used same VGA 128mb bios as a normal v1.0 Xbox honestly thought there wouldn't be an issue but bricked it hard.
Oh well I shall perceiver and not accept defeat.
They have a different MCPX chip from the retail boxes, so the boot ROM encryption is different. If it's actually a modchip then just removing or disabling it will let the system boot from the on-board flash that should have the dev boot ROM still in it.
If you reflashed the TSOP (which is possible without hardware modification on a dev or debug kit) then it's a bit more difficult - the easiest way to recover it is to unsolder the chip and reflash it using an external programmer. You can use a modchip flashed with an original debug boot ROM, but you will have to flash it in a retail unit (which will apparently brick) then transfer it to the debug. This also breaks the recovery disc functionality, which is why reflashing the on-board chip is better.
Beautiful styling for a dev kit. 💯
If your "how the graphics work" videos are my favorite, these dev kit videos are my close second favorite. Keep up the excellent content :)
When I worked at redstorm we moved buildings and I was able to get a dreamcast and n64 for free that was used to play test back in the day. All of their consoles and dev kits that had a hard drive got destroyed. My heart hurt so much.
can you do an updated video on converting a retail xbox to debug ? I could never get it to work with your last video.
This was really interesting. The original xbox is among my all time favourite consoles due to how versatile it is in terms of modding and upgrading, as well as the huge community behind such things. The xbox will always have a place in my TV stand.
You noted that a DevKit BIOS can be put on a retail unit, does the opposite work? Would a DevKit work with a retail BIOS, and would it utilize the full 128MB RAM?
While I can't answer if a retail BIOS would work on a devkit, I can say for sure the retail BIOS would not recognize the extra RAM.
No, it doesn't work and in fact will brick the unit. The two machines have different southbridge chips (devkit = MCPX2, retail = MCPX3) and the retail version has an embedded boot ROM that will attempt to decrypt the boot code with the wrong key, which just results in a very hard crash. The only way to fully recover the unit after this involves desoldering the TSOP on the motherboard and reflashing it. You can also use a (512kB+) LPC modchip with the debug kit ROM on it and that will allow you to boot, but since you are no longer running from the on-board TSOP the recovery disc won't work properly. You also lose the serial port because the modchip has to remain connected to the LPC header.
Note that booting from LPC and then disconnecting it and trying to reflash won't work because once the on-board TSOP is paged out the only way to bring it back seems to be a power cycle.
Sega chihiro dev kit is different as far as I know. The USB port is input not output and part of the IDE emulation card.
The IDE emulation card is (or was) an off the shelf part, not made by MS. Soo they might of thought it would be useful but as far as I know it's only USB 1 or 1.1 so the IDE cable is wayyyy faster.
and failing that moving things via ftp is faster then sticking isos onto an old FAT usb drive.
The DVT3 or older, I think older, a pretty rare mobo pics where shared a few years back showed a (for then) unkown 4 pin socket at the back of the xbox board, seemingly to connect to this usb port (same socket).
Upon further research, we (the community) think it might have been connected to the MCPX extra USB host port, the 5th (or 6th) usb host port. the first 4 for the controllers, the others disabled or never connected to the BGA balls anymore (not sure bout this part, but for sure the pins arent routed out to the back anymore).
The MCPX datasheet will tell you the USB host pin locations. might have been used for a usb keyboard (which MS clearly communicated to not use for retail games (yeah, until Phantasy Star Online ?!)
The Chihiro might have used the same connector for some custom FPGA mediaboard adapter during development, i mean, between Type 1 and xbox developement they miught have briefly used it for JVS, cause of this rumor?
That early board im talking bout also has a black connector between the CPU and Fan, it was probably Jtag, which is disabled in DVT4 and retail. (the jtag is disabled by connecting 1 pin of the cpu to ground)
Great episode just a bit too short would be nice if you showed some examples of you coding and operating it
He has done that in the past.
Head of Xbox knocks on MVG's door: "Mistakes were made"
Nobody can Fade Original Xbox That's real
Did anyone else notice Xbox 360 and GFWL has been down since this weekend?
I think it would be a cool idea for a video to show us the developement process hooking up the dev kit to visual studio
I really want to write some cool homebrew games but most of the time I just have to use c or c++ and I really find these languages difficult, though I have a lot of experience in C#, python, js and assembly
God knows how much I envy you everytime you show those devkits.
Lol, the "MS Equipment" sticker is still used today, my work laptop has a similar one.
still hoping I might own one of these some day and make a cool video game for it. closest I have come is a retail xbox modded with 128MB RAM but no debug bios flashed yet.
Have you looked into homebrew options?
I'd like to think that your exact system was used to develop the Xbox version of Crash Twinsanity, with it being from Vivendi Universal.
These red blinking screen when booting is from this game console or the monitor?
MORE chihiro games with this dev kit?
Microsoft: "That's a nice devkit you got there. It would be a shame... if something happened to it..."
Great vid! How come dev kits would have double the memory? (9:00) as in, wouldn't you want to know how it runs on the finished console?
I would assume because some memory would be required for the debugger
4:25 so the kernel debugger that would only connect via RS232 is something that could not be connected to an Xbox debugging kit? (4:40)
Great design Microsoft...
7:05 If a developer tries to claim their property, just tell them no.
2:00 Tell them about the redditor who gutted one just to make a gaming rig.
The DVD debug connector looks like external SCSI 68 connector, the PCI adapter looks like a IDE to SCSI card or smth very similar. It has the Sil IDE logic and what looks like a sanded down Adaptec SCSI controller.
Ok..the more i look at that Raptor card the more it looks like a mini PC card. It probably has a 486 or P1 core in that custom ASIC with external L2 cache chips + ram chips above those, a south-bridge, bios and IDE + SCSI controller chips. Would love to see that intel Flash chip dumped.
I wonder if this is how developer mode starting from the Xbox 360 came to be since dev kits are similar to retail consoles
starting from the Xbox One
My uncle works in Microsoft and says that you can keep the Dev Kit.
My uncle is a lawyer and says that MVG is breaking several laws.
My uncle owns a Nintendo and said "why are you asking me about Xbox?"
I wish i was a programmer back then. Theese days it feels… idk it just feels
Any plans to do a video around the ps2 TEST hardware? I've got one laying about but I don't know diddly about it
Test is the debug kit. TOOL is the development kit.
th-cam.com/video/hYjcwZA3XWs/w-d-xo.html
I wish i knew how to code games. I have so many great ideas for new games
I have my original xbox right next to my keyboard on my gaming desk loaded with 2tb and ready to go at all times.
Early DVT4's said FINAL to identify them from BETA-1C DVT3's. This DVT4 is from the 2nd half of 2002 so it's clearly using final hardware. The prototype stickers are only used to bypass FCC type stickers I'd assume.
best reply :D details and knowledge. How many DVT3 iterations are you aware of ?
MVG: please don't come after my dev kit.
Microsoft: that sounds like a challenge.
Seriously though, I'm pretty sure Microsoft has more things to be concerned about than an unaccounted for dev kit from 2 decades ago.
Seeing this makes me so sad I sold my crystal Xbox. I've got a softmodded OG Xbox, but oh how I wish I could get a cheap real crystal xbox shell to swap.
Hey I’m VG are you making one of these on the PS3 tool that you have as well? I would absolutely love to see it because I have two PS3 test kits and I can’t find the software that I run on the PC to put code on the test kits when they’re in debug mode. Thanks!
PS. Love the video looking forward to the Xbox 360 dev kit video as well!
I was under assumption that large silver PC tower with the XBOX name on it would be fake or something.
Nice to hear it's actually real and one of the earlier devkits.
MVG I tried to message you, I found a guy on a fb group that wanted to sell that PC style dev kit. I told him to tweet you, then I tried tweeting you, not sure if you saw or not but I figured you'd want it
I have a modded OG Xbox where I got a dev kit mobo with the 128mb RAM and it seriously helped out when using things like XBMC!
Always enjoy these fascinating videos of the systems and developing for them. Please keep bringing them on.
It's not a USB port for JVS. It looks the same but the wiring is different. It's actually RS485.
Is the brighter green jewel special for any reason? I used to have one, but sold it long ago.
I can see why people would want those tower prototypes. They look cool af! Did the xbox use PCIe? (or do you mean, the release version has hidden internal pci vs an exposed bus on the tower?) It's a single core Pentium III running scuffed NT5 right? (I never owned an Xbox of any generation and most of my friends were Sony or Nintendo loyalists... I vaguely remember somebody I knew owning some kind of XBox and being impressed with its video capabilities. but that could have been a 360.)
Great video love seeing these sorts of things. Also could you port doom to Skycoin's CX programing language, its based off golang but would love to see you have a go at that.
Microsoft has done a pretty good job with X360, X One, X Series consoles except for a few embarassing hiccups, but the original Xbox was and still is really amazing. Everything from the opening logo, to the design and quality of the console and even the amazing out of the box smell of the controllers.
The og Xbox is close to my heart but i don't have any attachment to a Windows 11 style interface on the Series X,
Wish I took one of every dev kit left EA back in 2008. They threw them all away anyway! I did get loads of pc hardware tho. Oh they closed down Parklands so they sent everything to the dump. Sad end to a fun time. Ea 2004 to 2008 was a great time.
I would absolutely love to own one of these.
And i would absolutely love to own you ;)
@@chrisakaschulbus4903 Daddy? Sorry, I mean sir?
@@carnavs "Daddy" not during business hours. Sir or mister is ok.
It's really weird how in that old video, younger/balder/no-beard MVG looks like Brian Altano when he was mid-transformation from big Brap to little Brap.
I seemingly can't find any videos of the Alpha Tower XDKs that are newer than 10 years ago. Did _NONE_ of the darned things get properly preserved?
Hey MVG - not sure - would you cover the recent gran turismo 7 update and how players then ended up using scripts and remote play on pc to start grinding credits in a full 100% auto mode? I never heard of such a thing before - and is quite a funny payback from player base
Who got this Development Kit, who can copy the old game to continued its life
I really enjoy these videos showing us dev kits and what not.
Gamers Nexus did a teardown of the Xbox Series X dev kit recently but it was unfortunately banned by Microsoft. Maybe you could help him out?
i still think the OG Xbox is the most beautiful Xbox MS ever made
for Playstation the most beautiful is the PS4 Pro PS5 is just ugly as shit
when i worked at 343 we recycled 100's of those that were in storage :(
Mvg I believe I found development files for fast and furious showdown can you please reply if you would be interested in taking a look and possibly seeing if you could recreate a build with them the original build was 1.65gb and it also has a visual studio solution file in the directory please leave contact info thanks
RS232... Back in the day... how I feel with a serial to usb in my backpack👴
Uhm... I have a modded ps3 with the xbox original start up sound... I was in sync with the xbox boot screen...
I still break out my xbox now and again to play DeusEx invisible war, time splitters 2 and OG Sims
Do you remove the clock cap? An opened Xbox is obviously worth less, but a dead xbox is probably worth even less?
What is the outro music?
Microsoft Ninjas after they confiscate MVG’s Dev Kit: “Mistakes Were Made”
Hello there, I have one of these I want to open but I am having a hard time getting it to open, I have taken the 6 screws off the bottom but still I cant take the top off.
Man I usually love your vids but this video was pretty weak. Besides the ports in the back I feel like I could find most the I go presented here on a Wikipedia page.
You should be fine, you have worked with them and you are well known. I put pics of mine in Instagram a couple years ago and nothing happened lol.
RIP the kid who did modify that alpha xbox to reuse as normal PC case and wiping hard drive.
damn, that 1280x720 launcher resolution is totally gangster
The port used for kernel debugging was not included in the debugging model? That's annoying
Hi MVG, could you do an episode where you go more indepth about the Chihiro hardware, like you did on the sega naomi?
Someone get on making an OG Xbox Emulator.. Need it for my Switch..
Probably still in their asset manager. I'm guessing the status is "Lost" or "Awaiting Return" or something.
Point of this video? Oh, I have run out of ideas but still want to make money.... Gotcha.
If someone were interested in an entry-level dev job, what is the best programming language to learn/master first?
Assemblergames used to be the place to get Dev kits, sold a few on there in the 360 days.
These dev kits are so interesting to me, i learn alot of from your channel!
This came from a former french company, which had Universal and Blizzard
You have giant hands apparently. I used a dolly to transport my Xbox.