Looking for more info on creating an Alpha XDK

There are two alpha XDKs out there. Like I said, Id be willing to share May 2001 at some point, but I have other fundraisers to finish.

May 2001:

 

I'm so in to contribute for a release of may 2001.

 

Borman, how much do you need for the others ? (Perfect dark and some XB1 right?)
I Google them and try to remember what I saw on OE website (I must have a backup of some images somewhere)
Ive got a cold and my GF got some leg(muscle) problems, which all dont help to do this awesome project. I hope and wish I can start somewhere this weekend.

 

Still 100 for MadeMan. Atreyu187 hasn't logged in 3 weeks so I hope he is okay. And 390$ on Perfect Dark, which I thought about lowering a little but only if things get going.

 

I'm still unable to get any video...just IP sitting on screen. I'm able to telnet to the pc and send some simple commands to communicate with XBDM (your ip on port 76. Recovery.exe seems to load in memory.

Does anyone know if any of the later xdks can compile code to run on the alphas? I'm guessing not but I really need more debug information at this point. Kernel debugging is only showing everything as healthy. I've tried 4 different video cards. I feel that the video mode is just not being set, as it never seems to attempt to do anything except display IP from xbdm on screen.

Any more suggestions are welcome ...

I hope you and your girlfriend feel better soon, CodeAsm

 

I dont think the later SDKs can. Microsoft did a decent job of sending out different software packages for the different sets. Even August 2001 where both Beta kits and Final kits were being used had separate sets of software.

 

Thanks Kl0wn, I hope she will.
Did you put the other firmware on the videocard? I think the Kernel wants to be able to call the right things to set it up.

anyway, here are some pictures of my parts. (untested so far)http://www.codeasm.com/xbox/images/alpha/
is your alpha booting without USB card? then I can test my parts easier

 

Yes, I've got the Alpha 2 firmware on the card (flashed with nvflash).

I do not get any extra errors booting without USB in it...so I'm not sure how much it matters.

 

USB is your control method, the onboard USB ports do not work for controllers.

 

I know borman, its just I dont have a usb card yet, so I want to test without (no controll I understand, no legacy support ;P)

 

Have spent about probably 20 hours stepping through boot process and still unable to see anything wrong. I don't think anything bad is being reported. Unfortunately none of the tools with later xdk's will connect to xbdm as they're too new. I'll have to try to modify them or write my own tools to try to get some better debug information.

I've made no progress yet this week. I'm not sure at this point how much more time/money I'll put into this project but I've got a few more things I'd like to try before taking a break.

I believe I've verified that the Recovery is not fully running as I'm unable to ever hit any of my breakpoints set in the debugger around the point where "Press any button on the controller to start recovery" text is shown. I can set breakpoints before this though, and they get triggered. I'll keep stepping through debugger and hopefully find something.

 

I had some trouble at school so maybe tommorrow ill finaly able to setup some parts. Can one see info on plain Serial? send commands by hand?

 

You need to connect with a null modem cable. I got one on Amazon for a few $$. I use the kernel debugger that comes with any xdk (and probably other microsoft sdks) to communicate with it. You may be able to use Putty to talk to it, I'm not sure.

FYI, the recovery launches the kernel with baud set to 115200. I had to set my kernel debugger to launch with -k baud=115200

 

thx, I have all kinds of Serial cables. will be fine. Thx for the baudspeed info and wich tool. just fixed school, so I should have some time to try.

 

Quick update.

I found an interesting area in the recovery while debugging which seems to show it failing during DirectX init but I've yet to find the cause. I feel I'm getting closer (maybe).

 

Missing sound card?

 

Well, I don't have a sound card, but I don't think that's the cause of it. This seems more like graphics. I'm not positive that a sound device is required but I've not confirmed this yet.

from recovery:

http://pastebin.com/K9nzgVHT

 

I feel like Old Engineer said that the sound card was required to boot at one point.

 

Interesting...I haven't seen that yet, though. I'll keep checking to see if I find it look for audio. Still need to find what model it used.

 

Well directx will cover graphics, sound and probably input. So missing sound card and USB is possible cause.