Blade dash was great - really fast navigating with the 360 controller. Always missed it after NXE and Metro UI It's a rare sight these days! Looks like updates have been routinely archived here
Wow eviltaco64 nice find ) looks like you don't have to own a jtag to install older updates? Always thought you can't downgrade a firmware without modding
No, you can't downgrade even with modding (well you can with hacking but it's well... hacky...). The CPU on XBOX360 consoles are reconfigured every update and that causes it to refuse running earlier versions of the system.
Metro UI on the Xbox 360 was fucking awful. The day that was pushed was the day that the 360 died for me.
Even with RGH/JTAG mods? It seems to be all you're really doing is moving over key pieces of info and building a new file to write to the onboard flash. Unless it autoconfigures on first boot.
You can in principle run anything you like on a JTAG/RGH box - the basic purpose of the hack is to trick the machine into running the old (now blacklisted) hypervisor that has the privilege escalation bug in it - and once that's running you can take complete control of the machine. The thing is that the dash and the rest of the system software are built together, so running an old dash forces you to run an old system version, which leaves you unable to run most games because they are using calls that are not supported in the old firmware. The main restriction is that you have to run the low-level boot components that match whatever version you upgraded the console to using official upgrades - because those will burn the efuses in the CPU and the older boot components won't run if the number of fuses burnt doesn't match what the code is expecting.
JTAG hack was a mean of reviving a 2006 exploit which used a hypervisor programming mistake on dashboard version 4532 (A 64bit value in a syscall is dealt with as if it was 32bit value by the security. This exploit was known as the "King Kong exploit" at the time and was used mostly to boot linux) where a GPU shadder could be used to overwrite hypervisor memory and escalate execution privileges. In JTAG hack, the SMC MCU (an Intel 8082-like MCU) is used to interface with the GPU JTAG port (hence the name of the hack) and use the GPU memory controller to install the hack payload on the system RAM. The final result is total control. So you can run any kernel you feel like (you need a loader/patcher/rebooter) to achieve that, though.
There's also the problem of the CB (2BL) revocation fuses. Fuseline 02, the 2BL revocation fuseline (aka console sequence count) has an LDV just as CF/CG do. The difference is that the LDV count is RSA signed, so it cannot be changed. Downgrading the CB is impossible as when the CB is updated (8498, 14717, 14719, 15572, 15574) a fuse from Fuseset 2 is burned and LDV increased. When a CB fuse is burned, the previous CB is revoked and cannot run on that console anymore and cannot be unrevoked due to RSA signing. This is why the JTAG hack no longer functions after 7371.
Agreed, but I did use 360 for some time after that into 2013-14. Mostly for Netflix, other times for the good late games like Fez.
