(WIP) New modchip coming in

I'm having trouble extracting the VM. I downloaded the files a couple times and I'm unable to extract lubuntu_14.04_x86.7z. 7zip gives me that file when I try to extract from lubuntu_14.04_x86.7z.001.

The archive isn't damaged is it?

 

Well I must admit I only tested decompression before uploading it...

Downloading back right now to test. Sorry...

 

Well it's not working... I do put too much fate in technology. I thought that in 2015, things like corrupted uploads (especially to Google Drive) would be almost non-existent.

Anyway, I're re-uploading right now. I'll tell you when I have confirmed it unpacks just fine after downloading it back.

 

Chinese new year is here, so dont be surprised by the 20 day vacation and long wait on shipping coming. Basically China will be shut down for a while

 

Thanks for the info, Pulsar - glad there is a good reason for the delays )

 

That's what I thought but doesn't new year celebration starts the 18th? It seems really, really early for a holiday break...


BTW I fixed the VM download. I tested it and it extracts just fine.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B...HYyN2ZIVHM0QU55N0RnNzBlU2dNYXp6N00&authuser=0

 

VM works. I cloned a new copy of lpcmod_os and built it.

I'll use the current build to test if the other WD password works on my other hard drives. Then I'll see about adding more passwords for more HDD's. Granted the user will only be able to try 4 passwords after boot so attempts will need to be counted and controlled. Maybe we can come up with a better skin or background.

Yay, toys!

 

any chance you have any to sell yet?. still stoke about these new chips!.

 

Not yet but beta feedbacks are good so far. This means production of retail units could be the next step!

As I wrote earlier, we're looking at a Q2 2015 release.

 

sweet!. sorry to bug. just super stoked!

 

I think it's time for a status update.

I've been working on a script engine that will accomodate most hardcore users here.
Syntax is simple and functionnality is limited but good enough for the purpose!

All you need to have to start writing you own scripts is the command list sheet (will be included in the manual) and a text editor.

You will be able to set script execution at certain key points in the execution of XBlast OS. Right now, I though of 2 key moments: when XBlast OS execution starts(boot script) and before launching a BIOS bank(bank script). Of course your boot script doesn't have to be the same as the one when you launch a BIOS bank.

To speed up execution of the boot script, XBlast OS will embed it in the flash of the XBlast modchip. That way, XBlast OS doesn't have to wait for the HDD to spin up and initialize to read the script. The downside of this is that the size of the script has to be limited... 2.8KB max but it's not all that bad as all unecessary text contained in the script file will not be saved in the flash. You can put as much comments, spaces and tabs as you want. All that is saved in the flash is the useful text. So 2.8KB translate to roughly 2900 characters of code. More than enough to do simple stuff at boot.
Scripts that are executed before booting a bank are read from the HDD so their size is virtually limitless.

I've made a small video to show off some of what is possible to do with scripts.


Sorry for the potato quality of the recording...
In this video, the script is ran from the HDD but it fits in the flash no problem.
The LED matrix is interfaced with an AS1107 IC. AS1107 takes SPI in to control the LEDs.
SPI is coming from the General purpose output pads of the XBlast Lite. There is a SPI write function in the script engine that sends data in 8 bits bursts, MSB first, at 166KHz for those who know what this means.
SPI read is also supported but I have not tested it yet.

For the curious, here's the source code of the script running in the video:
[HR][/HR]

[HR][/HR]As I wrote earlier, more info on the script engine will be present in the OS manual.


This will be included in version 0.3beta release as well as very basic S.M.A.R.T. support for HDDs. I'm still working on it.

 

That is so cool! Genius!

I spent a little time messing with backdrop.jpg and tried to get rid of the nasty pixels. The best results would come from the icons being placed over a static colored background, without using magenta for transparency. I added a static colored backdrop to each icon to "blend" it in with the background by a general color. I didn't get to test it yet but the leftovers seen in the left arrow should be gone, as some things weren't aligned to 64 pixels.

Spoiler

Here is the .psd if someone wants to mess around with the graphics.

View attachment LPCOS_backdrop.7z

 

Real nice work. This will give it a far better look! I merged your changes but in my excitement, I forgot to check the file size of the new backdrop... It's way too big to fit in the 256kb image. JPEG images will not shrink much size gzipped so I would try to keep it lower than 50kb.

I compressed it down to around that size but it suffered the effect of it.

 

Hmm.. 50KB then? I think it would be a good idea to only include a set of icons with XBlast OS. The whole 1024x832 image is a little unnecessary. Setting a background color and later loading an image from the HDD (if one's there and the file exists) would be the ideal solution.

Bummer that compression kills it so bad. It seems to blend the icons with the magenta again.

Well, looking more at jpg compression, it matters more of how many colors are in the palette and how detailed the image is than how big the image is. If I make the background 1 color without any magenta and remove the HDD icon, the size falls below 50KB, without compression.

Spoiler

So forget what I just said about having an image big enough only to hold the icons. A graphic background is really limited without the space of the HDD.

 

Added ability to load JEPGs files from HDD.
Please do not use progressive JPEG and all these weird variants. Just plain old JPEG.

For now, place backdrop.jpg in C:\XBlast\ for the background image. It must be 1024x768 in size.
Place icons.jpg in C:\XBlast\ for custom icons. Icons are 64x64 and lined up horizontally on a magenta background (0xFF00FF in 24bpp RGB). You can place a maximum of 16 icons so the image max dimensions would be 1024x64. icons.jpg doesn't need to be 1024x64 if you don't put 16 icons in there. Just make sure its width is a multiple of 64pixels corresponding to the number of icons you've put in there. There should be at least 6 icons in there to accomodate XBlast OS. Just look in the "pics" folder in source repo to inspire you.

This will be in the next release of XBlast OS; which should be coming soon.

 

Benny

I received my XBlast a couple of days ago and have had a good play this weekend.

I already had a partly disassembled console on my bench and I was feeling lazy and also excited about the chip arriving so it seemed a good excuse to get to work right away.

The board I installed on is a V1.0 with a 1Ghz processor and 128MB RAM.

My pics are a bit scruffy because this is an X3CP console so I wanted to leave all my other cabling in place.

As I already had a pin header installed, installation of the XBlast was so straightforward and I was up and running in under 10 minutes. The chip is nicely designed with large solder pads that should make this pretty easy for a novice.



I did a quick test to see if all was well:



All good!

I was itching to hook up an LCD display and I had a HD44780 laying about so on with that. I used a pin header/connector because I wanted to be able to connect and disconnect easily.



Yay!





I spent a good while prodding about in the menus and apart from a couple of small cosmetic issues that were already reported, it all works as expected. I went ahead and Net flashed X2 5035 and IND-BiOS 5003 to the respective bioses and that went smoothly too.

In the next couple of days I hope to have a play with the disk and TSOP features because I didn't look at them yet.

Your plan to be able to load JPGs from the HDD is great and should help to pretty things up some, what with the image size restraints on the chip. And that scripting stuff seems like it will open up all sorts of possibilities - you seem to think of everything )

All in all - thanks mate - really nice!

Cheers, Mark

 

Benny, I think you should advertise and market this chip more on sites like gbatemp,team-xecuter,teamx360,isozone and others. There would definetly be buyers, some just because they are curious.
GET THE HYPE TRAIN MOVING.

 

been a while since i checked the progress on this (like way back last year when you posted it on xbmc4xbox) have to say loving the progress so far if i get another xbox for modding ill definitly be interested in one of these

 

Good to see you're having fun with it. Thanks for the review!

Aside from IsoZone, these community forums do not have a very active Xbox section. It's true there are multiple communities alive out there but I prefer to wait before making any annoucement. Of course, you're all welcome to point them to this thread for more information. This is not a secret but it doesn't need to be made widely known right now. Here's why:

Since I'm several months away from a public release, I prefer to keep it quiet on more "end-user" community forums. People who browse AssemblerGames forums sees multiple threads about various projects and can appreciate how things can take considerable amount of time. If I would just post info about this everywhere, people would just ask for ETAs and all sorts of question that would make me look like I don't care if I do not constantly reply to those because I prefer to code than repeat what was already said in this thread.

Second reason is that the first batch of units will be small (around 200-250 units). I want to give the opportunity to member of this community to have their own first as they've been the ones waiting the longest.

Third reason is community experience in modding. I feel that more people here on AssemblerGames are comfortable and willing to try hardware mods whereas places like IsoZone feels more like softmodders. Since it will be my first experience selling a "mass market" product, I would like to prioritize selling these to people who knows what they're doing or how to get properly answered if they have questions. I've been browsing the scene for so long; I've seen the vast amount of desperate people asking for help as they thought they could do it easily and figured out too late they didn't have a single clue of what was happening!
Personnal story, I brought my first Xbox to get modded to some guy annoucing himself from the local ads. Ultimately, he was not able to mod it for me as he'd never came across that Xbox revision (1.6). The guy tried to install a Xecuter 2.6 but never made it work due to the LPC rebuild and different BIOS requirements. He just handed me my Xbox back, with a voided warranty and no ability to load homebrews/emulators. A while later, when I attempted to mod it on my own, I found out hey had severly damaged the LPC port, probably trying to rebuild the LPC port and/or uninstall and reinstall the pin header multiple times. Clearly he had no idea of what he was doing.
That's the kind of person I wish to avoid selling to, at least for the first batch! (To finish my story, I softmodded that Xbox, sold it to some guy who probably just wanted to play "backup" games and bought another one to install a X3CE by myself.)

Just keep checking this thread! Release is scheduled for Q2 2015.

 

I can't wait till this is done. All I can find are 1.6's nowadays.