OS X on X-Box

Pippin

Sys***** slave.
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~ranma1/mac_install.html

I thought this was relatively interesting. Some of you might have seen it before, Some may not. The X-Box is running emulation software, ‘Pear Pc’ - then emulating OS x.

As you can see this is the first and still current x-box. And it is only emulating Mac OS. However x-box 2 is rumoured to be using the g5 chip.

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/5327/Xbox-2-CPU-To-Be-A-65nm-Part

It may well be possible to have OS X running on that for real. But that is a heated debate already. Anyway some might just enjoy this.
 
Pear PC is DOG slow, and I wouldn't even wanna see it on a wimpy 733MHz processor like the XBox has.

Still, that's cool! I've got an XBox, and I've always been interested in "modding" it somehow to run Linux, or put that Media Center software on it... but I'm not ready to go mucking around with it just yet... Perhaps if someone wanted to donate one? :D
 
Are there, btw., any real _news_ about PearPC? Seems most everyone has more or less forgotten about it by now. I remember it creating quite some waves initially (until those interested learned exactly _how_ slow it is...)...
 
I think this is a pretty interesting little project, even though it does take a whopping 10 hours to run the Mac OS X installer disc (confirming that yes, it is slow as mollasses). I congratulate the author of this on such an impressive project. I don't think I'd bother doing it myself though!

Pear is still under development, the current version is 0.3 and it has seen a few incremental updates in the past six months, so no, its not dead.
 
I like my XBox just the way it is. A game console. But there have been times when I was tempted to try install Linux on it, and I think I'll wait till the XBox 2 is released and I have one before trying to put Linux on my old xbox.
 
I like my XBox just the way it is. A game console. But there have been times when I was tempted to try install Linux on it, and I think I'll wait till the XBox 2 is released and I have one before trying to put Linux on my old xbox.

Most likley the "xbox 2" won't be backwards compatible.
It is (will be) based on a PowerPC system, the original xbox is a X86 system.

Emulation of an X86 system is no option because even if it works it will never run original xbox games at full speed. On a sidenote the graphics core of the the new MS 'box will be provided by ATI.

So if you mess up your "xbox1" you won't be able to play xbox games. (unless you fix it or buy a new one)
 
Ifrit said:
Most likley the "xbox 2" won't be backwards compatible.
It is (will be) based on a PowerPC system, the original xbox is a X86 system.

Emulation of an X86 system is no option because even if it works it will never run original xbox games at full speed. On a sidenote the graphics core of the the new MS 'box will be provided by ATI.

So if you mess up your "xbox1" you won't be able to play xbox games. (unless you fix it or buy a new one)

Yep Microsoft has confirmed that the xbox 2 will definitely NOT run original xbox games....
 
I'm not too bothered about playing my XBox 1 games once the XBox 2 is released. All I'm keen on is just being able to play games, and if I mess up my XBox 1 now, I'll have nothing to game on except my Powerbook.
 
As for the theory on OSX on Xbox2.. unless im mistaken, MacOS (all versions) have REQUIRED a BOOT ROM and a compatible FIRMWARE to boot the os. I can't see people ripping the boot-rom out of Macs and soldering into xbox's just to run osx... seems kinda pointless.
 
PearPC is emulation software than runs on i86 hardware and emulates the PowerPC processor. It's all done through emulation -- so no boot ROM is required.

It works the same way VirtualPC works on your Mac -- it's just a Mac emulator running on Windows software.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
PearPC is emulation software than runs on i86 hardware and emulates the PowerPC processor. It's all done through emulation -- so no boot ROM is required.

It also runs on a huge number of other platforms, albeit not as well. By far the most effort has been expended at trying to get it to perform well on x86, which is probably the most common place it'd be run.

Right now it runs at about 1/15 efficiency on x86 (executing 15 instructions to execute one PPC instruction). It runs at about 1/200 efficiency on other platforms.

Needless to say, I wouldn't want to try to install OS X on Sparc at the moment =)
 
Pengu said:
As for the theory on OSX on Xbox2.. unless im mistaken, MacOS (all versions) have REQUIRED a BOOT ROM and a compatible FIRMWARE to boot the os. I can't see people ripping the boot-rom out of Macs and soldering into xbox's just to run osx... seems kinda pointless.

Mac On Linux is an environment for PPC Linux that runs OS X, is it not?
Perhaps you'd need to install Linux first, but you should be able to run OS X on the new XBoxes just fine
 
I don't know about anyone else, but here in England Xbox's have become cheap. I got mine for £180, with 2 games, I think, and it came out at £300 first. Now it's £99, and that includes a free XBL trial (in some areas of the UK, for odd reasons).

To be honest, 99 isn't too bad. I'd get one if I could and mod my old Xbox.

My friend decided to solder the green jewel so it looks like I spilt acid on it, and then he took the Xbox apart, and signed his Xbox Live Gamertag on the inside cover, just so I wouldn't forget it. Put it all back together, went online, which kinda amazed me. The "open your xbox and you cant play XBL" rumours, are that, just rumours.

Anyhow, El, it could be a worthy project.
 
Um.. I'm not sure about the "just fine" bit.. Don't forget: there will likely be NO drivers that apple make that will be usable for an xbox2. and. microsoft have already stated that they WON'T be putting a hdd in it, as not many game developers have made use of it, but many XBox "hackers" (linux, game/movie pirates, etc) have made great use of it, to the point of replacing it with a 80-120Gb drive (up from ~8 Gb)
 
Pengu said:
As for the theory on OSX on Xbox2.. unless im mistaken, MacOS (all versions) have REQUIRED a BOOT ROM and a compatible FIRMWARE to boot the os. I can't see people ripping the boot-rom out of Macs and soldering into xbox's just to run osx... seems kinda pointless.

I don't think it's pointless, it's like the climbers who risk life and limb to go up a mountain. The people that do this stuff (mostly hobbyists) are more into the challenge of it. May be a little more expensive if something goes wrong though..
 
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