Xbox360... you can't TSOP us now

[Zeus]

Joystiq report The original Xbox contained a readable/writable TSOP chip which means that in order to "mod" the system you didn't even need to install a modchip. Just flash BIOS code directly to the TSOP. What's the point? You don't care about the original Xbox? Here it is then: The Xbox 360 has a TSOP chip as well.



We're already having a very nerdy, hands-on day here so we might as well continue. The original Xbox contained a readable/writable TSOP chip which means that in order to "mod" the system you didn't even need to install a modchip. Just flash BIOS code directly to the TSOP. What's the point? You don't care about the original Xbox? Here it is then:

The Xbox 360 has a TSOP chip as well.

Smarter people than I will determine if this can be exploited. The Soft Life writes, "Does the existence of a TSOP on the Xbox360's motherboard mean the same LDT security attack will be available? Probably not. But it seems to at least be an potential opening.


Original News Source: <a href="http://softlife.blogspot.com/2005/11/xbox360-you-cant-tsop-us-now.html" target="_blank">blogspot.com</a>

[zeb crs]

it might be a problem yes.
The TSOP as referrred is not a flash rom as before. It is a dataflash chip of 16 Mbyte.
It does not have adress and datalines as before.
A CPU or micro during its first boot is an extremely dummy thing.
It is quite complex to run code from a dataflash.
It has to be som more code hidden in some chip that contains the bios or boot code for the 360.

[Zak]

I guess the dashboard is now stored in those 16MB since there's no other place to store it :)
Remember the thing works without the HDD as well. So even if we find a dashboard exploit, we'll need to flash the TSOP to use it.

[peppers]

correct me if im wrong but I thought new regular xboxes could not be tsop flashed perhaps they dont store bios on it but just sertain system settings, or maybe it stores some sort of console ID well I guess we will find out soon enoth

[wiggim]

Compare this to the PSP which has a flashable TSOP. Does it help with modding them? nope, it actually impedes the modding quite a bit with the way sony uses it. With a 16mbit chip (2MB) is quite large, thats a lot of code to deassemble (it will be done - MS has a lot of employees). I doubt this chip will be used to mod the xbox 360 though. To play your old xbox titles, or new xbox 360 titles this will probably be updated. I guess this all really depends if they have a backup flash or an override enable on the board somewhere in case the flashing fails.

The V1.6's (new xboxes) can't have the TSOP flashed because MS combined the TSOP chip with the video encoding chip (Xcalibur chip it was called) and it was read-only I do believe. (they finally caught on after 5 revisions) So unless you somehow reverse-engineered the chip and made your own chip that was flashable, desoldered the one installed and tediously installed the new one, there was no way to do it as MS owned the IP for them (so there is no documentation on them)

Who knows what could surface once the x 360 is more mainstream. From my experience the first console revisions are always the easiest.