XeniumMods v3.xx SneakPeak!

[RMM]

On 9/13/2023 at 9:58 PM, Ernegien said:

I'm still interested in Nem's input on all of this. The hardware is indisputably a 1:1 clone, but what's the plan for the firmware side of things? Is he expecting people steal Dustin's or is he creating his own? I already know the answer, but I'm giving Nem the chance to own up to it.

Isn't the hardware design of the OpenXenium a clone?

[Ernegien]

20 minutes ago, RMM said:

Isn't the hardware design of the OpenXenium a clone?

Yes, and I know where you're trying to go with this, but the following is different in Ryzee's situation:

• The original Xenium chips hadn't been produced/sold in 15+ years
• I don't believe he ever sold them
• Both the hardware and firmware were fully open-sourced
• The firmware was reverse engineered, not stolen
• He credited the original creators and didn't lie about the source of inspiration
• He's one of the most selfless people there is in this scene

[KaosEngineer]

On 9/13/2023 at 6:45 PM, Ryzee119 said:

I was referring to these.

https://github.com/MakeMHz/xbox-hdmi-kernel-source

Admittedly I don't know exactly what they are doing but I assume you apply these to stock m8 and Ind to make it communicate with xboxhd over smbus and send the required video mode parameters to the encoder. There were written in ASM so there is no C sources etc.

Thanks for pointing them out to me. I had entirely missed them.

I only saw the patch files in the xbox-hd-plus repository.

[RMM]

2 hours ago, Ernegien said:

Yes, and I know where you're trying to go with this, but the following is different in Ryzee's situation:

• The original Xenium chips hadn't been produced/sold in 15+ years
• I don't believe he ever sold them
• Both the hardware and firmware were fully open-sourced
• The firmware was reverse engineered, not stolen
• He credited the original creators and didn't lie about the source of inspiration
• He's one of the most selfless people there is in this scene

 

It seems very hypocritical to complain about copying a hardware design when Ryzee did the same thing.

•  The original XboxHD+ is no longer being made either.  The design was abandoned so its no longer produced & sold.  Again I dont see the issue when its no longer being made.
•  Ryzee still copied a hardware design that someone else initially made and I am pretty sure he has profited off of that
•  Open sourced a hardware design that someone else made?  Also, maybe NeMesiS will use open source firmware
•  Stolen firmware?  How is using open source firmware stealing when its open source?  Maybe NeMesiS releases his HDMI mod with no firmware.  And the reverse engineering stuff you have me a little confused, is it not ok to reverse engineer hardware if you're NeMesiS but its OK to reverse engineer software? or is it just OK to reverse engineer hardware but only if you're Ryzee taking the Xenium hardware and turning that in to OpenXenium?  Is one or both OK depending on who you are? or is it just not OK for either
•  NeMesiS hasnt lied.  Im guessing you are here because you have seen the pictures and the videos of his progress. He isnt hiding anything.  If he were trying to hide something he wouldnt be so clearly showing you what he is doing.
•  NeMesiS is working on providing an option that no longer exists for people of the Xbox community.  An HDMI mod that works independent of whatever modchip someone is using.  Nobody else is offering a solution like this, certainly not Dustin with his Stellar stuff.  Many people already have a modchip installed in their Xbox.  These people may not want to uninstall their modchip and install a different modchip just to get HDMI output from their Xbox.  The work being done by NeMesiS is appreciated by many people in this Xbox community.

Edited September 15, 2023 by RMM

[Ryzee119]

It's clear how openxenium and this project are different but  I'll answer the question because it's easy for me to do so honestly.

I took the xenium PCB mapped out the traces picked the same components that were available (very easy and took me about 1 hour). I had to find an alternate flash chip as the original was obsolete. I then painstakingly spent weeks reverse engineering the cpld behaviour with my logic analyser to release something for the community for free and fully documented (with references) how my code, the xenium and the LPC protocol work. I personally spent alot of time doing my own engineering work. There's no smoke and mirrors at all where openxenium came from. I literally have xenium in the name and I don't talk shit about team xodus while using their work. I never sold xenium (perhaps a couple sent to friends at cost or to cover postage) and I never distributed xeniumOS on my repo although I'm morally confident 15 year old xeniumOS binaries are a different beast that MakeMhz XboxHDMI fw.

I'm also fairly confident alot of of recent modchips releases have used my work as a reference. https://github.com/Team-Resurgent/LPC-Mangler for example has word for word comments and vhdl from openxenium.

You're welcome Xbox community.

There you go. Full transparency about the project. Hope to receive the same for this project.

If you genuinely believe openxenium is a mindless clone in the same vein as this project I don't know what to say apart from I'm offended 

[ACE_AU]

Certain ppl need to F off! Mind your own business and stop getting Pineappled butthurt! Without knowing what is going on and accusing ppl of shit they do NOT know! STOP ruining this thread with crap!

[Ryzee119]

11 minutes ago, ACE_AU said:

Certain ppl need to F off! Mind your own business and stop getting Pineappled butthurt! Without knowing what is going on and accusing ppl of shit they do NOT know! STOP ruining this thread with crap!

You're a professional. You know whats up. The only defense's are justifications why it's acceptable to clone. Admittedly not from Nem so other people are making it worse for him. They should just wait for someone who actually knows what's going on to chime in (maybe you?)

But understood.

Good luck Nem. 

[ACE_AU]

1 minute ago, Ryzee119 said:

You're a professional. You know whats up. The only defense's are justifications why it's acceptable to clone. Admittedly not from Nem so other people are making it worse for him. They should just wait for someone who actually knows what's going on to chime in (maybe you?)

But understood.

Good luck Nem. 

I didnt mention names…. But!!!

Do i need to mention yours too??

i have FW i can load if I want to,what are you going to do about it? And why?

[Ernegien]

The progression from "I created this" to "what are you going to do about it" is incredible. At the very least, I'd expect an apology (not to me) when Nem releases this hardware for the sole purpose of being used with Dustin's firmware.

[smithincanton]

On 8/15/2023 at 5:04 AM, NeMesiS said:

 

Another project I'd like to start working on once I've finished the HDMI mod, is to try and upgrade the MCU for the OGX360 as the current Atmega32u4 is it's limiting factor for any further firmware improvements. I've already discussed this with Ryzee119 on he's GitHub but we couldn't decide which MCU to go with. So to show some initiative I want to retro fit the STM32 development board to Ryzee's 4 channel OGX360 board. I may just do an adaptor board and instead of routing traces I'll just have a bunch of pads and I'll route everything with kynar wire for testing. Along with STM32duino bootloader the firmware shouldn't require too many changes for it to work.

STM32duino (github.com)

 I would love to have an internal version of this that is just plug and pass through with the usb connectors already in the xbox.  

[dtomcat]

1 hour ago, smithincanton said:

 I would love to have an internal version of this that is just plug and pass through with the usb connectors already in the xbox.  

 

[NeMesiS]

On 9/7/2023 at 8:31 PM, Ryzee119 said:

The board is a clear copy of the xboxhdmi board and from what I can see even uses the same firmware. That's how it's ripping it off.

I could speculate the same things about MakeMHz, it's awfully similar to your xboxhdmi mod.
Which begs the question, who copied who?

 

 

On 9/8/2023 at 6:52 AM, Ryzee119 said:

Then ofcourse you design the flex cables which Nem would know is expensive and you're doing all this on a bunch technical assumptions it's going to work unless you can copy someone else's.

I didn't think that was a problem, after all Dustin did commit to OpenSourcing the hardware.
Does this imply that the XboxHD+ is based on OpenSource hardware? 

 

 

On 9/8/2023 at 6:52 AM, Ryzee119 said:

I don't really care about cloning the hardware that much to be honest but to achieve the goals of the project I'd thought you be having to do something different.

Then why spend so much time and effort on the subject.
So, am I in the clear for the hardware side of things?

 

On 9/8/2023 at 6:59 AM, Ryzee119 said:

I made the open xenium but I also never sold them and never included XeniumOS in my repository and I openly acknowledge their good work on that chip because it was awesome.

Have I done something wrong by selling Xenium modchips?
I'm far from being the only person to have done so.

 

 

On 9/8/2023 at 8:23 AM, Ryzee119 said:

I was expecting a quick response like "yep been testing with MakeMhz fw but have plans of my own" and I'm sure that's the case tbh 

You're jumping the gun a little, the project is still in active development.
I don't even have a working prototype yet.
We'll just have to wait and see what this project evolves to.

 

On 9/7/2023 at 11:33 PM, trencherfield said:

Then interject and bitch about MM's firmware being copied, which everyone can get a copy of anyway and is already out there. Nem has not even said he's selling that. How do you know? He hasn't even got to that stage. Plus he can sell it blank if he so desires and therefore it's hardware only with no 'IP'.

Correct...

"But for the sake of argument"
The community just needed the hardware, I don't need to include a firmware on my end.
It will be up to the end user which firmware they choose to use, much like a bios.
All I've done is given the community an alternate option, which is what they wanted.

 

This wouldn't be the case if MakeMHz focused on having good public relations instead of
attacking everyone including their own customers.

And anti-competitive behavior like this: "https://teamxodus.com/"
For myself and many others this was crossing one line too many...

 

False or misleading claims
Claims that businesses make about their products or services should be accurate, true and based on reasonable grounds. It’s against the law for a business to make false or misleading claims.

Not delivering products and services that are paid for
Businesses must not accept payment for products or services that they don’t intend to supply.

Pressuring and harassing consumers
It’s against the law for a business to use physical force, coercion or undue harassment against consumers.

Unconscionable conduct
Unconscionable conduct is behaviour so harsh that it goes against good conscience. Under consumer law, businesses must not act unconscionably towards consumers or other businesses.

Business behaviour that is potentially illegal
Business behaviour substantially lessens competition when it interferes with or damages the competitive process in a market in a meaningful way. This is usually by deterring, hindering or preventing competition.

Misuse of market power
It's not illegal to have market power. However, businesses must not misuse this power to stop other businesses competing on their merits.

 

"Conclusion"
I could go on, but the bottom line is that I'm not crossing any lines that MakeMHz hasn't already!
Some forget that this is a hacking community, I accepted the risks that go along with that years ago.
And so has anyone else that has used modified bioses, emulators and games...

[Bowlsnapper]

8 hours ago, NeMesiS said:

I could speculate the same things about MakeMHz, it's awfully similar to your xboxhdmi mod.
Which begs the question, who copied who?

 

 

I didn't think that was a problem, after all Dustin did commit to OpenSourcing the hardware.
Does this imply that the XboxHD+ is based on OpenSource hardware? 

 

 

Then why spend so much time and effort on the subject.
So, am I in the clear for the hardware side of things?

 

Have I done something wrong by selling Xenium modchips?
I'm far from being the only person to have done so.

 

 

You're jumping the gun a little, the project is still in active development.
I don't even have a working prototype yet.
We'll just have to wait and see what this project evolves to.

 

Correct..."But for the sake of argument"
The community just needed the hardware, I don't need to include a firmware on my end.
It will be up to the end user which firmware they choose to use, much like a bios.
All I've done is given the community an alternate option, which is what they wanted.

This wouldn't be the case if MakeMHz focused on having good public relations instead of
attacking everyone including their own customers.

And anti-competitive behavior like this: "https://teamxodus.com/"
For myself and many others this was crossing one line too many...

 

False or misleading claims
Claims that businesses make about their products or services should be accurate, true and based on reasonable grounds. It’s against the law for a business to make false or misleading claims.

Not delivering products and services that are paid for
Businesses must not accept payment for products or services that they don’t intend to supply.

Pressuring and harassing consumers
It’s against the law for a business to use physical force, coercion or undue harassment against consumers.

Unconscionable conduct
Unconscionable conduct is behaviour so harsh that it goes against good conscience. Under consumer law, businesses must not act unconscionably towards consumers or other businesses.

Business behaviour that is potentially illegal
Business behaviour substantially lessens competition when it interferes with or damages the competitive process in a market in a meaningful way. This is usually by deterring, hindering or preventing competition.

Misuse of market power
It's not illegal to have market power. However, businesses must not misuse this power to stop other businesses competing on their merits.

 

"Conclusion"
I could go on, but the bottom line is that I'm not crossing any lines that MakeMHz hasn't already!
Some forget that this is a hacking community, I accepted the risks that go along with that years ago.
And so has anyone else that has used modified bioses, emulators and games...

@Ryzee119... The purpose of posting publicly in a forum instead of using DM's to discuss something is to have it seen by others. You can try to respond to these types of arguments (which were chosen pretty well), but it will be very difficult to appear to have a leg to stand on to others, both by technicality and morally. It's very apparent that people seem to like Nemesis much better than Dustin anyway and would like to see him succeed for reasons that I have stated and which now Nem himself has, at least pertaining to reasons like MakeMHZ policies. MakeMHZ fucked up and chose a business path that was not in their best interest. Dustin now must deal with the consequences of his decision. I dunno if he thought he was the smartest person on the planet and nobody would ever try to compete with his products or what. But there is a demand for this product. Claiming that Nemesis must meet your standards for passing the test of originality is retarded and I doubt if people are buying it, buddy.

Please stop doing this. 

[Halo_2]

37 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Who the hell is halo_2, anyway? Not anybody I've seen on this forum. There I go with my "conspiracy theories" again...

 

Im a xbox modding newb-ish who has been on the forum for a long time when MVG announced XLink Kai which got my interested in xbox original again.....don't know why I'm roped into this argument.

I only like Ryzee119 post as he made a modchip all by himself for free as I understand.
And then uploaded all the details to GitHub. 

Edited September 19, 2023 by Halo_2

[Bowlsnapper]

20 minutes ago, Halo_2 said:

 

Im a xbox modding newbish who has been on the forum for a long time....don't know why I'm roped into this argument. 

Sorry about that. I'll unrope you, since that was an unfounded claim.  

As this thread was. 

[ACE_AU]

Back on topic now me thinks! Let the haters hate and lets get on with the project at hand! HDMI mods for our OG’s with any chip support etc.I can’t wait to text them out for NeM and for the greater good of our/the community.

[NeMesiS]

Now that the parcels are starting to arrive by break is over and
I'm slowly getting back into finishing up some projects.

I had a bit or a print off to compare 3DFillies, SunLu and eSun.
It only took a couple of prints to see the results and I really wasn't
impressed with the print quality of either SunLu or eSun.

PLA+ is a combination of PLA and TPU to give it some flexibility.
eSun seems to have a higher TPU percentage as the melting temp
seem to be lower and produces a very high gloss finish.

It's a similar situation for eSun but just not as bad.
These test results have given me more appreciation for the
quality prints I've been getting while using 3DFillies filaments.

Unfortunately, it seems they continue to have some stock issues as they
have not had either PLA+ or PETG available in black for some time now.
But I think it would be worth the wait...

I have a couple rolls of PETG I got from 3Dfillies a couple years back
that I never used, so it might be worth that I setup slicing profile for PETG.
With any luck I can just use my PLA+ profile and tweak the temps to suit.

[NeMesiS]

Immediately ran into a problem, as I was unpacking the PETG it hit me.
Printing PETG on these PEI beds will destroy them...
Will need to look into which surface finish will be better suited.

In the meantime, I'm just going to have to work with what I got.
I don't use many colors so it would be nice to use them up.

PLA+ Filaments:
White = Full
Blue = 3/4
Purple = 3/4
Red = 1/2
Green = 1/2
Dark Gray = 1/4
Pink = 1/4

[NeMesiS]

When I first did the dual fan caddy design, I got a bit excited and started printing it off
in different colors to see what they would look like. The sets are incomplete but I should
have enough filament on hand to finish them off.

I managed to print off 3x "Black" sets before I ran out of filament.
But as reference the above image shows all the pieces for a complete conversion.
The "Blue" prints are extra's I'm throwing in for now...

(Excuse the workbench with solder and stuff all over it.)

[Donnie-Burger]

42 minutes ago, NeMesiS said:

When I first did the dual fan caddy design, I got a bit excited and started printing it off
in different colors to see what they would look like. The sets are incomplete but I should
have enough filament on hand to finish them off.

I managed to print off 3x "Black" sets before I ran out of filament.
But as reference the above image shows all the pieces for a complete conversion.
The "Blue" prints are extra's I'm throwing in for now...

(Excuse the workbench with solder and stuff all over it.)

Looking good I'll have mine assembled shortly.

[NeMesiS]

And we're off...

This will take 3 or so days to complete all the prints using 2x printers.
I'm keeping one printer spare for prototyping...
 

10 minutes ago, Donnie-Burger said:

Looking good I'll have mine assembled shortly.

No hurry mate,
Don't forget that Dempsey wrote an install guide, forget which page though...

[NeMesiS]

Just to recap on the xenium programmer, the final design still works as shown in
the proto video with only one minor visual different being that the "Power" LED
is now labelled as "Standby".
 

Have been able to confirm that the OpenXenium adaptor works like a charm, not that there was much to it.
I ended up using a rubber band to apply some pressure on the bottom header but much better solution
would be to use some spring loaded pogo pins.

 

[Bowlsnapper]

1 hour ago, NeMesiS said:

When I first did the dual fan caddy design, I got a bit excited and started printing it off
in different colors to see what they would look like. The sets are incomplete but I should
have enough filament on hand to finish them off.

I managed to print off 3x "Black" sets before I ran out of filament.
But as reference the above image shows all the pieces for a complete conversion.
The "Blue" prints are extra's I'm throwing in for now...

(Excuse the workbench with solder and stuff all over it.)

I need another kit... lol

[NeMesiS]

Now that my other RPi Zero's have arrived I was able to go through and do some fresh installs.
I found a bug where I forgot to add a variable for the username and put together a bash script
to automate the install process as much as possible.

I kept the install.sh bash script as simple as possible to make it easy for people to read.
It installs all the required libraries plus xenium-programmer from GitHub, including
a variety of changes before compiling X-P.
 

Also, the python script that makes the hardware work with X-P software will startup on boot.
FTP home directory gets forwarded to where the firmware and OS are located for quick access.
Once the install script is finished the LED's will cycle and land on "Standby".
From here your ready to start programming Xenium's, no reboot required.

I'll follow up this post with the entire install process along with a short video and link to the files.
This might take me a couple hours or so but I hope to have it done before the end of the day.

[NeMesiS]

Use "RPi Imager" to install "RPi OS Lite 32bit" onto an SD card.
Before writing the image click on the cog icon for settings.
Enable SSH then setup username and password. (This will also be your FTP login.)
Finally configure your wireless settings, save and write the image.

Notes: I could have created an image but it's best to do a fresh install using RPi imager
to enable SSH and setup Wifi as the RPi Zero only has micro USB ports so connecting
a mouse and keyboard is not so straight forward. And if you don't have a Linux machine
to read an "ext" formatted SD card you can FTP into the device via Wifi.