Gooday Gaming Guests - Xbox One and Series Boot Process

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

No Hardware upgrades for Black Series X and Newest White Series X All-Digital

Alright so yesterday I signed up for Flash Gemini Advanced. So.0 Experimental Advanced. It doesn't have as many things you can do, but I can learn programming, I think, better. Even if I want to learn basic programming, which I do. So it gave me a little startup to do that. But today we're going to do a boot process. And so we're going to use it through Flash over here. So I wanted to know the boot process of the 1540. So we're going to go up to the Xbox One. We'll start with Flash and I'll ask my buddy Zippy if he knows anything different. So the Xbox One model 1540 was a fairly complex boot process involving multi stages and security checks. Here's a

simplified breakdown what happens when you press the power button. Initial power and security chip power on when you press the power button the power supply unit receives a signal security chip is on the south bridge activates first component to read the south bridge uh contains dedicated security chip RAM contains embedded firmware that is checked for integrity. The APU is initialized. So now we have an APU, we didn't have that in the earlier systems I don't think. GPU but not an APU. So APU, once the Southbridge does a check, then process the APU. Hold on, let me just find it. Oh, I'm going to try this.

Okay, so yeah, the APU initializes, which is the heart of the Xbox One. Combination of a CPU and a GPU. So this is an APU. The APU firmware load. APU has its own built-in ROM containing firmware. This firmware is loaded and initializes the APU's core components. Hypervision. System OS loading.

Boot check before loading the APU. Kites firmware to the south bridge. Checking for anything that was tampered with. Boot loader execution. If the secure boot is successful, the boot loader is executed. Hypervision initializes. sounds like a spaceship hyper vision the hyper vision also known as the system OS so it's called hyper vision first time I've heard of that that's why I do this so I can learn stuff I know

it's the offline update firmware OSU firmware, but now I know it's called hypervision. Also known as the system OS is a critical layer of software and manages the systems. Oh, that's good. My Mr. Range is with mailman's here. Is the mailman here? D'oh, where I am.

Oh, it's just a mailman. Provides a security environment and running other operations. It's okay. It's all right. He just sits in quiet, but the mailman, he's banging on the mailbox. All right, so hypervision is then loaded into memory and initialized. Oh, that's enough. He wanted to be in the podcast today, right, Mr. Ranger? Oh, that's enough. Don't call me. You wanted to be in the podcast today, right, Mr. Ranger?

Oh, that's enough. So the next step is host OS, game OS loading, host OS, game OS initialization. The HyperVision then loads and initializes the host OS, sometimes referred to as the game OS this is the primary operating system that runs games and applications user interface the host OS initializes the user interface bringing up the Xbox Xbox dashboard so now you're at the Xbox One dashboard. System ready. Network peripherals connected. Checks for updates.

You know, Xbox One, there's always an update. If you haven't turned it on, why don't you turn it on? There's another update. I do want to get a Xbox One Series X, but then all digital. The white one. which would be the last model, I don't think they're going to make any more after that but we'll see oh the X1 is now ready to play the games

key security features throughout the process secure boot, checks for all stages hardware root of trust the southbridge chip trusts it hypervision the vision is isolated and the host uh providing an extra layer of security encrypted storage

the hard drive is encrypted further protecting uh simplified analog analog Think of it like a building of multi security points. Security guard is the Southbridge, building manager is the APU firmware, head of security is hyper vision, and reception is host OS. so that was pretty cool so now let's go to chat GPT let me ask him Zippy they have to have names they don't already had any flash but I already named Zippy a while ago when I first I first first started using I was like wow this is really quick so say you gotta have a name we'll call you Zippy all right here we go so let's see let's we're doing40 boot process. So now I have two subscriptions. And they're both $20 each.

Which is a bummer. Although this might have ended. Oh, I don't think I can do this one anymore. I forgot. Xbox One. I don't think I can do this one anymore. I forgot. I forgot. Xbox One. For some reason, I can't use that one anymore. I will try a different one.

I got to start a new one then. Oh, there we go. 32 times. I guess you get so far and you can't go any further. Let's try that. That's why. xbox one 1540 boot the last thing i did was was with the rest of the sega sega cd i mean sega saturn and sega um um dreamcast being the last one.

Let's see, Xbox One 1540. Boot process. Okay, let's see what happens. Original Xbox One. Let's see. So a little bit more detail inus than my Flash Gemini. It says the external power supply brick initializes. The LED on the supply indicates status white or orange. So now I'm doing comparisons between the two. chip SOC which integrates the AMD CPU and GPU so it's saying it's a little bit different I suppose just saying it's an APU so it's AMD RAM storage peripherals there's a unified extendable firmware interface there's the bootloader. There's a hyper vision

Hyper V vision is the name of it according to Zippy here. Two core system running simultaneously. There's the game OS, Durango OS operating the game and it handles OS and then the system, a modified Windows 10 core used for gaming tasks. So it has Windows 10 as its core operating system. Runs alongside the OS ensures the authenticity hardware verification the dashboard loads the main UI services Xbox one connect game or app launch initialized so key hardware involved in boot process the AMD SOC Jaguar based the system's CPU and GPU are integrated into one chip chip calling an APU as flash called APU has DDR3 8 gigabytes of RAM hard drive is 5 gigabytes or 1 terabyte blue a blu-ray drive power supply units external usually trouble boot issues I you always got to check the power supply first. The power brick

is often the issue. You can hold, perform a hard reset, hold 10 seconds. That never really does anything. Error codes, E012, E015, Kate Software Hardware, use the offline update tool OSU1 yeah and then there's a process so overall chat GPT gave me a much better answer than flash boot the console into recovery mode yeah we know I do that after reset alright so let's go on to Xbox 1 1681 now I'm just going to stick with my buddy Zippy here see if there's any difference

alright model 1681 so now it would pretty much be the same system I wonder if there's anything. Oh, this has some 4K action going on for the 1681. Again, a lot of it's the same boot. I'll just kind of scroll through and see if i can see any difference eight core processor and also the the s has its

own power supply inside where the 1540 has the power brick still so it talks about the error codes yeah we know all that all right let's go back over here. I go quick and then I lose it. Alright, so the S1681, the revision of the original Xbox, released in 2016, brought several improvements such as smaller form factor, it the white one integrated power supply which is inside is the pa or the n1 uh the pa power supply model it was one that usually uh failed sport a 4k output hdr gaming uhd blu-ray playback. Process is similar to the original in Xbox. Power is on. Supply.

It uses the same kind of SoC chip. 8 gigabytes of RAM. The fan was the noisiest of all of them. It sounded like a little bird. Even if it was brand new, it made that weird bird noise. Very annoying. 1540 was not that... It didn't make that much noise.

So the AEVU... So 14K resolution. Boots, same Hyper Vision. Load, OS is still Windows 10 based. Because even the series... We'll check the series S or X next. Those are basically just an upgrade of xbox one not like a ps4 going to a ps5 to me that was like a wow that's a good size upgrade

xbox series s and x really hasn't been the gpu is 1.4 teleflops t-flops tf t-flops slightly improved over the original Xbox one so there's a little bit of difference 8 core Jaguar architect architect 1.5 gigahertz for the AMD APU I was calling an APU upgraded support for blu-rays okay so let's. The rest of it is just troubleshooting. We don't have to worry about that. Alright.

Let's go to. X. 1787. I started with boot processes. That way I can at least get the basics. And it will kind of give me a run down. Of like the chip and everything in it. That I didn't know until now. I know how works kind of kind of sort all right let's see what this one says takes him a minute but he's pretty zippy

and definitely I would go back and do all the, um, one on Gemini too, but I'm not going to do that many. I just want to see what one, how it, once I learn it, I seem to get a lot more details. Oh, wow. So I learned a couple of new things just as it's scrolling here. The difference in the power between the s and the x although the x 1787 has a giant uh heat sink set heat sink in it and they always burnt out the video chips oh cool yes oh it's giving me some good differences oh i like this i get bar i get

like graphs that show difference. So we'll get to that. Let's hit the main points that I see. That makes it to 1787. That was a big upgrade, really, from the S. It just has so many issues. So at one point, I think I've had... I remember getting 70 Xbox One S from some guy local. That's how many were broken at one time, 70.

And over time, I've probably had 500, 600 of them. And the X, probably 300 or 400 probably, each with its own issue. Mostly the video chip was the X. All right, so the boot process is similar. It has its own power supply, which also can go. It has a system check. Then it has the advanced vapor chamber cooling system. Starts up.

Someone asked me about that, and now I know and understand what they're talking about. It's like, because I sold a few of those heat sinks they're really big you know like does the vapor chamber work I have no idea what you're talking about all right so it uses a UEFI based firmware it has 4k resolution and HDR 10 depending on the TV. HyperVision V. This is the Game OS is Scorpio OS because now there's a little Scorpio on the motherboards. So if you get a Project Scorpio,

it's the exact same as the regular X1787. There's no difference. Just you pay for that top cover and the logo. So all the motherboards inside the X are the same Custom OS optimized for high high game performance so the gaming OS Scorpio OS is a custom OS utilized to

Take advantage of X's advanced hardware for rendering they always say that first it was you have Xbox one game and then it was well still with s was about the same but then then when Xbox one X came out then they say that there was games that were advanced for Xbox one what only for the X 1787 and then now they did that for the series s series X kind of like the ps5 Pro both both operating systems loaded the memory pretty much the same disk resolution remember this, here's the difference. So custom AMD SoC 8 core, custom Jaguar Architect clocked at 2.3.

The S was 1.7. GPU is 6 teraflops supporting 4k rendering. 12 gigabytes of GDDR5 RAM provides high band with memory for gaming systems. 3.2 gigabytes per second bandwidth transfer. one terabyte hard drive yeah i believe they did four camber four 4k ultra hard drive and then a vapor chamber cooling system keeps the hardware cool and quiet during reference some of them that i've opened the fan was so burnt brown from the heat it was crazy but it still worked stuck on green screen i don't really have that problem no video is usually the the video chip or the ic chip i think it's called and also if the the these still have mechanical hard drives in them that was a big big upgrade to the series s and X onboard memory.

Lots of times black screens were because either the hard drive is no good anymore or the system on it didn't work. Therefore it would give you a black screen. More so on the S1681 on the X1787 it was that video chip most of the time. So it gives me that graph now. Difference between Xbox One X and Xbox One S. So again 6 teraflops compared to only 1.4 teraflops has upscaling 4K where the Xbox One X is 4K native. RAM is 12 gigabytes. Xbox One S is 8 gigabytes. Cooling system, the vapor chamber, and the Xbox one series yes I always

learned something doing it this way I've loved to learn how the actual whole board works but it's gonna start somewhere all right so let's try the Xbox one series x boot process let's see if i ran out here oh here it comes i was released in 2020 right around the time that the um ps5 came out I'd gotten all three of them, and I took them all apart. Well, most of them apart. I have videos way back when when I did that, so there are videos.

You can type in that. To me, I thought going from PS4 to PS5 was pretty fun. Series, SRX, not really so much uh i like them now power on initializes indicated has its own power supply so the system on chip now combines the amd z2 cpu and a r dna2 gpu initializingizing 10 gigabytes of DDR GDDR6 memory and a 512 gigabyte onboard NVMe solid-state drive that was a huge upgrade you have to worry about it and then you could add the other little upgrade of memory in that back card thing there.

It was real expensive. I did get one of those. Uses the same unified extendable firmware interface. 4K video output. For 1440p gaming. HDMI 2. I didn't realize they had HDMI 2mi 2.1 is initialized um hypervisions the game oh the os is basically the same though still windows 10 based uh operating system utilizes Xbox Volicity architecture which leverages the solid-state drive and direct storage API. Xbox loading GPU let's see quick resume feature allows a so game initializes our rdna2 gpu for enhanced graphics z2 cpu for faster physics and ai so

there's some sort of an ai in there i know that uh velocity uh architecture for near zero load times. That's pretty cool. All right, and then we go to CPU 8-core Zen 2 architecture clocked at 3.6 gigahertz. And then the GPU is an RDNA 2 architect with four tower flops. Optimize that 1440 gaming. Memory was at 10 gigabytes. Storage was 512. Cooling system designed with a single fan. Airflow. HDMI 2. Supports VRR ALLM. Auto low latency mode. 120 refresh rate. I never had one that didn't work. I stopped getting systems after PS4s. So I've never had any Xbox One Series S or X.

As systems to take apart and sell parts. I stopped after PS4. I've had tons of PS4s. And those those were really expensive and I just never got into it I started going to older stuff I went backwards was more fun and I never had any Xbox I mean ps5s to take apart I had four now but I've never had one for parts they're always really expensive okay so we'll do the last one now alright now so we'll go to Xbox one boot process. Cool. And then I'll save the PS5 for next time.

I can already see some difference in here. I will ask about the... I'm going to see if the Series S, I mean Series X, all digitals, any upgrade. Like hardware wise. Usually, there's some sort of upgrade. We'll find out. We'll look here first. So I can see where the GPU memory is significantly more. The Series X is pretty cool. I like that. I had one for a long time. I'd like to get another one. I kind of want to get one with a disc but I kind of don't. Most of my games, I don't even buy disc games anymore. However, you can play backwards compatible.

Alright, so let's see what we're different here. Alright, so the Xbox Series X was also released in 2020. It was the flagship next generation console. for high performance 4k gaming enhanced low time low time and cutting edge hardware features so the series s is not really considered the uh real upgrade the system on chip amd zen 2 cpu rdNA 2 GPU, 16 gigabytes here now GDDR6 RAM and 1 terabyte of the NVMe solid-state drive. Has the has some sort of a vacuum chamber cooler again still uses the same unified firmware interface. The software is basically the same. Digital handshake.

HDMI handshake ensures compatibility with the connected display including VRR, variable refresh rate, ALLM, auto low latency mode, HDR 10 and 120 gigahertz that's for the HDMI 2.1 hypervisions same again it's the same loading system person now I want a whole new Xbox Xbox to whatever that may be whatever they they're going to call it. So 2026 should be a really fun year. So more AI based system. PS6. I believe the PS5 is already done. I guess the PS5 Pro.

I think that's it. I think they're all getting ready for the next gen. I think. And there was really no Xbox. to compete with the PS 5 Pro although I did have one for one day and it was no really big deal sure there was some differences although I had two terabytes that I liked Xbox Series X does not it's only one says Auto HDR and FPS boot. Backwards compatible games.

Custom AMD SoC 8 core Zen 2 architect clocked at 3.8. 12 teraflops. Memory was 16 the 10 gigabytes 56 gigabytes a second for the GPU and then six gigabytes three three hundred thirty six gigabytes a second for the secondary storage is one terabyte HDMI 2 then we're on to trouble. Let's see if this is the Xbox Series X boot process, emphasize speed, security, and multitasking. Okay. Is the Xbox One Series X all digital? Any different?

Different, different. any different all digital so be is the white that's white I like because you always want the opposite color of how are they or. Let's see if there's any difference here. There it is. So now it's confused. I confused it. No, it went backwards on me. It doesn't recognize that there is a newer one, I don't think. So now it's comparing the X to the S so let's see if I can correct it so although my Zippy here is pretty smart it's not it's it doesn't know everything or it doesn't it doesn't understand when I asked it so there is a newer all digital

Xbox 1 Series X not S let's see if i can straighten it out uh use jpg for every search let's see if it figures that out. You're correct! There we go. I know it. Microsoft has introduced a new all-digital Series X. This version maintains the high performance specifics of the standard X, but opts for the physical drive. Can you do gamers who prefer digital? So I want to see. So it retains the powerful hardware.

Custom 3.8 rendering. Memory is 16 gigabytes. I wish they would have upgraded that to 2 terabytes. I don't know why they didn't do that. All digital without disk drive. All digital X through inclusion side by side I just want to see if there's anything different that I might miss. Nah, it's doing it again. So I'm at side by side of Xbox One Series X Disk Drive. disk drive and

Xbox One Series X All Digital Let's see if I can do it when I want. Searching the web. digital let's see if i can do it for a while

searching the web it's weird got all confused on me let's see if i got it to work just want to see if there's anything different no it still didn't do it let's keep doing that robot wait no all digital oh maybe just it's just calling it now that's 2.4 10 do you guys so I'm gonna keep bugger so series Series X all digital not Series S. I wonder if AI can get mad if you ask too many questions. Apologies for the confusion. All digital Series X. Officially named the Xbox Series 1X. One all digital.

There we go. Finally got it. Finally got the comparison I was looking for. All right. Let's see if there's any difference. I don't see anything. Quick look. Side by side comparison. Between a standard Series X and a Series X digital.

Except for the color. the disk drive one has one and one doesn't. The CPU is the same AMD Z2 8 core 3.8 GHz GPU is the same AMD RDNA 2 12 teraflops so it's exactly the same so even though you're getting something newer because it was made newer key difference is $50 cheaper and I like that you can get you can't do that with this one but PS5 slim i have i have an all digital but i can get a disk drive an add-on which is really fun i haven't got one yet but i'm gonna whereas you couldn't do that with this you should make some sort of a plug-in uh disk drive like an external disk drive to plug into your i still want to get the white one though but all right so that's my little fun thing for the day comparison between the Xbox Ones and all the boots for them and the different I learned a lot actually just doing this

all the technical stuff I didn't know nothing I really needed I just wanted to see if there was any reason to go from the black one to the white one I'd lose the disk drive but I'd really gain nothing and it's a little bit more so we'll see

alright so that's my gaming system for today have a good evening and I'll probably see you guys I'll see you in a moment alright have a good one bye