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Cygnos360 v2.0 Sample High-Res Pictures and Some Details
>> Team Cygnos sent us a sample Xbox360 with a Cygnos360 v2.0 pre-production sample some time ago. We will be posting some on-hands videos of how the device works in the next few days, but here are some high-res pictures of the devices installed already.
The Cygnos360 v2.0 has an onboard NAND-flash memory and the external addon (included) allows you to flash it with a PC via USB. With the external switch you can also easily switch between the motherboard and Cygnos flash memory, so u can switch between the lastest MS kernel and an exploitable kernel to boot Linux via the King Kong exploit. Or you could also have 2 kernels with a different game/video region for example. Another possible use is to have the lastest kernel on both and if you're concerned Microsoft keeps logs/flags on the NAND of what you play when you're offline ... u can use the cygnos flash when playing offline and the motherboard flash when playing online.
 
The device has everything you need to flash/read the flash memories, get your CPU key (needed to make a modified or manual-downgraded kernel work) and also includes all hardware to perform the Time Attack exploit on your Xbox360 (which allows to still retrieve your CPU key even if you're on a kernel newer than the exploitable kernels). However remember the Time Attack only works on 360s before Microsoft changed the GPU (which are all non-hdmi consoles and those made before ~August 2007) which can still boot on kernel 1888 (needed for the Time Attack).
The installation looks fairly easily although I did not perform this one myself as it came pre-installed. There are maybe 2 points that are a bit harder, but should be very doable for anyone with some soldering experience.
 
Here's a statement from Team Cygnos where they pledges for more support for Xbox360 Linux development and more:
[QUOTE]
In order to spark interest again in Linux on the Xbox360, we sent XS an Xbox360 with our newest Cygnos360 V2 installed to show what is already possible. The demo console runs kernel 7357 (also known as New Xbox Experience) on the on-board NAND-flash and the vulnerable kernel 4532 on the Cygnos360 NAND-flash. Booting one or the other kernel is just a matter of flipping the switch on the Cygnos360 Interface Board that comes with Cygnos360 V2.
We installed Ubuntu Linux 7.10 on the harddisk of the demo console, which can be booted through the well-known King Kong exploit. We thought it would be time to show some progress on the Linux side, so we took XBMC and compiled it for the Xbox360. We used Ubuntu 7.10 for that purpose (we dont take credits for the porting to PPC that fully goes to the guys at XBMC.org). We had to throw in quite a bit of work in patching here and there to get XBMC running on our Xbox360 console (so we take credit for that ;-) ). We did not have any time for any optimization whatsoever. Please view this as a "proof of concept" XBMC is still without GPU acceleration and without direct sound support. It runs stable however and you can see the news feed ticking in. We are confident that the revived interest in Linux on the Xbox360 together with the excellent hardware documentation, which is already available for AMDs similar R500 and R600 GPUs, will soon lead to 3D acceleration on the Xbox360. Hopefully great projects like "Xenkit" will see more interest now and lead to homebrew soon.
So we got a console that has the following on it:
1) Cygnos360 V2.0 installed and downgraded to 1888 kernel (piece of cake :-) )
2) NXE on the original onboard NAND-flash
3) 4532 on the Cygnos360 NAND-flash with
4) Xenon Ubuntu 7.10 on the harddisk with XBMC ported on it.
All necessary steps to run NXE and Linux on our demo console were carried out with Cygnos360 V2 alone. No other hardware was used. That includes reading and programming the NAND-flashes on Xbox360 and Cygnos360 and performing the timing-attack for downgrading.
In the mean time we will continue our own work and hope to give the scene (which has been called dead by many people) a bit of a kickstart with a defibrillator.
We have focussed with Cygnos360 V2.0 to create a piece of hardware that is really easy to install and simple to use. It should finally give a lot of people the opportunity to have an exploitable kernel for Linux with XBMC, dual region codes and whatever is to come, as well as the newest dashboards for playing latest games and on Xbox Live.
[/QUOTE]
More news (with videos) soon.
Official Site: http://www.cygnos360.com
Buy Cygnos360 v2.0 (retail final): divineo.com
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
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