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Brand New Wave 4 Games on Xbox 360

Posted on 20 October 2009 by guessswh0

Looks like Disney has put the whole 360 modding/hacking scene into a little bit of a frenzy.

Disney’s newest game is the first game that has the Wave 4 formatting.  This includes the newest NXE and its dash updates.

Here is what Kushan has to say about Wave 4 games…

2009/10/16

Looks like we were wrong in assuming that iXtreme v1.51 was fully compatible with 4th Wave PFI/Video. Turns out that only Hitachi iXtreme v1.51 will boot 4th Wave backups, and BenQ/LiteOn/Samsung iXtreme v1.51 will NOT boot 4th Wave. It would have been fully compatible if only the Video data had changed but not with the change in PFI (capacity). So currently the only safe option for booting 4th Wave backups on a BenQ/LiteOn/Samsung drive is to use iXtreme v1.6 and the one shot boot disc.

2009/10/15 (Updated 2009/10/16):

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Wave 4 and YOU v1.2 by Kushan
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A n00b’s guide to everything Wave4

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What IS “Wave 4″?
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A regular, retail Xbox 360 disk is split into several sections or “partitions”. One of these partitions is known as the “video partition”. Before March 2009, this partition simply contained a video that would play if you inserted the disk into a regular DVD player, the video would basically tell you that you were an idiot and need to put it into an Xbox 360 to play it.

One of the ways Microsoft can detect you being a dirty, filthy pirate is to scan this video to make sure it matches with what is supposed to be on the disk, so to protect you, the firmware itself does a quick checksum of it and if it doesn’t match with known video data, it wont boot. Every now and then, this video changed, with each change being called a “wave”.

Normally, system updates (dashboard updates) are stored on a different part of the disk, taking up about 8Mb of space, however in November 2008 Microsoft launched the “NXE”, a completely new Dashboard for the system. Along with the new dash came Avatars, making the whole update substantially larger (somewhere in the region of 130MB). This meant the update wouldn’t fit on the disk in the same partition that previous updates were located and so instead the update was placed within the video partition. This was known as “wave 3″ and hit around March 2009.

As Microsoft now distributes new Dashboard updates in the same partition, each time the 360 gets a software update, we will see a new “wave” a few months later. There was a Dashboard update in August 2009 and that is now being distributed with the latest games. This is known as Wave4. Its identical to Wave3, except the video partition now contains the August 09 Dash update. The first known game to have this was Cars Race-o-rama.

Now, its important to remember that iXtreme was designed to PROTECT you and part of that protection is the “video partition” check. When this video partition changes, the firmware doesn’t know if its just a new “wave” or if its a bad rip and thus opts to not boot it.

When wave 3 hit, iXtreme 1.51 was quickly released to tackle the problem. This was a temporary fix only, the firmware simply does not do the video partition check and thus boots was supposed to boot ANY wave, up to wave 4 and beyond.

However, this in itself is “unsafe”. If the disk is fine, then you’ll be fine, but if the video partition is in any way corrupt, iXtreme 1.51 will still boot it and thus you could be detected by Microsoft and banned. This also is not helped by the fact that some impatient, idiotic people decided to “patch” Wave3 games with Wave2 data in order to get iXtreme 1.5 or below to boot it. This is a great way to get yourself banned and thus iXtreme 1.6 was created.

ix1.6 will only boot games that have the CORRECT video partition, up to and including wave 3. This means that if you have a Wave 3 game that was patched with a Wave 2 video partition (aka a great big bullseye for Microsoft to target), iXtreme 1.6 will not boot it but ix1.51 will.

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Will I need a new firmware to play Wave 4 games?
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IF you are on iXtreme 1.5 or below, Wave3 games will not boot for you and thus Wave4 games will not either. In this case, YES you need to update your firmware!

IF you are on iXtreme 1.51 (Hitachi), then ANY wave will boot fine, including Wave4 however you must be EXTRA careful as you are not protected against corrupt or incorrect video partitions. This is one of the many reasons to always use abgx360. If a game is fully verified, playing it on iXtreme 1.51 is just as safe as playing it on iXtreme 1.6 – this includes Wave4 games.

IF you are on iXtreme 1.51 (BenQ/LiteOn/Samsung), then YES you need to update your firmware!

IF you are on iXtreme 1.6, you can ALSO play Wave 4 and above games, however you need to use a special activation disk to do so. This was added to the firmware specifically for this eventuality – the disk activates “one-shot-boot” mode, essentially it allows iX1.6 to boot any game you insert into the drive, even if its not properly stealthed. You simply insert the disk into the drive, let it spin up (it will say “play DVD”), then swap in your Wave4 game. You will need to do this each time you want to play a Wave 4 (or above) game. Don’t worry, if the game has all the necessary stealth data, then iX1.6 will still use it, so if you boot a VERIFIED Wave4 game using this method, you should be just as safe as you were booting a verified wave 3 game.

The disk is available here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/5ed5xr and needs to be burned to a DUAL LAYER disk, but entirely on the first layer (do not set a layerbreak and when imgburn prompts, tell it to burn to the first layer only).

A new iXtreme firmware will eventually be released with strict wave4 support (no activation disk needed), however some time needs to pass before this happens. Although Cars: Race-o-Rama was the first game to appear in the wild with Wave 4 video, it was not necessarily the first game to be pressed with it. Also, during a wave transition there are often a few exceptions to the process which also need to be known about. There will be no timeframe for this, so do not ask.

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What about abgx360? Will that need to be updated?
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abgx360 v1.0.1 (latest as of time of writing) does not recognise a “wave 4″ image and will report a POSSIBLE corrupt/bad PFI/Video partition, however the program is actually still completely compatible with Wave 4 games. Once a Wave4 title is verified, abgx360 will still download the .ini from the database and fully check out the image. If the image matches and the game is verified, then it has also passed the stealth checks and thus it is as safe to play as any wave3 or wave2 game.

abgx360 v1.0.2 will be released with full Wave4 recognition in a similar manner to the new iXtreme; that is once the transition date is known and any exceptions are noted.

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Jailbreak All iPhones with 3.1.2 Firmware!

Posted on 13 October 2009 by guessswh0

The dev-team has yet again delivered to us what we all wanted.  A jailbreak for the 3.1.2 iPhone!

Check out our guide here to create your own custom 3.1.2 firmware for your iphone!

Or if you want, download one of our premade jailbroken firmwares!  The jailbroken firmwares only come with OpenSSH installed and additional Cydia repositories.

2G Jailbroken (activated)

3G Jailbroken (not activated)

3GS Jailbroken (not activated)

3G Jailbroken (activated)

3GS Jailbroken (activated)

If you are going use the firmware on your site, please link to the post, not direct to the ipsw.

Let us know how it works for you, or if you have any requests!

If you have any questions, also please ask us in our forums where our experts can help you out.

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Use a Laptop as a Wireless XBOX 360 Adapter

Posted on 19 September 2009 by yosel177

Why waste yoxboxur hard earned money on a wireless adapter when your desktop or laptop already have a built in wirelss card?  There are only 3 steps needed to take advantage of your computer’s wireless connection.  Here is an easy guide to help with the settings.

Comments (0)

Jailbreak iPhone 3.1 Firmware!

Posted on 16 September 2009 by guessswh0

Hello all!

Well, as you know, the 3.1 firmware for Apple’s iPhone has been released, and as you should also know, the iPhone Dev Team has yet to disappoint!

This current jailbreak is only for iPhone 3g, 2g and first gen ipod touch users.

They have just released the method for jailbreaking the new 3.1 firmware!

For a complete guide, check out our wiki here!

If you have any questions, please, ask in our forums! Our experts can help out!

Good luck!

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Free – Anonymous BitTorrent Service

Posted on 27 July 2009 by guessswh0

Yes, it has finally hit the scene.

A new service has been offered to all internet users – with Bit Torrent users specifically in mind.  It’s called “ItsHidden”.

Check them out at their webpage.

logo

The service is nearly the same as other existing VPN services that are availble for users (such as iPredator).  The way it works, is you will VPN into their server, and all information between you, and their server is encrypted.  They also promote that no logs are kept about the information you are sending or receiving through their service.

It is designed to work with all platforms:

  • Windows
  • Linux
  • Mac
  • iPhone

Right now, the service is in a beta testing mode.  See if you can sign up for it.  Additionally, they will offer a $5 account (assuming this is a monthly versus a one-time fee) which enables port forwarding, and other features.  However, the service claims that they will always offer the basic account for free.

It’s definitely worth a look.

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DRM – Nearly Extinct

Posted on 22 July 2009 by guessswh0

It’s true, DRM is officially dead.

Although, many people could have made the arguement a little while ago when Apple had announced that all music on iTunes would be DRM free.  However, the RIAA, and other copyright groups were still supporting and attempting to promote DRM.  The RIAA had predicted that DRM would be making a major comeback, but really…. come on.  Users hate it.  It only hurts legitimate users.  People will be more inclined to pirate the media they want versus deal with software that can cripple the media that they “own”.

But now the RIAA has said that DRM is nearly extinct.  Jonathan Lamy, spokesman for the RIAA, has even mentioned that DRM is almost non-existant nowadays.

It looks like the music industry is finally realizing that customers just want what they rightfully own (when purchased).  Lets hope that the death of DRM is coming.

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The New Pirate Bay’s Paying Model

Posted on 17 July 2009 by guessswh0

So it’s been confirmed,

The new owners of The Pirate Bay are going to be turning the website into a paying website.  In order to access the files, and everything the new Pirate Bay has to offer, users will be forced to pay a fee, although it has not been detailed if this is a one time fee, (or more likely) a monthly fee.

The new owners have said that a user can contribute his computing resources (our guess is sharing the files, nothing like a distributed computing application) to reduce that users total cost all the way down to 0.

Essentially it appears that the site can be free, but we don’t know the amount of “computing contribution” is required for that amount.

If all goes well, the sale is supposed to take place by the end of July…

Let’s hope you followed our previous article about copying The Pirate Bay’s torrents to an open tracker and we can make sure we never have to use this model.

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New Method for Jailbreaking iPhone 3GS with Redsn0w!

Posted on 08 July 2009 by guessswh0

The redsn0w application has just been updated with the functionality to jailbreak the iPhone 3gs.
We have just made a guide for you to be able to follow and perform the jailbreak.  Check out the guide here:

Jailbreak 3GS with Redsn0w!

If you have any questions, be sure to ask them in our forum here!

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Could The Pirate Bay’s Torrents Live On?

Posted on 06 July 2009 by guessswh0

Well,

It has been confirmed that The Pirate Bay is going to be sold for 7.8 Million dollars to the Global Gaming Company, which is a Swedish software company.  So now, many of us might be thinking, what exactly is going to happen to the torrents that are hosted on The Pirate Bay?  The new owners promise that “no illegal” downloading will take place on the website.

Does this mean that the torrent community will lose quite a bit of content?

Not if we take action.

Torrentfreak provides a pretty nifty article on what can be done to help keep the trackers alive, using Open Bittorrent, which is an open tracker that anyone can use.

So how does this work?

To quote Torrentfreak, this is the general process:

First of all find a torrent on The Pirate Bay – I chose Montt Mardie’s “We Are All The Pirate Bay” for symbolic demo purposes here. Now paste the URL of the torrent into the editor on TorrentEditor.com and click ‘edit it’. TorrentEditor will return the seeds and peers – in this case 182 seeds and no peers.


obt1


For the next step, remove the Pirate Bay’s trackers from the torrent and replace them with the announce URL for OpenBitTorrent’s tracker, which is http://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80/announce and click ‘update’ at the bottom of the page. Result: 182 seeds, no peers.

obt2

This is the entire process.  Pretty simple.

By no means are we suggesting any single person go through and do this for all torrents on The Pirate Bay (but if you feel like it, go for it).  But if we can get the entire bittorrent community to add just a few torrents, we can ensure that The Pirate Bay’s files will continue to sail forward.

ugh… cheesy, I know.

But, lets all start, and add one today to help keep content available…

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Jailbreak Your iPhone 3GS with Purplera1n!

Posted on 04 July 2009 by guessswh0

New news!

A jailbreak for the iphone 3GS has just been released.  It’s a program called Purplera1n.

If you want to learn how to jailbreak your 3GS, click here to see our guide!

The basics is that you will download the Purplera1n application, and then run it from your computer.  It will connect to your iphone, and jailbreak it.  You’ll then have to install cydia, and you will be set!

If you have any questions on how the whole jailbreaking process, ask here in our forums!

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