A closer look at the Microsoft Original XBOX DVT-4 Development Kit | MVG

[@dogoku]

Vivendi was the parent company of Blizzard, which merged with Activision to become Activision Blizzard, which was recently bought by Microsoft. So they full circled xD

[@kenrickkahn]

Some things will always find itself back.. Look at Nintendo with Banjo.. In Due Time what was once will always be again..

[@Sean-D78]

@@kenrickkahn Banjo will stay with Microsoft, they're just nice enough to allow it on Nintendo's platform

[@1Soniccool]

Vivendi Games

[@YTesting]

Illuminati is behind this, I am sure

[@Kalvinjj]

@@Sean-D78 Nice enough = profitable enough

[@JonThysell]

Former Xbox engineer here - though they probably won't come after you for the devkit, they could look up the tag and see who it was last assigned to, which in this case would probably be someone at Vivendi Universal, given the other sticker.

[@ErebuBat]

What is the risk of them doing that?

[@BurnMoneyBeats]

@@ErebuBat the last person assigned is responsible for it not being returned to m$. Side note: Noice Surname

[@testosteroneinc.3800]

You must be fun at parties.

[@ErebuBat]

@@BurnMoneyBeats right…. But what is the r consequences for that, especially for a defunct studio?

[@JonThysell]

@@ErebuBat This late? I'm guessing practically non-existent. If a current generation devkit popped up online somewhere I imagine someone would check it out. I know that some prototypes/alpha kits would be requested back as soon as more production-ready models were widely available. The X1 alpha kits were also in these beastly 70lb. PC towers we had to have chained to our desks. No one was more grateful than I when they needed to be returned and we got "normal-sized" beta and production devkits instead.

[@sirflimflam]

Man I always geek out over dev kits. Back in the end of the PS2 lifecycle and early PS3 lifecycle I was working for Sony in their first party QA department, and I handled / used so many devkits and testkits there. It was actually so fun that on my lunch breaks or even after work I'd sit in my office plugging away at "homebrew" (would it even be homebrew at that point?) on the official sdk's. I could burn a few DVD/BD-R's and share it with the people working on whatever my project was at the time. I really miss those years.

[@chrisakaschulbus4903]

"(would it even be homebrew at that point?)" Now you're getting really deep and philosophical.

[@GamerbyDesign]

Office brew maybe

[@gtmode6947]

Hi, do you have any DVD files from then left ? Interested

[@woolwinder55]

That's really cool!! Do you have any good stories of one time you went to do that or no? That's still great anyway!

[@transformersloverjon]

Upload some of those projects if you still have them.

[@AwesomeGames56]

Such a beautiful piece of hardware. I’d like to think it influenced the crystal Xbox in some way. I just finished a softmod and HDD upgrade on an OG Xbox 1.6 that I picked up from a thrift store as “not working”, and as far as I can tell the only issue with it was that it didn’t have cables. A $10 set of cables and about $50 worth of other hardware and it’s quite the machine. I have a lot of respect for the community surrounding softmodding and the things you can do with the original Xbox these days.

[@PneumaticFrog]

try hardware mods! The xbox HD+ kit is awesome

[@NickGoblin]

Lucky. I grabbed a ps1 at a thrift store that said "not tested" on it and it was a fucking nightmare trying to get a game to boot. Two replacement disc drives and it still wouldn't read anything. Not even a normal CD.

[@Manic_Panic]

Mine is 1.1, hardmodded with TSOP flash and with a 2TB SATA HDD + the optical disc drive still works just in case. Got 85% of the entire official library of the OG Xbox inside the hard drive, if you could have some extra hundred GBs (maybe 200-ish GB) on the HDD, you could actually have 100% inside.

[@PneumaticFrog]

@@Manic_Panic 85% is all you need. Can I get a link to the game files?

[@Manic_Panic]

@@PneumaticFrog Just search for "The Unofficial Redump Hoard".

[@CorporalDanLives]

I just remembered how this thing had screenshot functionality, and you could reboot other Xboxes on the network. I would mess with my art director by resetting his machine randomly, man I was real turd back in '01

[@Gold171]

For what developer, if you don’t mind me asking?

[@charlibiris]

@@Gold171 you are allowed to confess a sin, not a sinner heh

[@squeeeb]

I love it lol

[@CombustOrange]

i love imagining that. just, you rebooting the art director's xbox and then you hear em shout across the room "GOD DAMN IT THIS IS THE THIRD TIME THIS WEEK"

[@BleughBleugh]

I’ve fond memories back in the day of upgrading standard xboxes to have 4 extra memory chips to take them from 32MB to 64MB…that made XBMC work better and did seem to give improvements on some games at the time. I think dev kit xboxes we’re all 64MB or more with all chips populated and there was an xecutor chip that could enable dev mode

[@deanwoodyatt1891]

Edit - was adding 64Meg more memory!, fun, hand soldering 100 pin TQSP chips with chipquic and 'drag soldering'

[@blahdelablah]

If you had the soldering skills you could add extra RAM to a regular Xbox, the extra RAM could be used by some homebrew software.

[@chrisakaschulbus4903]

@@blahdelablah Why should i do this if i can just download more ram?

[@blahdelablah]

@@chrisakaschulbus4903 You going to download a car next?

[@chrisakaschulbus4903]

@@blahdelablah Do i need a loaders license to download the car? i'm so sorry...

[@unclenoob3062]

Since I watched MVG's first big hit video (about soft modding an OG xbox) I've modded and sold/given away around 10 of these bad boys. It's been sweet.

[@jeffnickels6199]

I was buying xboxes for $10 each a few years ago and giving them away. Now there's a store near me giving $150 each for them. I could've made s killing if I'd known they'd be worth that much now.

[@michaelhanson5773]

@@jeffnickels6199 would they have bought them as modded? Some places here would not touch modded hardware for purchase.

[@BurnMoneyBeats]

Yeah I remember that post 911 propaganda about a hacked ps2 being powerful enough to launch a missile. When suddenly you couldn't find a codebreaker at gamestop because it was the most popular way of getting the M Brown exploit on the memory card. I had to sort mine out with a gameshark and a save converter iirc. Thank god for Free McBoot when it came along. Got into xbox late but it was still a struggle at first. JRocky is the goat though, although I still need to find an old enough usb stick. My current setup uses my modded psp to hold the xbox exploit on a 1gb pro duo. It's no pretty but it works.

[@Ricar2002YT]

I can't wait for the 360 episode! I'm sure it's going to be pretty interesting just like this one

[@n1njahawkssecondchannel84]

I bet too

[@MetalJesusRocks]

That is one SEXY OG Xbox 😍

[@mattymatt2323]

Cereal port would have came in handy for the devs working an early shift

[@Auraxium]

Yeah breakfast is important

[@RWL2012]

or *kernel* debugging. oh wait is that popcorn?

[@iplyrunescape305]

Rofl

[@TrimeshSZ]

One strange and rather counter-intuitive thing is that there was no hardware difference between the "Prototype" DVT-4s and the "Final" ones. They were imported as "prototypes" because the FCC testing wasn't complete and they didn't have an FCC ID - and you can't import stuff into the US for sale or lease unless it has FCC approval. So they were all bought in as prototypes and were technically considered to be "on loan" (which is also why so many of them have those "MS property" stickers on them - that way they never technically left the control of Microsoft). Some time later, the DVT-4 did pass FCC testing and had an FCC ID assigned - but it turned out that the original design was compliant anyway. Since pulling back all the "prototype" boxes and replacing them with ones that were exactly the same except for a sticker was clearly stupid they didn't do that and just left them out in the field. I was told by one of the guys working on the hardware that there are actually rather more "Prototype" DVT-4s out there than "Final" ones, at least in the US.

[@CodeAsm]

intresting :D these prototype DVT4 dont differ much from the final DVT4, but the DVT3 differed more, besides different casing, the MCP X was older. Or maybe even newer DVT4 had different PCB designs in a way? hmm

[@LucasLealDev]

Damn transparent consoles are beautiful

[@Alexander_l322]

It is and i love the green Xbox badge on top rather than the clear one

[@WickedGamerCollector]

Thanks for showing ! I have never seen this kind of an Xbox Classic before 👍

[@piip4]

This was really interesting. The original xbox is among my all time favourite consoles due to how versatile it is in terms of modding and upgrading, as well as the huge community behind such things. The xbox will always have a place in my TV stand.

[@eppinizer]

If your "how the graphics work" videos are my favorite, these dev kit videos are my close second favorite. Keep up the excellent content :)

[@Allerka]

I have a DVT-4. Mine has the USB port portion of the case, essentially, "broken" out. Like, someone took a sawzall and just chiseled out some of the case. Mine also had a completely (even to this day) unknown game on it called "Invasion Hostile Intent". I've asked some of the big people in this scene on Twitter (MVG, Borman, etc.) and they never heard of it. It's not really a game, just a menu front end, but it looked like some type of Counter Strike knockoff. Getting into one of these kits is a hassle, at least for me. I have to remove the expansion card screw mounts (on the cards) because the case actually sits between them and can't be lifted up, like a usual Xbox console case. When I got my DVT-4, the first thing I did was figure out how to open it, and then busted the clock capacitor right out of there.

[@teckman02]

has the game been dumped?

[@algamer6176]

Please Dump the game bro

[@Allerka]

@@algamer6176 I backed it up myself (with a few extra copies), but again, it's NOT a game. It's barely event a front end, it's just a camera kind of flying around a generic suburban house environment with a menu that doesn't really do anything.

[@algamer6176]

@@Allerka Still can you at least upload it to the internet archive

[@farhanmahalludin]

Man I miss the early 2000s when translucent plastic cases were trendy. From Game Boys, PS2 controllers, Digivice etc.

[@MishraArtificer]

Then clear windows and RGB LEDs became trendy on PCs...we, as a species, seem to love watching lights change.

[@CorporalDanLives]

I had one of these. It was great. Incredibly robust, deploy code via network, effortless, really. I had to switch to PS2 for the next project and I wanted to die.

[@TaimatCR]

What games did you work on? If you csn/want to share of course

[@x0j]

huh? the ps2 tool had network deploy

[@luxorjr]

That was really nice and informative. I given an original Xbox Development Kit some years back (plus one for the 360) and apart from a visual inspection it had to be put away due to family obligations. Allegedly it has an early version of Perfect Dark on it so I really must get around to digging it out.

[@teckman02]

dump that drive and make it public if you haven't already.

[@perpetualcollapse]

Understandable, have a nice day.

[@npen4998]

You too! Thank you for your open-mindedness.

[@ericandruszko7563]

As a much less experienced game dev myself, seeing these always bring joy to me. I never got to play with console dev kits in college or in the industry (at least not yet), since I work solely on PC games and a few mobile games. But I love delving into the whole console process, even if I barely use/play on them.

[@saschaberger3212]

God knows how much I envy you everytime you show those devkits.

[@antcosentino27]

Seems like the toolchain was remarkably well-rounded. Impressive stuff.

[@GoogleDoesEvil]

Yeah. I built my career on the Microsoft stack. When I work in other ecosystems I get really frustrated. Their development tools are decades behind Microsoft's. I really wish we had a technology like WPF that works on qt or GTK for example. Of course, half of what made WPF so great was Blend; so, we'd need something like that too.

[@BlazinX]

Beautiful styling for a dev kit. 💯

[@milkycalcium3172]

This is awesome, taking a peak behind the scenes is so cool. It'd be awesome to see you dive into a PS2 or PS1 Devkit

[@FintanMoloney]

Fascinating topic MVG - always had an interest in Dev Kits. Thanks for covering this.

[@Evercade_Effect]

I really enjoy these videos showing us dev kits and what not.

[@boydpukalo8980]

Always enjoy these fascinating videos of the systems and developing for them. Please keep bringing them on.

[@edumeli02]

I think it would be a cool idea for a video to show us the developement process hooking up the dev kit to visual studio

[@Zxcer]

These dev kits are so interesting to me, i learn alot of from your channel!

[@aceofhearts573]

When I worked at redstorm we moved buildings and I was able to get a dreamcast and n64 for free that was used to play test back in the day. All of their consoles and dev kits that had a hard drive got destroyed. My heart hurt so much.

[@phuzz00]

Another reason they had to be really sure before they sent the gold image, back then console games couldn't be patched easily, so they had to get all the bugs out first. Not like today with 'day 1' patches :(

[@CPTAmaris_Streams2114]

Ugh I miss the old days

[@RandomGuyCDN]

No Day 1 patches, no lying to a game community about whats in the game and having to patch a game multiple times later to still be incomplete (Looking at you CDPR). What I wouldnt give to go back to a time where games were playable on release and EA wasnt a complete wreck of a sports game company

[@mechadeka]

The original Quake had a day one patch that the instruction manual told you to download before playing the game. Numerous first party Nintendo games underwent multiple ROM/ISO revisions. Stop pretending to know what you're talking about.

[@venumspyder]

I used to work on games with the Xbox Dev Kit back in the day. Compared to Sega Saturn and Play Station Dev Kits it was a DREAM to work on!

[@eleKtriK676]

Thanks for making this! Im keen to start some homebrew dev on the Xbox, but always thought id be hamstrung by not having a dev kit. More simlar content would be awesome as I love your dev videos!

[@jormalindgren4865]

Nice to see, videos on devkits are always entertaining. 👍🏻

[@harrylights]

You’re so knowledgeable I enjoy watching you I’ve been watching you for some years now and I find you very therapeutic and I’ve got quite a big selection of games and consoles myself so the subject is interesting.

[@LusRetroSource]

Very informative video! The O.G. Xbox was my favorite system to mod. So many cool things you were able to do with it.

[@InfectedChris]

I have a modded OG Xbox where I got a dev kit mobo with the 128mb RAM and it seriously helped out when using things like XBMC!

[@Absquatula]

MVG telling Microsoft to leave him and his old dev kit alone made me think of a dog hungry for it's owners lunch 🤣 "No, go away. Shoo"

[@tonyatliss3709]

Nobody can Fade Original Xbox That's real

[@ochykysh]

The DVD debug connector looks like external SCSI 68 connector, the PCI adapter looks like a IDE to SCSI card or smth very similar. It has the Sil IDE logic and what looks like a sanded down Adaptec SCSI controller.

[@ochykysh]

Ok..the more i look at that Raptor card the more it looks like a mini PC card. It probably has a 486 or P1 core in that custom ASIC with external L2 cache chips + ram chips above those, a south-bridge, bios and IDE + SCSI controller chips. Would love to see that intel Flash chip dumped.

[@MegaManNeo]

I was under assumption that large silver PC tower with the XBOX name on it would be fake or something. Nice to hear it's actually real and one of the earlier devkits.

[@Carlosocc95]

I like to watch videos when you show this devkit, because it's beautiful.

[@hanslanda7319]

Just the other day I bust my Dev kit by accident, had it from another life in a different career. Mod chipped it myself purely so I could get a VGA bios on it as picture is so much better via a CRT monitor. Anyway used same VGA 128mb bios as a normal v1.0 Xbox honestly thought there wouldn't be an issue but bricked it hard. Oh well I shall perceiver and not accept defeat.

[@TrimeshSZ]

They have a different MCPX chip from the retail boxes, so the boot ROM encryption is different. If it's actually a modchip then just removing or disabling it will let the system boot from the on-board flash that should have the dev boot ROM still in it. If you reflashed the TSOP (which is possible without hardware modification on a dev or debug kit) then it's a bit more difficult - the easiest way to recover it is to unsolder the chip and reflash it using an external programmer. You can use a modchip flashed with an original debug boot ROM, but you will have to flash it in a retail unit (which will apparently brick) then transfer it to the debug. This also breaks the recovery disc functionality, which is why reflashing the on-board chip is better.

[@Xfade81]

Head of Xbox knocks on MVG's door: "Mistakes were made"

[@galangtirtayudha3973]

Imagine Xbox actually comments here and says: 'You son of gun, give my property back!'

[@3dmarth]

Fortunately, that kind of thing just isn't worth the effort. It's of no value to them. I'm legitimately kind of surprised, though, that Nintendo doesn't give everyone with a Dolphin or Revolution devkit a copyright strike and serve them a legal notice.

[@whthafk]

oh man i have been loving your content. kudos bro!

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Ah damn. I didn't send this one ;)

[@carnavs]

I would absolutely love to own one of these.

[@chrisakaschulbus4903]

And i would absolutely love to own you ;)

[@carnavs]

@@chrisakaschulbus4903 Daddy? Sorry, I mean sir?

[@chrisakaschulbus4903]

@@carnavs "Daddy" not during business hours. Sir or mister is ok.

[@horsthorstmann2480]

Always love these retro hardware videos u create 👍

[@syclopse]

Early DVT4's said FINAL to identify them from BETA-1C DVT3's. This DVT4 is from the 2nd half of 2002 so it's clearly using final hardware. The prototype stickers are only used to bypass FCC type stickers I'd assume.

[@CodeAsm]

best reply :D details and knowledge. How many DVT3 iterations are you aware of ?

[@northencail2099]

Looking forward to the next one. Great videos

[@andresbravo2003]

This is a beautiful white Development kit.

[@Nobbie248]

I have my original xbox right next to my keyboard on my gaming desk loaded with 2tb and ready to go at all times.

[@S44BBOI]

makes you appreciate how great the Gamecube was!

[@71bw]

??????????

[@HonkeyKong54]

Huh?

[@RetroFan]

Modded my Xbox years ago & it's awesome.

[@williama29]

a OG xbox dev kit sweet system that was for development use i never knew about this till now i had an original xbox in 2005-2006 but i used it to play games on normally i did discover xbox mods through a modified save file but i didn't know how to soft mod an xbox

[@uzziel524]

7:38 gotta love that glitch

[@Jrasta111]

Best retro content. I'm not even an Xbox fan. Many thanks.

[@r3v0lv3rz]

still hoping I might own one of these some day and make a cool video game for it. closest I have come is a retail xbox modded with 128MB RAM but no debug bios flashed yet.

[@thephoenixsystem6765]

Have you looked into homebrew options?

[@arndzu]

If you're right, physically it's a USB port, but it isn't one electrically. My understanding (I've never been brave enough to try) is that plugging USB equipment into a JVS port can damage either device. I own a Naomi 2; and I've read tons of "THIS IS NOT A USB PORT" warnings. As a software developer, I might assume the USB looking port on the back of my dev kit is a USB port and trying plugging something into it; which may be why it's physically blocked (to keep me from bricking a dev kit with my curiosity). I suppose they could also have a "THIS IS NOT A USB PORT" sticker; but I think the solution they went with is more visually appealing :D

[@OSW]

Great vid! How come dev kits would have double the memory? (9:00) as in, wouldn't you want to know how it runs on the finished console?

[@XENON2028]

I would assume because some memory would be required for the debugger

[@MobCat_]

Sega chihiro dev kit is different as far as I know. The USB port is input not output and part of the IDE emulation card. The IDE emulation card is (or was) an off the shelf part, not made by MS. Soo they might of thought it would be useful but as far as I know it's only USB 1 or 1.1 so the IDE cable is wayyyy faster. and failing that moving things via ftp is faster then sticking isos onto an old FAT usb drive.

[@CodeAsm]

The DVT3 or older, I think older, a pretty rare mobo pics where shared a few years back showed a (for then) unkown 4 pin socket at the back of the xbox board, seemingly to connect to this usb port (same socket). Upon further research, we (the community) think it might have been connected to the MCPX extra USB host port, the 5th (or 6th) usb host port. the first 4 for the controllers, the others disabled or never connected to the BGA balls anymore (not sure bout this part, but for sure the pins arent routed out to the back anymore). The MCPX datasheet will tell you the USB host pin locations. might have been used for a usb keyboard (which MS clearly communicated to not use for retail games (yeah, until Phantasy Star Online ?!) The Chihiro might have used the same connector for some custom FPGA mediaboard adapter during development, i mean, between Type 1 and xbox developement they miught have briefly used it for JVS, cause of this rumor? That early board im talking bout also has a black connector between the CPU and Fan, it was probably Jtag, which is disabled in DVT4 and retail. (the jtag is disabled by connecting 1 pin of the cpu to ground)

[@brianchambers7070]

This is really neat, thanks for sharing 👍

[@cafererel1916]

I wish i was a programmer back then. Theese days it feels… idk it just feels

[@jayl9482]

Can't wait to watch this one tomorrow, 1am is a bit too late lol

[@simbin.]

Did anyone else notice Xbox 360 and GFWL has been down since this weekend?

[@hypnotised-clover]

I'd like to think that your exact system was used to develop the Xbox version of Crash Twinsanity, with it being from Vivendi Universal.

[@big_chief21]

Great Video, would love to see one on the PS2 Tool one day!

[@myagi20000]

that is if he can find one for a decent price and not arrive destroyed because PS2 TOOLs are fragile

[@andiarrohnds5163]

damn, that 1280x720 launcher resolution is totally gangster

[@JestersDeadUK]

Great episode!!!

[@merkyuk]

As a collector i’m envious

[@yy6u]

og xbox development was supported on vc++98 vs 2002 and vs 2003, vs 6 support was later dropped, and the vs integration ships with patched files meaning it's a issue to use the XDK with updated visual studio net

[@JoeStuffzAlt]

I wonder if this is how developer mode starting from the Xbox 360 came to be since dev kits are similar to retail consoles

[@XENON2028]

starting from the Xbox One

[@Charliebob2006]

Assemblergames used to be the place to get Dev kits, sold a few on there in the 360 days.

[@reebokraidz1640]

I have a dvt 4 its great also got the rapter card for it

[@LouisOrangeCat]

Vivendi did some great games, that's so cool

[@remakeyourself]

It's really weird how in that old video, younger/balder/no-beard MVG looks like Brian Altano when he was mid-transformation from big Brap to little Brap.

[@X360DevNerd]

I have a few debug kits that were used to make Scarface The World is Yours :D

[@UncleBopEntertainment]

I wish i knew how to code games. I have so many great ideas for new games

[@AndyDo]

Those asset tags were probably in an Access DB on someone's desktop at IT. Surely long long long gone (obviously). But I'd love for some PM who just got promoted to try and justify their job by trying to go after that.

[@michaelhanson5773]

That shell of the dev kit looks exactly like my clear shell i had gotten for my OG xbox and i put LEDs in and stuff... Made me do a double take.

[@SLB94]

MVG: please don't come after my dev kit. Microsoft: that sounds like a challenge. Seriously though, I'm pretty sure Microsoft has more things to be concerned about than an unaccounted for dev kit from 2 decades ago.

[@pleasedontwatchthese9593]

Thats a cool looking dev kit

[@jamarforsythe7262]

Lol, the "MS Equipment" sticker is still used today, my work laptop has a similar one.

[@The0rangeCow]

Microsoft: "That's a nice devkit you got there. It would be a shame... if something happened to it..."

[@epicon6]

Microsoft has done a pretty good job with X360, X One, X Series consoles except for a few embarassing hiccups, but the original Xbox was and still is really amazing. Everything from the opening logo, to the design and quality of the console and even the amazing out of the box smell of the controllers. The og Xbox is close to my heart but i don't have any attachment to a Windows 11 style interface on the Series X,

[@ShanGamer1981]

i like the frosted acrylic casing

[@marschrr]

This gon be gud

[@david3199]

Love you mvg thanks for all the awesome videos

[@tirsojrp]

RS232... Back in the day... how I feel with a serial to usb in my backpack👴

[@skylo706]

I really want to write some cool homebrew games but most of the time I just have to use c or c++ and I really find these languages difficult, though I have a lot of experience in C#, python, js and assembly

[@Zebra66]

It's not a USB port for JVS. It looks the same but the wiring is different. It's actually RS485.

[@WednesdayMan]

I like the clear plastic look of the dev kit. makes me wonder if any other Xboxes were made in clear plastic

[@handlesarefeckinstupid]

The xbox crystal.

[@JoeSim8s]

We need an episode about Wii's NDEV!

[@MrSamPhoenix]

Love this, I can’t to see development kits based on the PS2/PS3.

[@yy6u]

great video as always!

[@overlordalfredo]

4:25 so the kernel debugger that would only connect via RS232 is something that could not be connected to an Xbox debugging kit? (4:40) Great design Microsoft...

[@apokalypz]

Great episode just a bit too short would be nice if you showed some examples of you coding and operating it

[@teckman02]

He has done that in the past.

[@GoTeamScotch]

4:00 I thought that photo looked familiar. Lol