2009/10/15:
More Details About 'Wave 4' from abgx360 - v1.0.2 coming soon
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Wave 4 and YOU v1.1 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 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, 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 1.6, 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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