I feel the need to include a disclaimer before getting into this: I don’t own an original Xbox, I own a Playstation 2, I consider myself a casual gamer, I’m a fan of Open Source and not Microsoft.
I purchased this box on the first day because early versions of consoles are generally easier to modify. With the PSP ver. 1.0 it was easy to run homebrew code, but with each successive firmware version, Sony makes it harder. The original Xboxes that are being sold now make it almost impossible to run Xbox Linux because of a hardware change.
Before we get to my experiences, here are some links that you might find interesting.
- Chipworks de-capps and photographs Xbox silicon. Chipworks is a leading silicon reverse engineering company. [via bunnie, who still needs a 360]
- Anandtech’s photo tour of the 360 internals, one and two
- batlogic’s VGA cable pinout and article on the original Xbox’s security model
- Free60.org, the Xbox 360 Linux project
