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XBox Linux HOWTOs
killmenow writes "Following up this slashdot story from a few days ago, today The Register is reporting that the XBox Linux folks have released a HOWTO for getting SuSE 8.0 running. Cool...I may have to go buy an X-Box now." There's also a HOWTO for Debian if that's your style. All of these require an XBox with modified hardware... There's also a story about the XBox online gaming service that implies Microsoft will be scanning your machine to make sure you haven't modified it, but we can't link to it since silicon.com has some sort of stupid registration requirement. Anyone find the story elsewhere? Ah, News.com has a story about XBox Live.
but to do anything with this I would really need a WHYTO.
sulli
RTFJ.
You'll eventually cave and will buy an X-box game. Its like a little kid dipping into the cookie jar even though its naughty.
Now I have linux on my XBox.
It was cool bringing a BASH prompt.
But now I really wanna play some Halo, but I can't?
It really sucks. I bought it for a gaming console, and now its just like a computer...
If I recall correctly wasn't some Anonymous Coward running a $250k award to the first group to get this done?
MS has the right to block any one form its networks. However, if they pursue the X-box owner (most likely by lawsuit) this is a different story. While X-box live is their network, the X-box is the consumer's personal possession. With that said, the person who owns it has the right to do anything he wants to it, modding included.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
"is this actually by microsoft" ????
Did you go to the site? It's a hacker project, with the current version running only on MOD CHIPPED X-BOXES. With MS threatening to use xbox-live to scan for mod chips, I'd say the answer is pretty obvious.
Bah! All you need to do is add another mod to hide the mod they look for. Remenicient of the ever popular radar-detector-detector.
Linux on the X-Box? Suuuuure, next some high up at Microsoft will admit that windows isnt secure, or that someone landed on the "moon"...
:P
humor folks, enjoy it
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
is this guy serious? if you just want to toy around with suse, BUY A PC. last i heard they were getting 1 frame a second on tux racer... for $300 you could buy a pretty decent PC that would run suse much better.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Could someone please post the EULA for the Xbox. I'm 99% certain that it said, essentially, "you can't use the software that comes with the xbox for anything but your xbox." That is, you can't use their software on another computer (making Xbox-emulators pretty difficult). I don't think it said anything else.
Furthermore, this restriction was only printed in a small box on one side of the product's shipping box -- nowhere did I see any EULAs on the unit itself, when I booted it up, or on any kind of sticker when I opened it up.
I'm just curious if they've since made it more restrictive. I know I was VERY surprised not to find a typical Microsoft EULA attached to a big red sticker pasted over the power supply, or somesuch.
That said, the "live network" could certainly deny access two whomever it wants -- be they people from another timezone, another country, or people using modded xboxes. But Microsoft shouldn't have any leg to stand on to prevent people from modding their boxes, except for the obvious one of avoiding copy protection on duplicated games (which wouldn't apply to 3rd party software, and *shouldn't* apply to backups). And Microsoft shouldn't go telling game companies that you've got a modded xbox and save folders on the hard driver for games X, Y, and Z (infering that they're illegally copied games).
Of course, what's right and legal is irrelevant when they've got more laywer money than most geeks with modded xboxes....
The DMCA means that even if you crack the protection on the XBOX you own, you are in violation, no?
Uh, the dreamcast has already been done.
I'm betting there will be a new generation of stealth mods and hd swap kits for those who want to make the box 'clean' to get on XBL. I don't really feel like playing cat-and-mouse every day to stay ahead of the game. Online play has historically been one of the most effective (not 100% mind you) means of copy protection.
I don't really mind double posts on
when Microsoft originally started shipping the xbox, they WISHED that that Linux would run on it as soon as possible. Why? They wanted a good excuse for entering the desktop/home PC market without being accused for using their monopoly power.
Now, because Linux has already soon changed the xbox from a game console to a nearly fullblown home PC - Microsoft can do it with windows as well. Want more proof, here. They are practising for this take over in many fronts. And it's not only PCs, they also bought a mobile phone plant in china. Oh yes, they will be selling the whole package SW+HW very soon.
And don't give me the line about how every xbox sale is a loss to microsoft. A sale is a sale on a quarterly earnings report, which is all the stockholders care about anyways.
For less than the price of an xbox you can get a really nice little motherboard Via technologies is putting out now for $130 or less.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/Products/eden.jsp
Now sure it doesn't have a 10 gig hard drive ($20 bucks?) or a dvd drive (+$40) or ram (128 +$20) or a case (+20) but so far for an Eden based system we're at $200, far less than the $270 you would expect to pay for a modded xbox.
Since UltraHLE i've never bought a console system. Why? If I put that $200 into my system, in a couple of years someone will write an emulator that can play it.
If you really want M$ to lose money, figure out a way around their copy protection, write an emulator, and watch how fast ISO images of the games start floating around IRC and p2p networks. Don't feed the beast by buying another xbox please!
--toq
Although some people will take the conspiritorial mindset that this was done solely to Microsoft's advantage and being anti-consumer, it was most likely done not to prevent silly things like Linux running on the box, but to prevent cheaters from modifying their boxes in such a way as to ruin the online experience for others.
It wouldn't take all that many cheaters with modded boxes to tank any online network's value to the average casual gamer.
Of course, there's the side benefit of punishing those who mod their boxes for copyright infringement purposes.
Microsoft may lose more money on a per unit basis to build the xbox, but Sony wasted more in R&D just to arrive at the PS2,3, 4, etc....
Yes, but Microsoft unfortunately doesn't have the first f**king clue about the electronics market. Sony does, in fact Sony are the biggest electronics manufacturer in the world. The reason that Sony don't just throw a bunch of off-the-shelf components into a box is because they understand their business better than Microsoft do.
Give it a couple of years and I'll bet you'll see Microsoft giving up on the X-Box.
Please explain.
GM should give me 100$ because by not buying a $40,000 car of theirs, they're 'losing' (I think the term youre looking for is not realizing 40,000 dollars of revenue) more than just a tiny 100$? Is it preferable to them that I take 100$ from them instead of not buying a car since they 'lose' less that way?
"Old man yells at systemd"
What's a waste of cash is all on your point of view.
I may like linux for certain tasks, but that doesn't mean I'm an anti-MS zealot. That's just idiocy. It behooves me not to be so close-minded.
Sony are not the "good guys". Nor are Nintendo, nor Sega. They're all running the same race towards the same finish line.
I own all 3 current systems, because I love video games. All 3 have exclusive titles that I want to play. End of story.
Sheesh.. Nerds spend 500 bucks on the latest whiz-bang video card, then talk about a 200 dollar console being 'a waste of cash'. I dont like PC gaming in general, so I'd rather spend the 500 to own all 3 current consoles (and I did). It's just a matter of taste.
Btw, this comment is idiotic..
>>"some games that were "exclusives" only because MS bought up their producers for that reason"
Thats how the industry works, goofball. You act like its some evil conspiracy, sheesh.
Nintendo bought exclusive rights to resident evil, Sony bought exclusive rights to GTA3, MS bought exclusive rights to DOA3 and Halo.
Meh, I shouldn't be feeding trolls.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Funny, I've heard the opposite.
FUD. The PS3 is at least two years out from now, if not more. Sony is simply trying to do to Microsoft what they did to Sega (ie, when the Dreamcast started doing well, they began flooding the media with PS2 announcements, even though you wouldn't see the console for another year and some months).
And yet, the XBox library is growing quite well. The first run of games (Halo, Gotham, Amped, DOA3, etc) did quite well, with a number of them topping sales of 1 million. The next round was mostly filler (like all consoles, there is always a lot of filler -- even more so if the console is looking to increase its library size. the PSX has a bunch of filler crap, as does the PS2), with a few gems like Rallisport, Gunvalkyrie, and Crazy Taxi 3. There are a number of great games being released this month now, too. Sega GT 2002, Sega Soccer Slam (yes, a Gamecube port), the next rev of sports titles (NFL Fever 2003 in August, Madden 2003, NFL 2K3, etc), Dead to Rights, Quantum Redshift, and more. What's my point? A console can develop a great library even if it doesn't have the benefit of being backwards-compatible with something else. Hell, the SNES did quite well, even though it wasn't backwards-compatible with the NES. Same for the Genesis and SMS (though there was an adaptor there). And of course the PSX did quite well, even though it was Sony's first machine (after Square decided to get on board, of course).
You just like making stuff up, right? Did you forget the 10+ years of backwards compatibility in Windows? The backwards compatibility in Office (new Office versions can read old Office files)? The simple truth is, Microsoft has proven that they value backwards compatibility in their other products, so why would you even think that they wouldn't with the XBox and theoretical XBox2?
First off, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being "100% anti-Linux". It's simply not comparable to being "anti-competitive". (hell, for Microsoft to be anti-linux, that means they're acting competitively, so they can't be both anti-linux and anti-competitive, right? anti-competitive != anti-competition, since the goal of being competitive is to wipe our your competition.) Anyway, once again you've failed to apply past evidence to your argument -- namely, Microsoft generally uses the courts as a very last resort (unlike some other companies *cough*ORACLE*cough*, *cough*SUN*cough*, *cough*NETSCAPE*cough* who run to court if Microsoft bats an eyelash at them). In other words, I doubt you'll see Microsoft taking anybody to court over Linux on the XBox unless things start to get really bad.
It simply amazes me that you can call Microsoft "the man" while at the same time praising Sony. Sony is just as "bad" as Microsoft, if not worse, but because their name isn't "Microsoft", I guess that doesn't really matter, does it?
In a recent Fry's ad, I saw an ad for a AMD Duron 1Ghz processor and motherboard for $79, and the motherboard had on board sound / video. Add some RAM, a hard drive, etc, and you can build a more powerful machine for probably around $300, and you don't have to solder in anything or void your warranty.
Anyone have a really compelling reason to run Linux on an XBOX? I'm sure there's at least one... maybe small machine footprint? XBOX is huge for a console compared to PS2 / Gamecube, but it's still small compared to even a midtower PC.
And yes, I'll accept "Because it's fun" as an answer :)
XBOX $199
MOD $99-149
Risk of ruining your XBox when soldering the mod chip: minimal but possible.
Add the price of your favorite keyboard and mouse and it's more cost effective to just buy a cheap PC or a "Net PC" with Linux (ThinkNic's go for only $249 WITH a keyboard and mouse).
For me, I'll keep my XBox of the games, and my cheap x86 box for Linux.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
why, oh why is everyone so hyped about the xbox? aside from the fact that the M$ marketing department know perfectly well how to generate hype and sell crap, I mean?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Two points, really. First, you could see this one coming miles away. Microsoft controls all the cards. They control the hardware you're getting, the software you're using and the network you're surfing. Given the fact that they created a closed box for a reason, it's no huge leap to imagine they'd use one or all of these paths to dissuade people from modding their box. And you won't see me minding too much either. One good thing that will make the X Box live a decent experience is conformity (yes, that evil, evil word). Knowing that the person who just fragged you has exactly the same hardware and connection. Sure, I might miss a multi region DVD mod or something, but not that much. Besides, I don't think anybody who mods for Linux is really worried about the games or X-Box Live. On that note, I can see MS being paranoid of Linux users trying to hack or otherwise use/abuse the Live network. I'd ban modded boxes too. A real, uncrippled OS is a dangerous tool in that environment. Too much temptation for you rabid, salivating Linux fan-boys. Finally, it's my opinion that Ps2 networking is probably going to blow because your going to have just as many surfing/playing problems as you did on your PC back in the Doom/Quake days... Y'know-- When that 56kb connection actually equalled out to 31.5kb if the planets were aligned and the wind was blowing south at 6kph? Maybe you'll get 42kb tommorow...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Price of a New XBox: $300.oo
Materials to mod the Xbox: $23.88
The look on his face when he realizes he just screwed up the soldering job and ruined the entire board: Priceless.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I think Microsoft's management were so used to winning in the software market they belived they can just do a similar thing in the electronics market and get the same results. I don't think they realised what they were taking on when they took on Sony.
I believe Sony - as business strategists - are much more sophisticated than Microsoft, at least when it comes to electronics products. I predict a suprise from Sony with the PS3 - there isn't going to be one. What Sony will do is make it so that all their medium and high-end DVD players will have the capability to play games. Games is where the money is, after all, not the boxes. Watch Microsoft struggle trying to compete with that. It would be really difficult for them to persuade other DVD manufacturers to alter their boxes to play MS games. But Sony is the biggest manufacturer of DVD players. I'm afraid soon it will be game over for MS in the console wars.
I'm fairly sure they'd give you $100 if you go out and buy one of their $40,000 cars in return. :-)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
A quick check at Walmart.com reveals that Xboxen can be had for $199. An 800Mhz Microtel PC can also be had for $199.
What do you want to do? Do you want a $200 PC? Buy the Microtel. Do you have an afternoon free to show off your 133t h4x0r 5k1115? Buy an Xbox and mod it.
I bought the dreamcast ($50) for it's hackability. I think it's worth the $50, hands down. No hardware mods are essential. The possibilites are not endless, but quite attactive. I think these people who are hacking the Xbox are simply paving the way. When the Xbox can be found at the Pawn shop for $20, I'll buy at least one if I know it can run linux. Heck, I'll be watching the prices over the next 6 months. With the console war, the PS2 is the clear winner. How long until Sony drops the price? How long until Xbox drops price to follow suit? How long until Xbox gets cheap enough to be used as multifunction appliances?
To the people who like to tear things apart and install linux, I wish you the best of luck. You are the geeks who make linux work the way it does.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
For all things that can be done with Linux installed in the console, I would like to be able to replace the Xbox drive with a higher capacity HDD and be able to partition it (one partition for a Linux filesystem, the other one for a regular 10GB Xbox filesystem).
If not possible, then how about mounting a NFS filesystem from another computer in the network, leaving the internal HDD untouched? I would still need to mount a remote filesystem in order to access my nearly 50GB worth of A/V files, as they won't fit into the regular Xbox HDD.
Lastly, a very important point here is that even though it is very useful to be able to convert the Xbox into a cheap and powerful $200 computer and use it as an A/V player in my huge TV, etc., I still want to use the machine in the way it was designed for, and that means running my legally owned games flawlessly.
What I really need is a non-intrusive Linux installation, such as the one in the Dreamcast. I know it might never be possible to run unsigned code without modifying the hardware, but THAT would be too much to ask.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
Cool...I may have to go buy an X-Box now.
Do us all a favor and please don't. Microsoft may lose money if you buy one, but it loses more if you don't. A console's fate is decided on how many are sold, it has nothing to do with sales of games. So when geeks start making Xboxes fly off the shelf, just to install Linux, it still makes the Xbox look like a high selling success. If the Xbox is seen as a viable console with high hardware sales, Microsoft will have have the last laugh. Then we'll see Xbox 2, 3, and 4, a prospect no one around here wants to see. Let the Xbox sit on the shelf , and then MS may get the hint and get out of the console business when it sees that they aren't selling.
Nanite
Yeah, Small.
God is real unless declared integer.
Strawmen left and right.
What does morals have to do with anything? Why should that even enter into the question at all? Linux isn't moral or immoral it has nothing to do with that at all. You won't be judged by anyone on which operating system you chose to put on your xbox. You won't get rejected from the gates of heaven for modding your xbox.
Besides, how does this affect you except on a superficial level?
Can't you do that now if you buy a video card with a TV out? I don't get it. I agree it's neat to be able to use an xbox for more then it was intended, but come on.
It's immoral because we all know how MS does business.
There used to be a company across the street from the one I worked at called netchameleon. They used to make PPP and TCP/IP stacks for dos, windows 3.1, and other operating systems. The majority of their business came from ISP bundles of their stack/PPP dialer.
Then MS decided it would be cool to include PPP in 95. Sales dropped, people got laid off.
Another good example is netscape.
And another one is BEOS
I'm sure there's a lot more companies to add to that list.
The biggest bitch people have with M$ products isn't so much the fact that they push other companies out with these practices, it's the inferior quality of this shit they shlep out.
Remember when
OOB
Used to make the 95 TCP/IP stack implode?
So is that enough ranting to justify my comment on why it's morally wrong to develop xbox on linux? No strawmen here, just facts.
I normally hate every attempt to snoop my systems. But I can see one good thing about the X-Box chip scanning online.
Now, I don't have a X-box or even played with it, so I don't know all that the chip mods can do. But let's assume that the gaming network catches on and there will be some very popular online games on the x-box. Couldn't one imagine that some would produce mod-chips that enabled the user to cheat the games in some way? Either by a function in the chip or by modified games.
Cheating ruined my enjoyment with playing Counterstrike( that and the games was getting old), so I would like to play a game where I was sure that nobody cheated. With every major game coming out these days, there's a constant battle with cheats, so the checking of the system could be a way to ensure a fair game.
Still I agree that it sucks and the fact that some servers insisted on scanning my files on my PC for cheats, before I could join a Counterstrike server, really made me say enough is enough. The X-box is not a pc, so maybe most people will not find it quite as bad. I don't know, I'm not going to buy a X-box anyway.
my sig
This is to try and convince the SETI@Home people to produce binaries for the Dreamcast and PS2 linux enviornments, isn't it?
If we hack the X-Box to run linux, won't that be an i386 platform console that can run seti@home? And then we can say, "See! People *DO* want to run seti@home on their game consoles. When can we get dreamcast and PS2 binaries to download?"
I keep reading MS is losing money on every single xbox they sell
/. when someone brings it up. It's no longer true -- but Microsoft would love to have you believe it. (Makes you think you're getting a good deal, for one.)
Ancient history. This has been gone over before from time to time on
Yeah, the first year, they had to write down R&D costs, pay start-up costs like for molds for the housing, circuit board design and low-volume prototypes, etc, etc. On a per-unit basis that first year, yeah, they probably took a hit. They wrote that off against taxes.
All that stuff is now paid for. Incremental costs for case, circuit boards, etc is as low as you'd expect of anything else with that kind of production run. Hardware costs (chips, memory, drive, etc.) are lower now than a year ago. Et cetera, et cetera.
Margins may be thin with the lowered price, but they're not negative.
Besides which, every XBox they sell is one more they can point to when talking to game designers, trying to convince them to develop games for the XBox exclusively or at least before any other platform.
-- Alastair
Question: Are the HOWTO's mentioned hosted on an XBOX running Linux and Apache? That'd be cool...
Point: The DMCA only kicks in if you are circumventing encryption (i.e. to play illegally copied games). If I'm correct, this setup uses the mod chip to entirely bypass the existing OS. So you aren't even running the OS that has the decryption. It should only be illegal if you employ some Linux based software to then circumvent encryption on commerical software or games.
I can't see how the DMCA could be used against someone just running Linux and freeware on the Xbox.
Come play Moral Decay!
Actually, by buying an X-Box and running Linux on it, you're actively contributing to the downfall of Microsoft. Here's how:
Microsoft relies on selling game licenses to make a profit off of their whole X-Box venture. And in order to remain competitive with Sony's PSX-2 pricing, they've had to heavily slash their unit costs. The net effect? They take a loss on each unit sold ($150, maybe more?), with the expecatation that if they sell enough games per unit, they'll be able to make that money back (and then some). By buying an X-Box, you're hitting MS where it hurts...... and no, companies don't have nuts.
Except if we assume they only produce as much as they sell, they'd be worse off if I bought one, and didn't buy any games or peripherals, as opposed to somebody else buying that specific unit and going out and spending their money on the money-making games for MS.
:)
:)
My theory is that the Xbox will still be sold - the question is more like, did they sell it to somebody who is eventually going to turn it into a profit generating sale, or did they sell it to me so I can banish it to the closet? In that case, it seems me not buying one Xbox is going to hurt them less because it increases the chances that somebody is going to buy it for the games.
I see what you're saying, but if they end up selling every last xbox, I'm not really hurting them worse by not buying one. But I can cause a hit on their ROI numbers by buying one and flushing it down the toilet because its one less sale that will turn into profit through the game licensing side.
"Old man yells at systemd"
You're on some bad fucking crack, dude.
but it's not immoral what they did, just ruthless business practice. Sucks that smaller companies are not as ruthless as MS, but that's the way it goes.
Anyone who tries to compete with MS knows the rules, they haven't changed them since the DAY they were founded. If you know your MS history, they have acted in a consistant manner.
It's the companies fault if they only made one product and never diversified what they made.
BEOS was a great product, but it was not good enough to switch to. The drawbacks were more then the advantages.
Netscape was an example of illegal but not immoral practices.
Sorry that you love computers and hate MS, it's a fact of life, deal with it. It's like loving cars and hating roads.
If you think that because some people got fired through MSes actions makes them 'immoral' then I would venture to state that through their actions, more people then ever have jobs in the IT industry. If they were the number one server OS then almost everyone would have a job because it would take that many people to keep that infastructure going!
Yes, but Microsoft unfortunately doesn't have the first f**king clue about the electronics market. Sony does, in fact Sony are the biggest electronics manufacturer in the world. The reason that Sony don't just throw a bunch of off-the-shelf components into a box is because they understand their business better than Microsoft do.
Flashback to 1982:
Yes, but Microsoft unfortunately doesn't have the first f**king clue about the computers market. IBM does, in fact IBM are the biggest computer manufacturers in the world. The reason that IBM don't just sell software is because they understand their business better than Microsoft do.
Give it a couple of years and I'll bet you'll see Microsoft giving up on DOS.
Mmmm.. Donuts
It almost seems as if Sony was not ready for this. It would kill the Xbox if PS/3 came out right now. It makes you wonder why Sony didn't release the PS/2 enhanced or somthing. you know the blinkn lights edition with full compatibility and obscure XYZ GPU postprocessing.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
If you want to buy a system to hack on then buy a Dreamcast. They're cheap (about $40) - and you can run Linux to your heart's content on the thing.
Not only Linux, either - lots of homebrew games, NetBSD and even QNX
There are even lots of good, and now very cheap, commercial games available for it.
Sure, it's not as advanced as an Xbox or a PS/2, before someone makes that very obvious point. But that is not what we are about, is it? The fun for many of us is in subverting the manufacturer's intentions and doing something unorthodox with the hardware - well the DC's the best for that.
2 bucks and a trip to radio shack and this is easily accomplished. (SPST or DPDT micro toggle, depending on the style of mod)
Thing is, people want to mod so they can swap in a 100 gig hard drive (anything bigger xbox cant use) and copy everything they rent from blockbuster to it. Or swap in a PC DVD drive which will read CD-R(W)/DVD-R(W). (The xbox has trouble with cdr)
Same thing with linux. It wastes up yer hard drive, putting it 'back the way it was' isn't so easy.
Much harder to switch. Though, not impossible.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Then MS decided it would be cool to include PPP in 95. Sales dropped, people got laid off.
My graphic design teacher had a similar example. As recently as 20 years ago, there were these things called "Typesetting shops" wherein you would pay megabucks to set type on a page. Somewhere around $60 CDN per page. Then along comes Apple and makes a computer that can do all that typesetting stuff in the comfort of your own home, and output it to a laser printer for relatively free.
Guess what happened to the typesetting shops.
That's what happens to people who make a business doing something that can easily be done better once someone has the idea to implement it.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
" How much energy and effort has been expended to get linux to run in some marginal fashion on the Microsoft Xbox? Imagine if instead that effort had been used to improve linux. Which end result is better?"
Well, you see, the situation where people tell you what to code (because it's useful) rather than you coding what you want to is called having a job.
Coding what you want to is a hobby.
If I want to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get freeBSD running on a kitten then that's between me and the kitten (and possibly the RSPCA...).
Who are you to tell me what to code ? I'll code what I damn well want to, motherfucker!
graspee
Slashdot's policy is that the NYT is so useful and referenced by so many stories that it shall be the one exception to their rule.
Anybody consider the possibility that Microsoft may have butchered the signature crap on the xbox in the same manner as they did with CryptAPI?
Any way to get a certificate and create another certificate with an issuer of Microsoft or something?
just a stray thought from the void...
(honestly not meaning to advertise a seller, but it's the only link I had handy)
From the description:
9 wires only
Full BIOS update possible
Works with all import games (US, JAP and PAL)
Original BIOS remains unmodified
Works with online games
Import games works with standard AV cable in full color
The only "ModChip" 100% safe for future upgrades
Allows to use home-made software on the Xbox
Parallel port built-in - upgrade BIOS anytime without soldering
Play Import games
Play Backup games
There's discussion on the Xbox mod forums about all of this. Some people seem to think this is a good solution. For $60, I'd give it a shot.
because THEY want to control how and when stuff is released. They want to sell differently priced versions of things in different countries.
The fact that some japanese game that will NEVER arrive in the US might be wanted by a few westerners is just a byproduct.