Slashdot Mirror
Aussie Company Releases Xbox Mod-Chip Designs
An anonymous reader submits: "According to an article in the Australian Financial Review, An Australian computer chip designer will this weekend risk the wrath of Microsoft by making its sophisticated Xbox mod-chip designs freely available over the internet.
This release is the second and most advanced design to date that has been released by this company, the earlier release of a much simpler design was covered by a previous article on slashdot.
Go get'em while they're hot everyone. When you consider what has been happening to companies who irritate console makers, these files might not be around for long!" The AFR article requires subscription, but the AussieChip site has more information, including a link to the terms under which the designs may be downloaded -- looks like they're looking for some dedicated amateurs ;)
Slashdot away: http://www.hysma.com/xbox/
Got some spare cycles and want to piss-off billg? Follow the link in my current sig. (The site is running outside DMCA-land, no worries.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Intel is the one that created the "Linux-Enabling" chips.
Here is a clue boat for you (in easy to understand baby talk):
1 - Microsoft is manufacturer. They sell box to stores. Store sell box to you.
2 - Microsoft make same amount of boxes whether you buy one of not. All the Linux geeks in the world couldn't affect demand enough to change that.
3 - When you buy a box your money goes to the store you bought it from. They actually make a profit.
4 - Microsoft sells games to stores. Stores sell to other Xbox customers.
5 - If Xbox does well then stores stock up on Xbox games. Microsoft gets paid whether you buy the game from the store or not.
I am tired of typing like that. The point is that you are a moron if you think that you are getting a good deal at the same time you are wripping off Microsoft. For the same amount of money you could build twice as good of a box and not have to hack it.
If anyone actually gets ahold of this, despite the inevitable heavy slashdotting it will receive, please mirror it on Freenet! It's very hard to censor a network with no servers, no administrators, and no controlling entity. ;) If the Powers That Be don't want you corrupting your mind with impure knowledge, then such material belongs on Freenet!
If you're not familiar with the Freenet project, take look: Users donate bandwidth and space by running a "node", and the network's content exists in the collective datastore shared by thousands of nodes.
Data is duplicated as it's retrieved, so popular content gets more redundantly distributed. Node-to-node communications are encrypted, and so is the content in each datastore. You don't know and can't control what's on your own node.
The usual interface to Freenet is a web browser, since web pages and images can be easily inserted into the network. Other types of data (music, movies, programs) are common, and front-end programs exist to facilitate large uploads and downloads.
Check out Freenet, run a stable node, and play with it! The more you use it, the faster it gets. Bandwidth is more important than space; if you can host a node on something faster than a dialup it would be nice.
Oh, and here's the cool thing about Freenet that makes it perfect for things like modchip designs: Once inserted, content cannot be forcibly removed. Even the creators of the network can't delete something from it. The only way content falls out of freenet is if everyone ignores it.
Look around the site. Look for any info they may be an industry standard gerber file.
Gerber files are what is sent to a photoplotter to make the masks for etching printed circuit boards. They are standard across the industry, coming in two flavors, RS-174D and RS-174X, which differ mostly in how the aperture tables which define pad and trace sizes and widths are implemented.
Protel's software is a graphics editor for making and editing printed circuit board manufacturing files, so there may be other editors that might be able to read it.
If you are unable to open the PCB files, most likely you may have to lay out the circuit board yourself if you wanna make one.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
It's sad that I'm such a nerd I had no problem reading that.. It's a simplified forkbomb. in english: it runs itself, which runs iself, which runs itself... untily our machine cries out in agony and you reboot it. Unless of course your machine has proper restrictions on it (see: man ulimit; ulimit -a)
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Now on freenet at CHK@c1gWOutxO-0ebPP73wrutNLkIKYQAwI,k3w3C0mvMsBzec KB2oDZEw/AussieChipModChips.zip
you guys do know that this is old as hell, right? it's all over the web like here and here.
Check out this
http://warmcat.com/milksop
Thats the REAL creator of the CheapMod, Andy Green.
This news is NOTHING new as cheapmod information has been around for more than a 8 months.
If your going to post an article of this maginituted, do some research first.
Actually, I'd say your thinking of RS-247D, and RS-247X. The X version has the apeture table embedded in the top of each file.
.pcb files, perhaps there is one.
Given that the files are provided for personal use, I don't see a huge requirement for gerbers. Aside from gerber being a standard. Protel is almost a defacto standard here in Oz.
*alot* of pcb fabricators will accept the Protel files.
But if you're doing it your self, you'd probably be best printing the copper layers on a laser printer using transparency film.
The lucky pcb hobbist might have a Satcam or similar routing maching, which is free from the icky chemicals that you need to etch the board. Gerber files would probably work better here.
You can generate your own gerbers using Protel or their 30-day evaluation edition. www.protel.com
I don't like your chances of getting the Protel trial to run under Wine, it's windows software.
I don't know of a linux based CADD/CAM package that loads Protel
The reason for regional restrictions is to allow the companies to impose price discrimination. The idea is that you want to charge any one person as much as they are absolutely willing to pay before going someone else. Normally, you have to set a single price -- if you charged the wealthy citizens of the US more for Super Mario Brothers 5, someone would just import Indian copies sold cheaply. However, if you can break up the world into incompatible regions, you can charge a much closer value to what people are willing to pay in each region. Basically, this tends to be a good thing for very poor countries (as long as the game/movie actually comes out in their region), since they have to pay less, and bad for wealthy countries. It tends to irritate customers, who are directly impacted by compatibility issues, and don't directly see cost differences.
Also, AFAIK, region coding has not been successfully argued in court to be considered a form of copy protection, and hence is not covered under the DMCA. The reason region free hardware DVD players aren't commonly sold in the US any more is because the DVD Consortium can exert pressure on their licensees, not because it's against the law.
May we never see th