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 ;)

Comments

go aussies

[sixdotoh]

alright, finally the aussies are living up to their criminal heritage!!! (hey, i was born there at least . . .)

seems the past few articles involving Australia on /. have been about them restricting rights.

Re:go aussies

[MavEtJu]

When I teased my girl about it, she countered with "only the ones who were too stupid to be caught, the real ones are still over in England.".

I am beaten, unable to use that argument again.

Re:go aussies

[The Only Druid]

Two points:

Of the criminals who were sent to Australia, you should remember exactly two facts, at least:

One, until the American revolution, those criminals were being sent to America as indentured servants; When the revolution occured, there was no means of removing those criminals from the overcrowded British system, meaning that instead they inhabited numerous overpacked ships for weeks and months off the shore of the UK.

Two, of the criminals that were sent to Australia, something on the order of 70% (the numbers vary) were non-violent, and under the age of 20. The majority of these criminals were orphans who stole bread, prostitutes and the ilk. These weren't, without many exceptions, murders and real theives. Moreover, a significant portion of the colonists were Black Sheep of wealthy European families, sent to Australia with the combination of hopes that they might not embarass the family further, and that they might redeem themselves.

Now, as to their rights...hey I love the country, and hope to move back there, but its a country that has a list of books/movies/games/music that the government deeps innappropriate, and can, if it wishes, refuse to permit their import. This occured recently, with GTA: Vice City, which forced Rockstar games to censor the game slightly for release there. Its a dangerous rule...of course the US (my current home) is getting precariously close.

Re:go aussies

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

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)

Re:go aussies

[fermion]

One the essays in Salmon of Doubt, by the late Douglas Adams, talks about a sign on a bridge which stated the punishment for defacing the bridge would be exile to Australia. He was surprised that the bridge was still in one piece.

Adams then goes to ponder what one can say about a country where, at one time, one of the harshest punishment was exile to one the most beautiful places on Earth.

"Mod Chips" or "Linux-Enabling" chips?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever controls the language of the debate controls the debate. (see "sharing" vs. "stealing")

Can we start calling these "linux-enabling" chips or something equally positive, something that shows that they are NOT primarily designed to circumvent copyright?

Microsoft Won't Have To Do A Thing

[aerojad]

Slashdot will surely keep this site down for a while to come!

Re:Please read before mod

[Anonymous Coward]

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Mirror Link

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot away: http://www.hysma.com/xbox/

Don't forget!

[AndroidCat]

There's a distributed project to crypto-crack the Xbox private key. This would allow runnning Linux or anything else on an unmodified Xbox (no mod chip), and would keep the warranty intact.

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.)

Re:Don't forget!

[SuperBanana]

There's a distributed project to crypto-crack the Xbox private key. This would allow runnning Linux or anything else on an unmodified Xbox (no mod chip), and would keep the warranty intact.

Methinks voiding the warranty will not be a problem by the time the project finishes.

Remember Distributed.net? Aka, the guys who took years(and years...) to prove how easily they could crack RC5 given all that distributedcomputing power? :-)

Re:Don't forget!

[JDWTopGuy]

Dude, it's a distributed computing project. Theoretically, with enough computers, it could be done in a few years.

Well okay, it would have to be something like a couple of stadiums filled with dual processor 3Ghz systems running full-time, but hey, they just might get lucky. They don't have to search the entire keyspace in order to find the right key.

flood the site

[jesler]

If Microsoft doesn't want anyone to see these designs, they need only bring the site to its knees with a flood of traffic, generated by a well-placed article on highly-viewed website.

oh... wait...

Dear Microsoft Inc.

[SuperDuG]

I am writing you on behlaf of the X-Box Purchasing community. I would like to thank you for your wonderful product that you are selling at a loss, and tell you that we are all very happy to watch your stock index fall.

Anyways, I am writing you today to inform you that your wonderful copyright protection and region protection schemes have been broken. I request that you save the entire community some time next model and just forget the entire copyright idea all together. We want to play with our X-Box's the same as we want to play with our toasters, but you don't see GE breathing down our necks when we do it.

Sort of a word to the wise if we buy it, and we're bored, we're going to screw around with it. Anyways I hope you have a wonderful day monopolizing the Operating System industry and ignoring the supreme court.

Lots of love,

Everyone.

Re:Oh alright then.

[aweraw]

Hate to break it to ya, but the DMCA doesn't apply in Australia... it's an American law...

Not true

[fobbman]

"When you consider what has been happening to companies who irritate console makers, these files might not be around for long!"

Not true. Thanks to one of the benefits of the Internet, now that this information has been released and has been covered by the major geek media, there will be enough people who will download it so that the information will live on for a long, long time.

Ban Computers

[t_allardyce]

I think its obvious what course of action needs to be taken: Ban computers. Computers are responsible for almost 100% of DMCA violations: These tools of outlaws come in several categories:

-Personal computers:
these remain the no.1 tools of criminal "hackers" allowing them to propogate virii and pirate material and to violate the DMCA

-General purpose processors and microcontrollers:
these are used as mod chips, clearly tools that are used to violate the DMCA

-The internet (another by-product of computers):
is responsible for allowing numerous DMCA and copy right violations including the spreading of mod-chip plans, pirate material, and George W. Bush jokes.

Im serious, i can guarentee that once personal computers are banned there will be atleast an 80% drop in the number of DMCA violations! If you dont think banning personal computers is a law that can be enforced then think again: There exist large databases of computer owners sourced from retail shops, online stores, credit card transactions, software licenses and ISP's. Personal computers also emit an EMF at the frequency of their internal clock, these can be detected and categorised - higher frequencies usually denote more powerful and therefore more illigal computers. Its true that there are legitimate uses for computers, but in this case they should be restricted to government use only.

Let me leave you with a thought: Terrorists also use computers!!!!!!

Re:Oh alright then.

[tomstdenis]

Whoa whoa, you mean America doesn't rule the world yet? Dubya, send some troops and wrangle up a kangaroo or two.

Re:Oh alright then.

[jericho4.0]

Yes, but violators better be aware of the DMCA if they ever plan to visit the U.S, remember Dmitry Sklyarov?

The thing about information...

[heli0]

"these files might not be around for long"

you can't unring a bell.

Uncensorable mirrors...

[Myself]

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.

Re:PCB file

[anubi]

Most likely a Printed Circuit Board file.

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.

This is NOTHING new, only a rip-off something else

[Anonymous Coward]

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.