US takeover fails

According to ExCyber above, the chips he were selling didn't contain any Microsoft code. So the answer would seem to be, yes you can.
 
afaik ALL Modchips for the Box contain some kind of hacked MS Bios (apart from the Cromwell bios), be it a hacked debug bios for developing or a retail one. No chip just patches anything, I can confirm that because I have seen a "repaired" Xbox in which the original bios chip had been destroyed by force and desolderen, but which ran just fine with a modchip installed. There is no real difference in the data these chips contain, otherwise you wouldn´t be able to flash old 29-connection and newer LPC chips with the same kind of bios file.

The same chips which are used for some of the Xbox Modchips are also used as motherboard flashroms so I highly doubt that anyone will ever penalize selling these chips. And haven´t you noticed that there are practically no modchips offered for quite some time which are "ready-to-go" and loaded with a bios other than Cromwell?
 
afaik ALL Modchips for the Box contain some kind of hacked MS Bios (apart from the Cromwell bios), be it a hacked debug bios for developing or a retail one. No chip just patches anything

Enigmah did. If you don't want to just take my word for it, find some images of the boards and look up (or have a knowledgeable friend do so) the datasheets at Xilinx and/or Lattice depending on which version of the board you're looking at. They used only a single low/mid density Flash CPLD, which is nowhere near enough to hold an Xbox BIOS.
 
Originally posted by googlefest1@Feb 27, 2003 @ 12:04 PM

actualy i probably refered to the constitution in error

what i was refering to was the right to make a legal copy of your movie, software, etc . so that you can store you originals

some people actualy do that you know - i do that (but i usualy wait till you cant easily buy it anymore) (example all my favorite pc software i have i make a back up and then a back up - so if the back up goes bad then i have the other back up to make another backup so i have no need to break out the original--- same thing with my audio cds some of which cost more than 200$ so those i keep in a case and use only back ups -- same with the old game systems

you dont actually have such a right
 
@Excyber: Ok, I´ll look it up. Could be interesting ;-) btw, wasn´t Enigmah known under a different name, too?

edit: found it. OH god, not that thing!
biggrin.gif
He could even sell some of those? But the soldering diagrams seem interesting... don´t they look the same for the early homebrewn chips?

It suddenly struck my mind that if it patched the bios it was a device solely made for copy protection circumvention and therefore could be illegal according to the DCMA, right? But what if a chip is sold empty or with cromwell? Running Linux on a Xbox doesn´t circumvent anything, you can´r run pirated games with cromwell. If you flash another bios then you are responsible for anything that arises out of it yourself.

I mean you can copy a book printed blue on red with a standard scanner while filtering the colors out, that doesn´t make the scanner illegal because it´s not a device whose single intent is to circumvent a copy protection, or does it?

@Jurai: Depends on the country you live in. In Germany p.ex. you actually have the right to copy audio cds "for personal use", i.e. at most give one copy to a relative or close friend, this copy has to be made of an original cd etc... But circumventing a copy protection will probably soon be illegal here too (thanks RIAA!) and 7 out of 10 cds in the top10 have such a protection already. That also means I cannot play legally purchased cds in my car radio since it is also capable of playing MP3s and the radio detecs the data track on the cd with the low-quality WMA files on it.

You also have a right to make a backup copy of expensive or system critical software (i.e. operating systems, office suites etc...) because a loss of the original media could affect your work capabilities. You do NOT have a right to backup "entertainment software", this had been taken to court before and although iirc no penalty was issued to the person which was accused all copies were destroyed. This is because the loss of a game does not hurt you financially that much and it doesn´t affect your work capabilities. The companies should replace defective media for an acceptable amount of money though. Besides, most games can nowadays be had for very little money a few months after they´re out. N64 excluded, some games like Conker and Mario Tennis still sell for ridiculous prices long after the death of the system.
 
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