It would have been a great shame if the cancelling of this book by the original publisher due to DMCA fears had prevented its final release.
Although it's not going to be everyones cup of tea, you don't need to be a hardware fanatic to enjoy reading it. It does however provide an entertaining insight into the challenges faced by those wanting to turn their XBox from a games console into something more (linux media center, router or webserver anyone :)
The book begins with an overview of the XBox from a hardware point of view, with step by step instructions on opening the console and understand the motherboard layout. From here, bunnie covers a rather simple yet pleasing modification you can make to the xbox, changing the eject LED to a new colour.
The meat of the book however focuses on the security measures microsoft added to prevent piracy of XBox titles (and unfortunatly as a by-product, would be hackers from installing linux or running their own programs). This is by far the most intresting part of the book, showing the amount of work and various methods people use to locate and defeat these measures.
Finally the book finishes up with a round up on the legality of reverse engineering.
Recommended to anyone with an intrest in hardware, security or hacking in general.
