Between soldering LED's into the controller ports, making the xbox logo in the center of the console light up and the xecuter3 modchip, I had so much fun modding the OG xbox. I was first exposed to IRC and FTP through the Xbox modding community. I thought my multi-colored boot screen[1] was the coolest thing ever. Anyone else make the golden warthog skin[2] for halo 2?!
My main high school income was from modding Xboxes. It was all just local kids but one of my friend’s brothers worked for a celebrity and one of the Xboxes was apparently featured on MTV’s Cribs so I called it quits.
Our modded Xbox was done by my dad's friend at his work. Somehow I stumbled upon a halo modding forum and learned what I needed to do the most basic mods: ftp to pull the halo2 map files off of the box, using the signing tools to allow for modded maps to be played, and using a hex editor and modding tools to make the smg shoot tank rounds!
Secureboot style integrity systems that only boot into envs with ubiquitous signature validation and have lots of hardware protections to maintain that in the face of other bugs.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIVLbVoJIvk&t=1m07s
[2] https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gaming-urban-legends/image...