[genmud]

Decapping is well within the realm of hobbyists, I have thought about putting together an open source equivalent of the JetEtch, which can sometimes be found on eBay for fairly cheap. My main concern is that the chemicals used are really dangerous.

Things like laser glitching are feasible in the $thousands range and power or RF glitching is in the $hundreds range.

With low cost fiber laser cutters and etchers, lots of techniques can be applied. I imagine with the high resolution X-ray stuff starting to come onto the used market, lots of things for hardware hacking will become extremely affordable.

[rasz]

Yes. Decapping and laser glitching is all exploited today in amateur settings. Here are dudes working on old Arcade machines http://caps0ff.blogspot.com in fact most recent post is about laser glitching :)