Introduction

In November 2001, Microsoft released its first gaming console to the market: The Xbox. As with previous gaming systems (like Sony’s Playstation), people around the world started looking for ways to hack the console and bypass a security system that only allowed owners to play original games. Among many other reasons, hardcore gamers supposedly want to play backups or imports, for several reasons such as scratch prevention and collector’s issues, so bypassing this lock was “absolutely necessary.” (1) In the case of the Playstation 1 and Playstation 2, the systems were hacked by the installation of “modchips,” external pieces of hardware (i.e. chips) that modify the way the original hardware runs and thus allow users to directly boot backups of games or games of other regions.

On to History

The Enigmah chip, one of the Xbox's first mass produced modchips. It went on sale on May 27th, 2002 for a price of approximately $65USD. Required 29 wires to be soldered to the Xbox's motherboard.