[E3-hacking] Making life easy for you

[David Given]

On Friday 17 June 2005 10:28, Cliff Lawson wrote:
> Fair enough but shortly the job of recycling our subsidised hardware is due
> to get a bit trickier for you I hope.(Assuming we've implemented SHA256
> hashing and MD5+RSA signing correctly ;-)

Sounds like I should go and buy an E3 quick!

One of the things I like about playing with my E2, apart from the sheer fun of 
making something do something it was never designed for, is the fact that 
it's a really nicely designed piece of equipment. It feels solid and 
well-built, and has a very nice form factor. If you can produce an unlocked 
but unsubsidised version, then good luck to you; I hope you sell a 
bucketload. I'd certainly recommend them to people who want a small, powerful 
ARM box.

(Incidentally, depending on how your security system works, you may be able to 
sell one model of the hardware and then sell a seperate unlock code. 
Downloading the code would disable the encrypted boot process and wipe the 
flash. That way you might be able to save costs by only needing one 
production line.)

(You should also be aware that some people are going to take any encrypted 
boot sequence as a challenge; look no further than the incredible lengths 
some people went to to crack the XBox. However, I doubt any approach that 
requires hardware modification will achieve enough volume to worry you.)

(Also incidentally, I own a NC200. It's a lovely piece of hardware. I'm trying 
to hack that, too --- I have my own code booting from the SRAM card, but I 
haven't deciphered the floppy disk boot code yet...)

-- 
+- David Given --McQ-+ "I smell a rat; I see him forming in the air &
|  dg at cowlark.com    | darkening the sky; but I'll nip him in the bud."
| (dg at tao-group.com) | --- Sir Boyle Roche
+- www.cowlark.com --+