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[realmccloy]

A customer of mine today told me he was at EB Games and asked why there is a shortage of Xbox's.  I have noticed this still, but was blaming after effects of the holidays.

The manager at his local EB Games informed him that MS is only shipping smaller numbers of machines while they are modifying the machines so hard drives cannot be installed, other than the orginal that has come with the machine of course.

I haven't read any news about this, so I am wondering how reliable this information is.  What could they possibly do to the machine to stop someone from adding a larger HD?

I could only think of them doing something to the original MS Bios which would mean no XBL, but once a chip is installed and hacked bios flashed to the chip it's open game, correct??

Just curious to what anyone thinks about this.

later all

[fghjj]

Just some things I can think of that MS can do to prevent "abuse" based on current Xbox, some may sound stupid:

1- Hide the LPC bus even more to prevent LPC-based modchips
2- Update dashboard/BIOS to a newer version to prevent softmodding
3- "Marry" the HDD serial number and the EEPROM, to prevent softmod (unlikely, not useful for repairs of broken HDD)
4- Include some HDD specs in the BIOS, to prevent softmod w/larger HDD
5- Use some kind of custom HDD controller/interface (unlikely, expensive)
6- Additional hardware changes (unlikely, expensive)

I personally think that 1.6 is the latest Xbox version there will be and that MS is focusing on the Xbox2 "security" and try to prevent modding via newest games or Xbox Live.

[total_ass]

MS technically cannot stop softmodding with a newer dashboard, as newer softmods do not rely on flaws in dashboards. all they could do is update the bios to boot something else, which they will never do, not to mention it would interfere with dashboard updates on current xboxes.

all they could do is update the kernel a bit more, which is pointless as it doesn't really acheive anything.

in theory they could 'marry' the hard drive unlock key to the eeprom, but even then when one wanted to upgrade their hard drive you could hack the eeprom and change the key manually. or just lock a new drive with the same password.