Full Steam Ahead
At this point, it seems it is high time to get the project really going. The plan is to do the bulk of the work during the Christmas holidays, so it is imperative to have all of the ground work done by then. By December, all work must be R&D.

To that effect, this evening I finally got around to trading my brand new (version 1.6) Xbox with a friend who had the original (version 1.0/1.1) equipment. This is a win-win situation, because he gets a new unit, with a new warranty, and I get a unit that is more suitable for this project. Knowing the difficulties with the 1.6 hardware also allows for another section of the project report, where I can write about Microsoft's continued attempts to prevent people from running Linux on their gaming consoles, as they get more experience with their ideas about trusted computing, of which the Xbox is a prototype platform.

I was able to get Linux loaded into the two megabyte base image fairly quickly:

Next, I will attempt to strip the unit of its ability to play games, in favour of behaving as a small, cheap computer.