
A laptop, a desktop PC, one Raspberry Pi and a soldering station plus loads of electronic components right in my reach in all those drawers…
As I was completing the first few pages of the book “hacking the Xbox”, Nasir Jumani was teasing me with his texts about how good the games are and that I am to bring my own controller if I want to play.
After getting the soft copy of the book Hacking the Xbox for free, thanks to the writer Andrew “bunnie” Huang (whom I remember as the guy who designed his own Laptop) I mentioned the book to Nasir who also liked it and suggested if we were to get an Xbox for this book or not, so before even starting the book, we looked at OLX.com, found a seller, possibly the only Xbox 1 on OLX (Karachi) and we bought it the next day for less than Rs. 5,000 (less than 50$). Actually Nasir bought it and now he has started playing with it as we got some games with it as well while I am stuck here reading the README.1ST portion of the book and waiting for my chance to get my hands on our newly-bought-old-second-hand-modded game console.
About the Book: Hacking the Xbox is one of the finest books on reverse engineering ever written. Even though it covers the original Xbox (not 360), the lessons contained therein and analytical processes presented serve as a primer for both beginners and experienced hackers alike, serving as an inspiration for anyone wanting to delve deeper into the workings of the tech you bought and paid for. You can find the link to Hacking the Xbox (PDF version) at No Starch Press. [copied from DangerousPrototypes.com]
Oh, and here is a pic and a tweet from Nasir, cause it did happen, even if I haven’t even seen the damn thing in person yet
@zaidpirwani Faarigh Friday ftw. :p #xbox twitter.com/nasirjumani/st…
— nasirjumani (@nasirjumani) April 26, 2013
Copied from (and edited a little) Penultimate Author, Abstruce Goose
*being busy these days, but feel-like living a free day and at night, just before falling asleep all the sorrows and pending work comes haunting… but I ain’t not scared of any ghosts… :)
BTW, wrote a paper regarding an AVR based board with USB (V.USB to be precise) and a bootloader which makes it work without a programmer – also, Arduino compatible, detailes later, refining these days.
[Download not found]Presented the paper at a Student Research Paper Competition in COMNET’13 at Usman Institute of Technology, my friends also submitted their’s and WE WON, me winning the 1st Prize and my friends were the runner ups..
The following is a step-by-step procedure of what I did to get my Raspberry Pi in some sort of working condition, having SSH, VNC access, development tools installed, GPIO and Wiring-Pi Library and having a static IP so that Raspberry Pin can be connected directly to Laptop/PC via an ethernet cable without any router etc.
The hardware setup is as follows:
Now coming to the steps which I followed to set up my Raspberry Pi for use:
sudo raspi-config
sudo reboot
6.5. Before following the the next step, see Step 9 first..!
cd /etc/network
sudo nano interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.111
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1
sudo reboot
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tightvncserver
vncserver :1
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install python-rpi.gpio
sudo apt-get install python-rpi.gpio
This much should be enough for most, however, I installed/downloaded a couple more things
sudo apt-get install python-dev
sudo apt-get install python-smbus
sudo apt-get install i2c-tools
sudo apt-get install git
git clone http://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Raspberry-Pi-Python-Code.git
git clone git://git.drogon.net/wiringPi
sudo apt-get install arduino
sudo nano /etc/modules
i2c-bcm2708
i2c-dev
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf
#blacklist spi-bcm2708
#blacklist i2c-bcm2708
sudo apt-get install mono-complete
csharp
After boot and login via PuTTY, type in
vncserver :1
to start the VNC Server at port 1, you should have UltraVNC or some other VNC viewer application installed on your PC, start the viewer and put in the IP of Raspberry Pi along with port number. Connect, enter password and you are now logged in.
To start the VNC Server with specific options, you can use
vncserver :1 -geometry 1280x800 -depth 16 -pixelformat rgb565:
or see the vncserver help yourself to find out more options.
If you are like me, you want to access the Raspberry Pi directly from your PC/Laptop without router etc in between.
to do this, you will need the following, besides a Raspberry Pi and your Laptop.
— An Ethernet cable, cross connection is preferred.
— Raspberry Pi set at some STATIC IP, mine is set as follows:
address 192.168.0.111
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1
Set the IP settings of your PC Ethernet adapter as follows:
Now start a new PuTTY session and do as follows, (start VNCServer)
Login to VNCServer by using the VNC Viewer application, see how the port number is added with the IP address.
FINALLY, Raspberry Pi desktop, accessed from a PC, directly via a LAN Cable, without any Switch or Router.
Note: Most of the stuff mentioned and steps taken and commands used were taken from different websites, some of the ones worth mentioning are:
I am reading “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character” [Google Books] a book/collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Richard Feynman – found the book at the same market from where I found the Newness Electrical Engineering book.
I bought the book as I have heard quite a few lectures of Mr. Feynman on youtube and wanted to know a bit more about him, found the book by sheer chance so I bought it for Rs. 20. Some of the pages that I read today seem to perfectly describe the status of education system in Pakistan – the part is in which Mr. Feynman talks about his visit of Brazil in 1950 when he stayed there for about 10 months teaching Physics to University students. His remarks would be same if he visits Pakistan today, so when reading the below text replace Brazil with Pakistan and it will feel like our home country.
It is a long read, about 8 pages so read on if you have time now or read later or not, see it from a teacher’s perspective and see how we as students are doing and check if the same habits are found within us or not. I don’t know how Brazil is these days, but we are 63 years in future now…!
If you have survived so far and read all of the above, I would love to hear your remarks about it.
P.S. I do NOT own the rights to this book and do not claim this to be my work – for any legal matters.