I read a couple guides before attempting this, but in retrospect it wasn’t terribly difficult.  In the course of my research I determined that I owned a very recently made xbox – hungarian – and I got to learn about the diverse xbox modding community which is both vast and deep.

For this project I had to track down an action replay unit which allows you to copy saves to you xbox via the memory card.  When I purchased my xbox, back in ‘05, I asked if the retailer carried the memory cards and was assured that, with the tremendous harddrive installed, there was no need for a puny memory card.  Given that it took me 4 days to track one down in the metro area I should have just got one then.  This cost me 14 USD and was required for about 15 seconds of this project.  At that rate, it was more expensive than the xbox.

I also had to locate a copy of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell – I found a greatest hits copy for 4 bucks on day one.  Given that this is only required to load the save from the memory card it is kind of expensive, but it’s a title I haven’t played, so I consider it a good investment.

The steps:

1. Plug the action replay unit into your PC and install the action replay software.  There is also a driver for this unit which came with it and which was rediculously hard to install.  I’ve been working with XP since it was in beta and I’ve been working with USB since it was rolled out, but it was like predicting rain trying to get this thing installed.
2. Post hardware install, locate a copy of the Softmod Installer.  This is also apparently like magic, but I was able to locate this in about 5 seconds using google and the word “torrent” and had the file in moments.  You must extract this and copy the SID.Splinter.Cell.v2.0.Xbox-Hq file into the memory card using the old drag-and-drop method.  The copy takes a couple seconds and allows you to get the linux loader onto your xbox.
3. Remove the memory card from the USB adapter and place it in your xbox controller.  Start your xbox with an empty DVD tray.  When the xbox dashboard comes up, navigate to the memory card area and, as one suggested, “drill” down to the memory card.  You can then copy the file, which appears with the Debian logo, to the xbox harddrive.
4. At this point you can reboot your xbox, stick the Splinter Cell disk in, and enter the game as if you intended to play.  There will be a Linux profile within splinter cell and by selecting it  you allow the magic to happen.  Anyone familiar with hacking will know the phrase “buffer overrun” which is what you’re causing to happen:  by running this Linux profile you’re actually causing a memory buffer to fill up and overrun which executes the arbitrary code installing Linux on your xbox.  Magical.  Think about the implications of that and understand it is one of the most basic building blocks of an exploit.  Solid.
5. After a couple seconds the Unleashx dashboard will appear – from now on this is what your xbox will boot into – a marked improvement I think.  I recommend 2 things now:  create MS and Mod backups.  If you were about to update a webpage or perform a kernel update I would tell you the same thing – a backup isn’t just one step to perform prior to doing something else.  A backup is a best practices sort of event that should precede everything you touch, from config files to OS version upgrades, almost without you thinking about it consciously.  Now, only after completing the backups, you should select to install the softmod.  Although each step up til now has lead to this point it is terribly anti-climatic.  I expected a trumpet to sound or a rooster to crow or something else bordering on the romantic.  I was, however, disappointed in that regard.  In all others, however, I was much pleased.  I booted it up and saw the old green splash was replaced by the new blue Unleashx dashboard.  I was more pleased by the new toys I had at my disposal.
6. I now had the ability to configure the network settings of the device and start up the FTP server.  Why do wee need FTP, Devon?  Because we’re going to copy over the XBMC which is chock-full of goodies to play with.  You can get the XBMC from XBMC.org and it’s a pretty swift download, too.  Copy it over and you’ll see it under the Applications menu.  Since my XBMC was released something like 20 hours prior to me installing it I saw no need to upgrade but, if you have an older release, there is compelling reason to upgrade to the new one – reasons like tetris and the use of scripts.
7. Finally, I took it upon myself to start enabling Samba shares so my Xbox could then stream media on my local network.  The device is actually quite robust, sporting a 733 MHz Psuedo-Celeron and a 233 MHz NVidia GPU.

So, that’s it for now – in the near future I’d like to try either installing a version of OS X on there or maybe seeing if I can get a pair of them to do some rendering in tandem using Dr. Queue.  I must, of course, give propers to Gina Trapani at Lifehacker and the XBMC wiki.