Xbox
The original Xbox was released on November 15, 2001, in North America, February 22, 2002, in Japan, and March 14, 2002, in Australia and Europe. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market. As part of the sixth-generation of gaming, the Xbox competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast (which stopped American sales before the Xbox went on sale), and Nintendo's GameCube. The Xbox was the first console offered by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. The name Xbox was derived from a contraction of "DirectX Box", a reference to Microsoft's graphics API, DirectX.
Xbox (console) modchips
These modchips were the very first modchips to appear on the Xbox console. These chips resulted from the initial work eavesdropping on the HyperTransport bus of the Xbox. Common features of this generation of modchips include basic abilities such as burned discs, removal of region restrictions and removal of Macrovision protection from video DVDs. One major issue that occurred with this generation of modchips is that it only worked on the first revision of the Xbox motherboard which was labeled v1.0. Another issue was that it required one to solder around 29 wires onto the Xbox motherboard. This increased the chance of damage to the Xbox motherboard due to improper installation by inexperienced technicians.