If I was to teach myself to solder using internet web pages... maybe I could have spent hours practicing on an old network card and if I did all that I could spend hours on websites like
www.xbox-scene.com figuring out how to do a mod....I would make THIS:
180GB Hard Drive
Upgrade the ATA cables, Boost the fan speed
add a Mod chip with LED display and 3 Bios caches (for loading differant boots, including a secret unmoded version of an XBox so you can play on XBox Live)
a few case and controler vinals just so you would know its not a regular XBox.
Customer userinterface and dashboard I would have built by myself
membership to something like gamefly so I can rent games and then dump them to the HD and send them back!
If I had an XBox moded...thats what I would do!