In the last days of February, the user "Zephray Wenting" managed to acquire a transparent laptop designed for prison use, and shared several details about its security online, including the BIOS password, the unit whitelist, and his hack to access the USB. Now it's Bringus Studios' turn, whom we remember well for his miniaturized GameCubes and Sega's gaming computer. What did he do? Take one of these transparent computers, install Ubuntu, and start playing... more or less.
The story of the prison laptop took a very particular turn in early March. After all the information published by "Zephray Wenting" and the work of other users like "techknight", the Washington Department of Corrections ordered the collection of 1,200 laptops in the hands of incarcerated students for the installation of an emergency update. Officials talk about "prevention", but students are worried because many hope to graduate soon, and their situation becomes complicated without access to the hardware.
The Seattle Times article also mentions how these devices circulated on eBay (a recycler in Milwaukee received 100 computers, but chose to resell them instead of destroying them), and one of them reached Bringus Studios, who had the fabulous idea of exploring its "gaming potential":
Playing on the Prison Laptop
The adventure begins with two hacks, one to power the laptop (it uses 12V, but Bringus doesn't have the correct charger), and another to connect a USB hub to the internal port used by the trackpad. Then he installed Ubuntu on an SSD, and copied its boot section to another USB drive, since the BIOS whitelist prevents direct boot.
As expected, Ubuntu threw some errors (the keyboard stopped responding more than once, among other things), and Steam installation complained about damaged packages at first, but after suffering a while, Bringus managed to get its interface to start correctly. As for game selection, he explored several works of art inspired by prisons, to end with Half-Life and Half-Life 2, which worked perfectly (yes, even a Celeron has enough firepower).
In the second video, Bringus installed a breakout to take advantage of the second USB port on the motherboard (and thus restore trackpad functionality), and install the hub more permanently... with surgery included.
