DMS for the Newbie. My experience...
I've been following the modchip scene ever since the PS2's first release. Although I'd been reading about modchips and following the various products, I never had the huevos or the cash to actually get one. When the Flip Tops came out, I bit and bought a 1st run for VERY cheap and installed it with very minor difficulties. I was pleasantly impressed, since previously I'd done the gameshark/cog thing for the during the year. The flip-top made it much more simple. After a few months of the flip-top I really wanted to get a direct boot chip since I found myself switching out games frequently. So which one to get?
Messiah 2 was king of the mountain and Magic 3 was going through some growing pains when I heard about the DMS. So I thought I would wait for the release and see if it was all that it was hyped up to be. (I happened to be very interested in the region free) I was also curious to see how close to the original release date that it was going to arrive.
During that time I got too busy with work and such until a few weeks ago.
After reading some of the preliminary reviews, I was sort of impressed and noticed the DMS had actually gone to 2.0, so I decided bite the bullet and pre-order a DMS3 2.0 from foundmy.com. Foundmy.com did a very good job all the way around with price, communication and shipping. When the chip came I realized I had better learn to solder. I really wanted to do this myself and still remember reading message upon message of problems with some of the more prominent installers. I wasn't brave enough to send it off (later I would question if I made the right decision)..
So I needed to learn how to solder (I'd done solder on some BIG stuff a couple times previously.) I was a little worried since it sounded like about 90% of the killed PS2's came from bad installations. So I read everything I could from this site about soldering. ps2_charlie has a great solder tutorial and there are some other great tips that can be found throughout the forums. A couple of the most valuable tips were to tin the wire and use flux on the soldering point and you shouldn't need anymore solder except for the bigger wires (gnd and power).
Get the right equipment was small dip into the piggy bank. And I think that it is very important to have the RIGHT equipment (correct watt iron, 1 mm tip, good wire). After practicing on a 10 year old graphics card, and reading the DMS site's troubleshooting section, I was ready to go.
1st Install Attempt...(Bad Install)
I had a couple problems with the first install. I couldn't get the friggin' 20 awg power wire to solder to the point (This was because I was using solid wire instead of stranded- doh!). I also was so worried about the D & E wires that it made the install more painful. After soldering and putting it back together, the PS2 acted like there was no chip installed for games. DVD movies gave me a "DVD Player is not set up" error. Everything seemed to be testing okay with a multimeter. But I unsoldered all the wires on the controllers legs and in that area, anyway.
2nd Install Attempt... Success!
I had a much cleaner install and didn't worry about routing of D&E so much since I'd seen a couple other V7 PS2's that were working without the meticulous routing. I also repositioned the chip away from the edges a little more. I put it back together and TADA! It was working.
So now I have a working modded PS2 and I love it! Should have done it sooner (well, maybe not. If I had, I wouldn't have got a DMS)
Now I'm even enjoying the Dev mode, (something I didn't think I would even use initially) with the RealityPlayer.
Noob notes:
0-If you've never done superfine soldering before, don't make the PS2 your first! Try to have a pro do it. It most likely will be savings in time and money in the long run. I almost messed up my system a couple times trying to get the technique down. (Although I'm glad that I did it myself :p )
1-To play DVD's with DMS installed you must use the square button, otherwise you just get the browser. Likewise with PS1 games.
2-You must first install the DMS Explorer to your memory card before you can do anything with the Dev mode (run application off the memory card). After you've made the DMS Explorer disk, all you have to do is stick it in the PS2 like normal with a memory card in slot 1. Don't go into Dev mode first. The DMS Explore will now have an entry called "Browser" which resets the PS2 and just takes you to the PS2 Browser screen.
3-If you want to install an application to the memory card, you have to have a disk with a correct script for the installation (ie. the latest release of PSRealityPlayer 1.28 has said script on the CD image already- thanks guys!) To install that, you boot up the PS2 in Dev mode (which launches the DMS Explorer), then put the CD that your installing the application from into the PS2 then you push the "SELECT" button- not the X button- to install the application. If the CD was created correctly, then the application then becomes an entry in the DMS Explorer that you can choose to run whenever you go into Dev mode.
Overall, I love my PS2 even more now and I don't think I would have been as happy with a Messiah. I hope this helps...
