Fitting a modchip - how difficult?

I've done a little soldering in the past, but not much. How hard is fitting a modchip, really? I have a v8 PS2 that I'm willing to "sacrifice" if I need to - the front cover of the CD Tray is snapped off, due to a minor slide-card mishap, so I figure it will make an excellent guinea pig.

If that works, then I plan on doing a few more - I've read the stickies, but I can't seem to see a simple answer... is there a safe way to mod the PSTwo yet? If not, then my guess is that I can still find the odd few of the earlier model around.

EDIT: After taking another look at some of the pictures people have posted of their installs, I'm currently rethinking this plan. Some of the pins you have solder to are tiny, and very close together... I never noticed before how minute they are.

i'd go for it.. its not that hard. you need a steady hand and a fine tip on your soldering iron. when attaching wires to the bios, use razor blades on either side of the pin you are soldering in order to prevent soldier from touching/splashing onto the other pins. if you only touch the point with the soldering iron for <2 seconds you should have no problems at all if your patient.

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Originally Posted by HypERSoniC

i'd go for it.. its not that hard. you need a steady hand and a fine tip on your soldering iron. when attaching wires to the bios, use razor blades on either side of the pin you are soldering in order to prevent soldier from touching/splashing onto the other pins. if you only touch the point with the soldering iron for <2 seconds you should have no problems at all if your patient.

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Thanks for the advice. Like I said, I can afford to junk this PS2 if it all goes wrong, since I've had it year, and I've already screwed up the drive tray. :)

Razor blades? How innovative. What I wanna know is who comes up with these techniques for the first time...

You might want to try a broken pc motherboard or something like that. It has solder points just like a ps2. The safe way to do a pstwo is to do the summ0ne fix and the subzer fix. Just do the summ0ne tracking resistor with the subzero fix. I hope this helps.

You say you've got past soldering experience, that's a start. Seeing as your willing to do it yoursef and not minding if your ps2 goes to junk, then practice on old video cards or motherboards just soldering any component you want for practice. At least if you want some chance of a successful install, have some practice. Fine tip soldering iron is very important.

I've seen many damaged boards from people who "did a bit of soldering when they were younger". Rather, practise as much as possible on old pc boards first before you attempt it.

better yet if you want to practice get ahold of completely broken ps2s. Even if you don't want to try on a working one its good fun. (and the reason I chose to just get a premod)