I did my first PlayStation chip install and...

...it was a raging success.

I am chuffed to bits so needed to share it with someone.

I have been soldering for about a month now (properly) and up to this point have not tackled anything this small. I also have no electronics background or education.

It was finicky and I am not sure I had a smooth plan regarding how to wire it up but it seemed to come together.

I did not use Kynar wire. I instead opted for SAE branded 28awg wire cut from multicoloured ribbon cable which I think is definitely more forgiving than the 30awg Kynar.





PlayStation is a SCPH-5502 / PU18 and the chip is a PIC12C508A with 'Mayumi v4 PAL (SCEE).hex' burned with my TL866ii Plus.

I know there are some very talented people here so I would love some constructive feedback.

I have definitely caught the modding bug.

Cheers

P.S. Thanks to this awesome forum for making it possible for me to do this.

 

Looks pretty good to me!

 

Your soldering looks really good You could play around with the chip placement to get shorter wires, but even then this doesn't look bad to begin with. I've seen a million times worse

Nicely done

 

good ol times...good work

 

So that's your seal of approval @Damn-Deal-Done.

The simplest improvement would be to flip the chip around (like a half-kickflip) so shorten wires.

The mod is certainly clean and will work for a long time, aesthetics aren't that important for internal mods beside being evidence that care was taken and that it was done cleanly in a proper non-cryptic (spaghetti) way.

Good Job!

 

Very nice install. The comments on this thread clearly reflect that. Welcome to the club . Good luck with future mods.

 

I'll take it.

Thanks everyone. Great encouragement to keep going with this. Been looking at it for a while and still can't believe I managed to do this neat soldering. Much improved since the last few Sega mods I did. It was my first time using a new tip. T18-S4 which is tiny. But it allowed me to be much more precise.

Scouring eBay for some other revisions. Would like to do one of each eventually.

Noted about placement. I soldered the wires to the chip first before sticking it in place which I think made it extra difficult for me. The wires were about 4 times longer to begin as I completely overestimated the required lengths. Then trying to trim, strip and tin them hovering above the board was scary.

What I did was - Soldered wires to chip > stuck down chip > cut/stripped wires to lengths > soldered to pads.

What I probably should have done is,

Stuck down chip > measured up wires > cut/stripped wires to lengths > soldered to chip and pads.

Will try that next.

Much appreciated.

 

Cheers mate. I still use the Japanese PS1 you modded for me as my main unit.

 

It's fine, there isn't anything wrong with it at all. Don't watch Voltar on Youtube and feel bad that you don't have work that people charge 2-4x market value for while recording it for a broad audience if that's where your insecurities come from.

Use a pair of fingernail clippers if you want to go super short, solder to the pad then trim the excess to the chip while using a piece of electric tape or blue-tack to hold it down. If you really want, just probe around with a multimeter for continuity and you can have some seriously goofy and short wires as the "official" diagrams are made for dummies essentially.

 

Voultar’s very good at what he does , most of us could aspire to get to his level one day , for now baby steps , your install is very good for a first timer , clean and precise . Don’t worry about wire length and all the other things mentioned here , what matters is that it works and that you are happy with the job you’ve done .if you want to see a true master of the craft check jinn’s Installs on PS2 his work is really nothing short of a work of Art .

 

Ah yes, solder to pad first and then rout it to the chip second. That's a great tip. Cheers

 

Will do, cheers. I do believe in the art of it. Maybe because I have no electronics background, only art and music. Have no idea what those wires do. But I am looking into electronics courses because I'm hooked now.

PS2 and any later generation consoles seem a long way off. I want to do a Mega CD bios swap next then RGB a NES and RGB bypass an MD. Before moving on to more difficult things.

At this point I've never removed a surface mount chip or lifted legs or soldered to them. Snes switchless might be my next logical progression. Saturn FRAM mod might be after that once I buy a hot air gun.

Eventually trying my hand at PCB design and SMD work. Vast area and so much to learn.

 

That's a very nice install - even more so since you don't have much experience. One suggestion I would make is that on those PU-18 boards it's best to avoid running signals in the area below where you have the chip installed since that contains the low-level signal processing for the CD and is quite susceptible to interference. It won't stop it from working (well, unless you have a really worn-out optical pickup) but it does somewhat degrade the noise margin.

The other thing about Mayumi installs is that you want to keep the clock signal on pin 2 of the PIC as short as possible - but you did that anyway.

 

That's great cheers. I thought I had read something about this but could not find it again and just thought it might have been about a different revision. Keeping pin 2 short was just a happy accident. I definitely need to read up on this more.

 

I think you've already had many people say it's a good install but I'll also add that for someone with no experience, it's very good. What's the next console you plan on modding?

 

Cheers.

I already did a mega drive switchless and just added 32x to work with that so I started planning Mega CD multibios. Try get the three working together. Think that's next. But this PS1 chip seems like my first real proper mod.

I have received Voultar's Mega Drive RGB board, Tim's nes rgb board and a Xeno chip. So they need doing at some point.

Basically everything I have been planning to pay others to do for me but have always put off.

Other than stuff specifically for my own systems I also want to do anything considered a classic mod to build up the experience.

 

I never charged a premium for my work. If anything, I was below market rate.

But I don't have a YouTube channel, so what Ive been doing for years doesn't count anymore

 

Of course it doesn't! If you don't have a media presence and personality, nobody cares.

Spoiler

 

If you mod my systems for free @Bad_Ad84, I'll pay you with exposure. I'll share your work with an hashtag and all...

/s

 

Really nice clean soldering