I you get an Xecutor, it's really, really easy to do- 1 wire to solder and the rest is just a slot in pin header to solder on.
you still need to solder a couple of points on the board to bridge them for flashing the BIOS- might as well get a chip with more features on and the ability to turn it off for live. Altho, there's reports that Halo 2 can ban your xbox from xbox live even with the chip turned off
You flashed the TSOP? it always looked just as hard as fitting a chip but you don't get all of the benefits- it's true about the DVD drive but you can get a 120gb HD for £50 inc vat & P&P- it's a lot easier than having to burn games and load times are shortened by at least half. Plus, it gives you room for emulators & apps.
The XBox games spin in the opposite way to normal (or so I have read) so it is not as simple as replacing the drive... Then again...Juski...have you sucessfully ran your backups, just to see that they will work in the event of originals failing? My mate bought a "soft chip" kit. Basically its like a USB pen drive, with all the relevant files and instructions on it. Don't know exactly how it works, but in the end you can hook up your xbox to your pc and ftp new games over to the hard drive. I want to get my PS2 chipped aswell. Juski?
You can add a PC DVD drive quite easily with no soldering, all you need is a power splitter cable, this is fitting it a seconf drive as well as the xbox DVD drive and only takes a couple of mins. If you want to replace the drive completely, you'll need to do a bit soldering but nothing difficult, There's an easier way to play backups on your PS2 arther than chipping it (The chip instalation is harder than an xbox- 20 or so wires and they're all over the shop), it doesn't void your warranty which is good good PS2 lasers are know to have problems in all versions of the console. Just buy a network adapter and a PC hard disk, plug them in and get yourself the HD advance software off ebay, this lets you copy any game (original or backup) to the HD and then play the games off the HD without requiring the disk, again, it shortens load speeds and is a lot less hassle than a chip. ALternatively, this is currently the best PS2 chip about atm- http://www.mrmodchips.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=22_24&products_id=96 It has diagrams so you can see if you'd be happy fitting it, it's pretty straightforward and as long as you use a low heat soldering iron, should be OK. That site also does return postage & chipping or your console for about £70
That's a valid point... Wasn't thinking You'll still need a chip or a slide card to use a copied version of the HD Loader thingy, so it would be best to get an original from eBay.
