DMS4 solderless

[Peekay]

So after five hours or so of pissing about, I'm completely at a loss. The actual installation seemed to go okay, but putting the PS2 back together was a bit of a nuisance. Then I eagerly tried to see if Vagrant Story (NTSC) would work. Nothing. Then nothing with Zone of the Enders (PAL), which was a bit worrying (ie the PS2 just said "no disc data"). So I took the whole thing apart again, and this time screwed the ground loop coming off the chip everything else goes into to directly onto the motherboard, thinking this may have been the problem. Now nothing at all except a black screen. At the end of the day it's just a console... but any advice from anyone who's done it before would be appreciated. I thought I followed the instructions on the DMS website pretty much to the letter (except there was something about an underside attachment on the ejector chip on the model V6, and mine is either a V6 or V5). I feel like SCEE has been tapping my phones and reading my post.

[sj33]

Took me a while to get the install perfected also.

You'll get loads of people posting now about how crap the EZI is - and maybe they're right in that a solder install is superior. But don't let them put you off. I spent many hours fiddling with my install, usually turned out to be the clips were ever so slightly misaligned and needed some messing with.
Screwing the shield plate back on too tight can cause problems too. You may also want to cover the mod itself in electrical tape to make sure it doesn't short. Not on the clips, not needed, just the mod.

But once it's installed, it's job done for life.

Do bear in mind that you can only run domestic games on the stock bios - The replacement bios (ToxicBios for the Lite, ToxicOS for the Pro) is posted on the official forums.

[Peekay]

Cheers, I'll have another look. I got mine form Mr ModChips in Bristol (in Kingswood) - is it a shop or just a mail order place, do you know? The service was pretty impressive - I ordered it yesterday lunchtime and it came this morning. Was using ordinary sticky tape to tape the chip down a bad idea? I couldn't find any masking tape.

[sj33]

Flip', didn't know MrModchips was in Kingswood, Bristol - I live there!

Not aware of it being a store, I'd imagine it's in some sort of trading yard.

Sticky tape may be fine, I used electrical tape.

[Peekay]

I lived at the bottom of Whiteladies when I was at uni. Wish I was still in Bristol, actually, even if it was pretty expensive (although I know there are a lot more affordable parts of the city). I'll keep you posted on my progress...

[wod]

you've probably got a short somewhere or the clips aint aligned on the chips correctly

[Peekay]

How loose exactly should the plate on top of the motherboard be? Those screws are pretty short, they don't leave much leeway.

[fahrenheit]

First of all, can you press the reset button three times to boot from the backup flash chip?

If you have a consistant BSOD (Black screen) and you have checked and double checked all your connections, then you could have a dead flash chip like I had.
I installed a DMS4 Lite solder and flashed it with the ToxicBios 1.3 and it worked well for a couple of days, then I tried to boot a DVD-RW which gave me a 'this is not a Playstation 2 disc' type error, I reset and ejected the disc, but on re-boot I recieved a permanent BSOD. I uninstalled and reinstalled, but had no change, so I sent it back for a replacement. The replacement has been in and running well for 3 days now.

For the DMS4 PRO, there is one batch of flash chips that reportedly have an appauling failure rate (80-90%), the Singapore flash chip v1.0. Sadly the DMS team have not fessed up to this and have chosen to blame the users install instead. I think they have some quality control issues and I really am nevous about the lifespan of my replacement chip.

[gunrock]

MrModChips may not be there anymore...

Rumour has it that MrModChips and BaldBouncer have been busted for selling modchips.... which I can back up to some degree because I had just ordered a week ago a Qoob SX with gamebit for the GC and a SmartXX v2 LE modchip for my orginal XBox and guess what? They take the cash, send me a Qoob SX without the gamebit and then got a refund the cost of the SmartXX....

I was just waiting for my bonus to come through before I ordered... a week earlier and I'd have had no problem.

Anyway, both Baldbouncer and MrModChips online stores are down. Draw your own conclusions.

[sj33]

Tha's very close to home, MrModchips are only 5 minutes away from my house.

[k0pp0]

Hmm Bristol posse in the house. I live in Yate