Modded PS1 only plays some imports

[Chief H]

Okay, this almost has my tearing my hair out. I've just soldered in a modchip to a 9000 series PAL PS1 and was ecstatic when i got my US xenogears to work, but then I found my US copies of Valkyrie Profile and Legend of Mana don't work. seems it's now become very selective - JPN Vib Ribbon works, as does US FFVII but then on other stuff it refuses to work (shows 'please insert playstation cd-rom' screen). PAL FFVIII now doesn't want to work either.

I've tried soldering the chip in both 7-pin and 8-pin stealth modes as i thought that might be it but the results are exactly the same. baffling. Anyone have any ideas? I thought if it were just my weak soldering powers then nothing would work

[trev1976]

sure its not the lens being selective , i know when i use to play my PS1 alot i replaced about 4 of them over the years

[Chief H]

Hm, I thought about that and tried the ol' play it on its side/upside-down trick, but no joy. I think it played PAL FFVIII alright before the mod though (though didn't check before cracking it open), which is a bit worrying. Now it doesn't :/

[trev1976]

hmm very strange , sorry im not sure then

[gossi the dog]

I know Final Fantasy VIII had modchip protection so that may be why it's not playing

[trev1976]

yeah mine did , but if i remember correctly it came up with some screen saying something , it wouldnt work on the old style mod chip

so i took it here www.videogamecentre.co.uk and he put a newer type chip in it , after that it worked fine

[Yod@]

Silly question, perhaps - are you using the correct modchip for your PlayStation? Note that the newer white PSOne consoles use a different modchip than the older grey ones.

[Chief H]

Heh, I wish I knew both the chip and playstation were bought a long long time ago by a friend of mine and we never got around to having a pop at installing it. It's an older grey ps1, but at any rate i think i've killed it now. My soldering ineptness seems to have been too much for the poor thing to cope with. the cd drive now refuses to move, even when the lid button is pressed down. I think my problem was that each time i reassembled it, the solder points would be broken off, and stuff always gets harder to solder the more times you try (at least I find that). ah well, it was always bought as a nice little project for us to have on the side, it just took us a long time to get around to it.

I thought the picky booting was something very peculiar though; I'd never heard of it happening before and it did seem to be very picky about what game it was working with - it's not like the only times it worked were coincidentally with ffvii and xenogears, it was every time we tried it. I thought it might be the anti-chip software hinting that i'd gotten the stealth points soldered in wrong but i didn't think all the games that didn't work were protected, and when it didn't work it'd either say 'please insert playstation cd-rom' or go to the memory card menu. ah well, RIP my little grey friend...

[Baseley09]

Playstation can be a bit freak with modchips, came across this wierd one on my travels...

Over 2 modded Playstations & 300+ games all were fine, including Rival Schools 2 original.....but this one, ran fine, except when you tried the photography girl's RPG section it would denote that you are using a mod chip and you cant play this mode. Why the ****.....