Building a PS1 modchip from scratch and optimising your install

[@IntegerOfDoom]

12:00 That sequence of sounds will make any grown man cry.

[@karehaqt]

Grown man here, tears confirmed. Happy memories of getting mine as it was the first piece of gaming tech I bought with my own money.

[@kyorin6526]

Feeding those wires adjacent to the chips, but behind/under the legs is so satisfying 👍

[@IntegerOfDoom]

I wish I could do that but my hands are as steady as a chihuahua in a tumble dryer.

[@Mmouse_]

​@@IntegerOfDoomyou take a non soldered loose wire, feed it through the right hand pins with the excess completely free, then you bend it and do it again though the bottom ones, it'll naturally follow the legs and the IC package because there's nowhere else to go, trim, strip and solder. It's fiddly, but that's kinda the easy part, shaky hands is a problem with soldering to the IC legs.

[@alfaori2009]

Took me forever to find a great video like yours! Thank you so much man and keep going!

[@RetroGamesNow86]

This is a great video for figuring out how to optimize wire runs, thank you for that! I personally hadn't tried finding closer points of contact on the board to shorten my wires, this is really giving me a great idea to redo one of my PS1 modchips and maybe make a video referencing what you talked about here! this is awesome.

[@mjh17474]

I've tried a PSNee recently and it works nicely 🤘

[@electronash]

10:49 I've never been a huge fan of running a wire under the chip pins that way. In theory, each pin will be acting as a single loop of a transformer, and inducing some noise into the wire (and vice-versa, depending on which signals are on which pins). I mean, if it works, it works. lol But if any of the pins (or wire) are carrying say an analog RGB or audio signal, it could induce a tiny bit of noise. If it's for the sake of cosmetics, I'd personally rather tack the wire down (away from the chip legs) with some tiny blobs of hot glue.

[@electronash]

It was funny to realize that the "copy protection" on the PS1 was literally just injecting a serial string of the ASCII "S C E E" etc. into the CD tracking coils. So they must just do the same thing at the factory, during the lead-in part of the master CD. The rest of the CD is of course burned (or stamped) as normal. (PS1 disks can have a weird mixture of ISO formats, and many ignore the extra error correction, but it worked well enough for the expected lifetime of the console / disks.)

[@emmettturner9452]

@@electronash Most traces don’t double-back to form a loop. Is running under them any worse than running over them?

[@TheRetroChannel]

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend running wires that way on everything, especially if analog signals are nearby. Running everything on top of a ground plane would be ideal. But in this case I doubt it would make a difference

[@electronash]

@@emmettturner9452 tbf, I would think the effect is very small, so probably not too much of a problem. It's just, given a choice, it triggers my mild OCD. lol It would be interesting to test the theory somehow. I mean, I guess any wire is prone to having at least some noise induced in it anyway. Most of this stuff is purely digital, although the mod chip is essentially injecting the "SCEE" serial into the analog part of the laser tracking coil error circuit, IIRC.

[@emmettturner9452]

Funny you should mention PSone with Mayumi: Years ago I found that 8-wire Mayumi V4 on PIC 12F629 does not work on NTSC SCPH-101 PSone with the first “PM-41 (A)” board revision. It works just fine on PM-41 (2) (A). It works on PM-41 (A) with PIC 12C508A… just not with PIC 12F629. I did dozens of installs on several PSones to narrow down the issue. Of course, MM3 worked fine on all of them regardless of what PIC chip I used (found some ports on Assembler). I’m told that a capacitor on the voltage line may have fixed it but that wasn’t required for MM3, wasn’t part of the Mayumi V4 wiring diagram, and is an extra step. Might be worth trying to see if it gets Mayumi V4 working on a PAL SCPH-102.

[@TheRetroChannel]

The PAL PSone has a region lockout in the BIOS. You can still use the Mayumi V4 in them but they won't boot NTSC games.

[@Haldrie]

Funny I actually own both of those models and I'm using 12F629 chips and have not had any issues getting the M4 chip code to work with my installs. I wonder how come you are having issues. The flasher I have always gave me issues with 12C508A chips so for the longest time I was using 12C509 chips until the new code for 12F629 came out and I switched to using those after that and have yet to run in to any NTSC console at least that has not worked with them.

[@emmettturner9452]

@@Haldrie The same chips work when moved to the other SCPH-101 board rev or any of the larger consoles. I still have an IMGUR album with a bunch of my cross testing results that narrowed it down to that one specific combination of chip, hex, and board rev. I literally modded dozens of my consoles several dozen times that month around 2018. Though my results were consistent, if all it needed was a capacitor then it could be marginal for others depending on factors like line noise and power supply.

[@Haldrie]

@@emmettturner9452 You know I am having an issue with using Voultar's method with a SCPH-1001 where the chip refuses to work when soldered in with the really short wire runs but when I solder on a socket and use an adapter to connect the chip that way it works. Maybe a similar issue. Could just be a minor defect in the board that doesn't effect normal operations.

[@Vermilicious]

Quite tidy and efficient. Good job.

[@jarroddemeza2550]

That is a clean install!

[@Colin_Ames]

Tidy installation. Nice work.

[@NuVista175]

Nice work! Always a fun time watching your videos. Keep it up!

[@Haldrie]

All of the wires other then 5 and 6 can actually be soldered directly to the legs of the very chip you placed the mod chip on in the video. This chip is apparently one that controls the CD-ROM access and Voultar actually shows a method in one of his earlier videos where he only uses the legs of that chip to install a mod chip using a SOIC to DIP adapter and just soldering the wires to the DIP pins from underneath which doubles as a way to keep the mod chip held in place. I have done this method on several PS1s including a SCPH-1001 model giving it working stealth (yes it is possible despite what people seem to say online I know I got it working on two different consoles the only difference is where the wire for pin 3 goes). It makes for a very clean install where all you see are the wires for pins 5 and 6 going off to the CPU connections. The Mayumi 4 chip also has a the same feature the MM3 mod chip did where if you hold down the rest button for a few seconds you can switch the mode of the chip. The cycles is full stealth, stealth disabled, chip disabled. This only works if you wired pin 4 to a power connection that is pulled to ground when you press the rest button of which there is one near the ground pins of that chip.

[@TheRetroChannel]

Yeah there isn't much point soldering directly to the mechacon unless you're using a SOIC to DIP adaptor as the wiring is going to be visible either way. Connections 5 and 6 go to the Audio DSP, not the CPU. As for changing the modes, yeah that has tripped me up in the past. After chipping my first few PS1s they refused to play audio CDs. I thought I had broken something but then I read about changing the modes by holding reset. Good thing I connected pin 4 to reset on all of them and didn't take the lazy route of just connecting it to VCC

[@tammasus]

I don’t own a ps1 nor I plan on modding pss. But this was soothing to watch

[@taltechchip5827]

The first time I experienced a wild rock concert modding video😎

[@ledbetter1179]

Another awesome video ,.keep up the great work !

[@jandjrandr]

Being able to use backups of your very expensive games should have been an option from the start, but that was the early days of music and game piracy so they tried their best to prevent piracy by preventing their systems from playing copies. This had the side effect of making game copies invalid so instead you wore out your legitimate game discs instead. Leave if to those who believe in freedom to push the boundaries and create mods to solve that problem. To this day it is controversial, since Nintendo and Sony have tried to enforce that you have no rights to modify the hardware you purchase from them even to the point of adding these requirements to their terms of service. Considering how much rarer it will become over time to get working original discs, it's good to have this option to preserve the originals and just run the copies instead.

[@sanjyuu2298]

I would propably add a THT bypass capacitor to that uC. May not be critically required here (should be tested on oscilloscope), but after you design some electronics stuff, you'll get a habit to add them everywhere by default as it's a common practice, not to say propably recommended by all datasheets :).

[@TheRetroChannel]

No doubt it would be recommended by the datasheet and should be done for just about everything. But I'm not too concerned about it in this case. Just think about all those modchips out there with huge amounts or wire going all over the place with no bypass cap and they still work

[@sanjyuu2298]

​@@TheRetroChannel Deeming something as working is a binary statement :) It's more about conditions it's working under, depends of the application and its tolerance to interferences. I'm pretty aware that this chip is not able to degrade console's working conditions as proven by history, but since you went and put effort to optimize wiring in elegant way, adding a capacitor as good practice would be like adding a cherry on top of the cake. :) "Bypass Capacitors Visualised!" by EEVblog depicts how capacitors affect the working conditions.

[@scaleartsg]

12:16 turbo spool sounds

[@dreamvisionary]

Neat job 👍

[@MrFixiit]

Great job , Ive got a psnee in my PSOne its working great but i do need to order a cap kit for it as the RGB signals are loosing sync and i hear thats to do with a couple of the SMD caps so i will just replace them all . love the channel keep uo the good work and looking forward to the next vid

[@42beebop]

Eh, this was not what the title promised. I expected a discussion of how the PS1 recognizes original discs, how one could fake those signals and how they are injected into the board. Using those pre-compiled images skips all these details. That's the opposite of “from scratch”. But I DID learn something from you soldering those small wires.

[@HamzaOmari1]

a totally legit backup

[@CrazyPCgamercatguy]

Is there a replacement for PS1 power supply? Like a newer one, maybe having a usb-C port or something? That would be cool!

[@waynetemplar2183]

Lovely work but there’s soft mods that just need a memory card that can be kept in slot 2 and you get other features beyond just playing backups

[@t4rif4ri]

Why isnt the Manual for such chips showing the best points to solder the cables on

[@lucifermorningstar910]

4:33 that shielding you lift off, how important is it? Could it remain permanently off? It was the one part of the board i couldn’t scrub with 99% rubbing alcohol and a soft toothbrush.

[@TheRetroChannel]

It's just RF shielding, not critical and you could leave it off.

[@Mmouse_]

Leaking caps smell like fish to you? To me they smell almost exactly like pickled onion monster munch with an acrid smell mingled in... Like you got some of the monster munch blended it with burned 90° cable insulation.

[@saundersryan20]

I would be curious to know if there are any other chips that could be updated for over all performance

[@phillyirishdrewevo189]

Question do all mod chips play import games or no bc im gonna buy a ps1 with a mod chip but he only play burn cd on it n never try a import game

[@ArtemAleksashkin]

before running first time check shorts!!!!

[@charlesparson318]

Where can I find the programmer you used and the software?

[@TheRetroChannel]

My model is an old one, the current version is the "Xgecu T48". Have a look on AliExpress or eBay

[@yorgle]

Where did the practice of running wiring under rows of legs of chips come from? It's certainly not from any certification...

[@Knowbody42]

It came from Uranus.

[@emmettturner9452]

@@yorgle Voultar demonstrated this as his method. It’s kinda neat that it hides the only wires that travel any real distance away from the chip.

[@jeremygalloway1348]

​@emmettturner9452 doubt Voultar was the origin...maybe we should ask him? But yes it's very clean

[@emmettturner9452]

@@jeremygalloway1348 Perhaps not but he strongly suggests it.

[@robdifferent]

Ive got a ps1 ntfs Will try the modification chip. Does anyone know if there is an emulator for pc?

[@BurkenProductions]

What .. everyone as Arduino these days. Most ppl abandoned pics like 25 years ago.

[@AbdAlgani1999]

this pro video, its the worst to start see if someone want to do the mod

[@hamobika1820]

Nice work.

[@shangrilai1990]

🍪

[@TheRetroChannel]

🪡

[@gb.recordings]

How much would you charge me to do my mtsc PlayStation I've been reaching out to all modern KZbinrs and they not responding to their KZbin comments I even try to hit them up on eight Instagrams and Facebook's it's like they don't want to interact with their fans

[@Dark_Phoinix]

why put trash on internet?

[@ErdrickHero]

Eugh, PAL (shudders)