I've been doing mods every once and a while on various consoles for years, and I've never had a soldering problem before. Lately, every mod that I do seems to work fine for a matter of seconds or minutes, and then stop working. I then reheat either all the connections, or completely remove all wires and re-solder everything again, and have the same problem. It takes me days to get a mod done. I first noticed this with Wii mods, but the same problem seems to follow me to any console I work on. For example, when installing a 79 passkey into an xbox 360 the chip will light up, the drive will be in mode B for a matter of seconds and then just freezes up. I am having trouble determining what the problem is. I have tried switching to an older soldering iron that previously worked for me. I've tried using a different kind of solder, tried using flux, and not using flux, different modchips and different wire. I've even tried soldering using a heat gun on the connections. My usual method for soldering small connections, like those needed for d2c installs, is to first tin the wire and then tack the wire onto the pole of the d2c chip. I ensure that the connection is strong by giving the wire a tug, and I've also tried checking all of my connections with a multimeter, and everything seems fine, but the mod won't take for more than a few seconds, and then I have to reheat all the connections again just to get the same short lived result. My connections look fairly shiny, and look to have enough solder for a strong connection. I've been pulling my hair out about this for a month now, and nay suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
well with the 360 they are searching for certain drive chips and have added a disabler into there firmware and nintendo is getting ready for the next attempt at this as well with firmware 3.3 which will cause hell for mod chippers because of the new security so in all do aspects it may be your mods aren't functioning correctly because the chip has been blocked
susieqbbb: As far as I know theres nothing firmware-side that can be used to detect modchips on the wii. There are checks built into many of the games that check for chips, but there dosent seem to be any way for the console itself to check for them. Thats why they roll out new hardware (Cut leg D2B chipsets and the D2C chipset) instead of stopping modchips through firmware updates.
PsiLizard: I'm not really sure what your problem is. It may be that the 360 is blocking the chips but thats not the case with the wii modchips.
No, I don't think it's anything having to do with firmware either. I am able to eventually get these things to work on a long term process, it just takes sometimes literally over a hundred attempts. It's very frustrating, and I'm almost certain it's something involving my technique and/or my tools. I've just ran out of ideas myself on what I could be doing wrong, and I'm looking for any good soldering suggestions for these small points.
Are you keeping everything in place until your solders are cooled? Are you getting cold solders? Are you using flux and tinning each solder point/wire? Are you tinning your soldering iron and using a tip cleaner after each use?
I am paying close attension to keep everything as still as possible when soldering. The connections don't look like cold solder joints to me. I am using flux, and tinning both points as best as I can, and I'm tinning the iron as well. As far as cleaning the tip, I tend to use a moist folded paper towel.
