There seem to be a lot of posts floating about the message boards about aspects of this, but thought if I stuck my complete evening's experience down in one place, it might help somebody else.
I have a UK/PAL Gamecube I now know to be of the A/B variety.
I bought a Viper Chip from Baldbouncer.co.uk
I bought some Hyundai mini-DVD from ebuyer.co.uk
I installed the chip as specified at http://www.ps2nfo.com/viper.html Installation went well, closed up GC and prepared to flash it.
Dell D600 refused to recognize the chip, despite being configured correctly. Eventually recognized by IBM T22, but flash always corrupted. Tried again with T22 and shorter parallel cable and succesfully flashed Cobra v0.4.
GC now successfully booted backups on full sized Ritek DVDs, but failed on my mini Hyundai DVDs.
Pots were already within specs laid out in PS2info doc - 170-210 if memory serves me. Tried lowering it to 75 and suddenly all media works.
That's what happened anyway, what I learnt today is:
Baldbouncer and ebuyer were both excellent and delivered on time.
The installation guide on PS2Info is excellent - I'm more used to a series of pictures, but combination of txt and pictures took me through it with no cockups quite nicely.
PS2Ownz is a site with some connection to the chip makers. They are absolute scum of the earth, their forums and IRC channel ban IPs for no reason and they seem to be very erm 'commercially minded' (i.e. flog/plug any old crap for a bit of commision).
To get the files you need, have a hunt around on the dextrose and afterdark forums instead (official docs/links always seem to point back to ps2ownz - but I didn't got a single useful bit of code/info from them)
erm I think that's about it really, now I've written it, it seems much less eventful and informative than I thought. erm shout at me if you think I could answer any questions for you - I know the frustration of a stalled install.
