02/27/00

The DC's in the chips: Mod chip overview/review

So ya wanna play Virtua On for the Dreamcast? Maybe you've got this urge to play Shen Mue. Well, now you can. The era of the DC Mod chips has come. For months we have been promised external mods that plug into your DC controller. Well, that hasn't happened yet. What has happened is that some inventive companies have released little tiny chips that you solder to your DC motherboard which defeats the country code checks. Each company has come up with a little different way of programming their chips so you do actually have a choice in which one you want to buy and install (or pay someone else to do it for ya).

The first one to come out with a DC Mod Chip was NCS (www.ncsx.com). It was definately a scary monster that no one would ever want to touch. It was 2 tiny chips that you had to connect together then connect 24 more connections to the DC Bios chip. EEEKKK! I don't think so. I can hardly imagine soldering 24 connections on to a tiny-ass chip, then have to check which connections were bad when the stupid thing wouldn't work right.

While this was happening another company was hyping their 6-wire mod. The company is Modchips.com. They basically lied constantly until the chip was finally released. They claimed that the wires were already connected to a chip mounted on PC Board. When I received my DreamChip (so it's called) it was a dinky with a chip with 6 wires and some solder in a little static free bag. Plus they said it would be $25 with free next day air. It ended up being $49 + $5 for shipping.

Right when Modchips.com started to ship the Dreamchip, NCS announced that they had a 5-wire Mod chip. Yay, 1 less wire to connect. Well, the chips came in the mail and it was the same type chip from Modchips.com with 5 wires and a url to where you can find the instructions. They basically hid the instructions so not to scare off any potential buyers. Why is this you may ask? When installing the NCS modchip, you have to desolder and lift one of the DC Bios pins off of a connection pad on the motherboard. You can imagine how many novice solderers screamed like a woman when they saw they had to actually modify something on the pcboard itself.

Recently, Modchips.com have started selling a 4-wire modchip. I haven't tried this one yet. (I'm all out of Dreamcasts to Mod). But I'm sure it's close to the 6-wire one they released earlier.

Now with the background out of the way, let me give you my take on the current mod chips.

NCS 26-wire: Out of date. Crap. Be careful if you order a chip really cheap so not to receive one of these monsters.

NCS 5-wire: This chip is great. You should only install it if you are comfortable with desoldering on of the pins on your DC bios. I didn't have a problem with the 2 that I installed. Plus this chip is totally invisible. You can pop an import game in when you first boot the DC and you can plop one in and start it from the DC Menu screen. One thing I would say though is that NCS's packaging has something left to be desired. The wires you get are not stripped and are so brittle that until you get used to them, you'll be snapping the nice connections you just made. Plus I find it cheezy that they hid the instructions on a web site.

Modchips.com 6-wire Dreamchip: This a good chip. Especially for intermediate solderers. I never recommend this stuff for amateurs. The packaging was excellent (comparatively). You get 6 color coded pre-stripped wires and solder. The chip is relatively easy to install and works really well. My only beef with this chip is that it only defeats the country code check from boot up. This means if you finish playing a game and open the lid and try to put in an import and start it up, you won't be able to. There was questions that multidisc games wouldn't work with this. I was playing Shen Mue the other night and made it to the 2nd disc. The game has you save and insert the second disc. Well once you open up the lid the DC goes to the DC menu screen. So it doesn't really matter if you have one of these chips cause you might as well turn off the Dreamcast anyway. This doesn't mean there won't be any games that may work differently in the future though.

Most of the Dreamchip info above may be moot now with the 4-wire chip available. Though, looking at the instructions, it probably functions the same.

So what is my recommondations on chips? Well, if you're doing it yourself. I'd say go with the Dreamchip. It works great and you can get it many locations (like GameHits Gamestores! Where they will also install it for you). If you're a little more experienced with soldering or don't mind sending you're machine to New York, then I would suggest the NCS 5-wire chip. I like the idea that every little bit of functionality is still there after you modify your precious Dreamcast.

Either way, once the chip has been installed you will be enjoying the latest imports from across the seas. Damn I love my Shen Mue.

UPDATE: as of Febuary 25th, modchip.com temporarily recalled their 4-wire mod chip because it didn't work with multi-disc games, like Shen Mue, and Resident Evil: Code Veronica. They said that the problem would be corrected before March. Take note that the other mod chips reviewed here (at least the 5 and 6 wire ones) have no trouble with Multi-disc games.

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