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Comment by joshuamcginnis | Hacker News Reader

I used to program PSX mod chips and install them 20 years ago from my door room in Jester Dormitory at UT Austin. I printed out an ad, taped it on my door and waited for the knocks to do business. Back in those days, I would burn chips with hard-to-find .bin files using generic EEPROM programmers that used a printer parallel port. And I never had to buy any chips because, at the time, I'd request samples from the big silicon distributors (e.g. DigiKey / Mouser) and they'd send me dozens for free.

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Great story. How were sales? Did anyone else on campus compete with your business?

I did maybe a half dozen or so - nothing crazy. A lot of people were understandably scared to entrust me with a soldering iron on their expensive toy. Then PS2 came out and modding became much more complex. I do miss the satisfaction of putting in a chip, loading a burned game and seeing it load after a long anxiety-provoking black screen.

I had a friend in undergrad that was moving a pretty significant number of modded (original) XBoxes at a pretty significant markup...but it turned out that he also offered a particular service that was largely driving sales: a larger hard drive filled with ripped DVDs from the 'Red Light District' adult film studio.

I did the same while in high school. Someone asked me to mod his PS1 so I copied the pic12c508 he provided to me so I could do it again for cheaper.

For the sales, it was actually a rather good business, I had between 1 and 3 console a week to mod, for almost a year, and I didn't even put an ad.

It ended because someone with the latest model (SCPH 8xxx if memory serves) inisted I try to mod his PS1 despite me not having proper equipement to solder at the needed accuracy. It did failed obviously. I had a hard time making it work again, it was so stressful that I ended up stopping it altogether except 2 or 3 times after that for some close friends.

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