After trying various permutations of modchip, bypass wires, reflashing and a second XBox and its modchip I have come to the conclusion my new modchip is faulty. I’ve sort of confirmed this by hot-swapping it and by accident, noticing that by pressing down on the chip with my finger it flashes its little red LED.

I think there’s a bad solder joint on the chip itself, or a damaged track. I’ve probed the soldering I did extensively and the chip appears to have continuity with everything… but having to bend it isn’t a good sign.

I was going to simply return the chip to the place I bought it from, and wait for a replacement, but there was a problem; the place I bought it from has a slightly irritating £7 “testing” charge for all returned items, and the postage is at my expense. I paid £10 for the chip so paying £7 plus £3 postage just to send it back is not a sensible cost-effective idea. Also I think I bought the last modchip so there isn’t a replacement for them to send to me.

So I’ve done the next best thing; I found a different place and bought a different brand of modchip. It also cost a different price (£20) but hopefully it’ll work too. A bit of searching the web revealed that the modchip I bought is actually a clone and looking at the PCB reveals some rather cheap and bad manufacturing. The edges of the PCB are quite rough with pieces of fibreglass sticking out, and some of the tracks run very close to the edges.