Liability and risk

[kendrick]

In the course of learning how to mod consoles, I have probably destroyed twenty individual game machines. I once put a hole through the motherboard of an original Xbox. There are about four or five Sega Master Systems sitting around in a pile in my house because I didn't know that there were so many different board layouts. I own more than one blown Playstation because I didn't ground my wires properly. Oh, and I famously once set a laptop computer on fire because I shorted a capacitor lead.

At GamesX we encourage experimentation and sharing of knowledge. However, I am concerned that sometimes we don't communicate enough that there is a risk involved with modification. This risk is your own, as nobody here on the board can take responsibility for your work or guarantee its success. The risk of damage or loss is the expense of learning. If this risk is too great for you, then you need to pay a professional to do the work for you on spec.

In the spirit of informing our readers, I'd like to invite other posters to share their experiences. If you damaged or destroyed a game console in the course of a mod attempt, and if it's a memorable or spectacular story, I'd like you please to post it in this thread.

[NFG]

My failures are thankfully few.  The most memorable is frying a Dreamcast back when they were still new and expensive, by leaving the +5V unprotected inside the metal AV connector.  As soon as I plugged it in there was a short and teh whole system immediately died.

When I was much younger I ruined a printer by flexing the ribbon cable too far, and I tell you those things are bloody hard to fix!

[ken_cinder]

I can only recall 2 instances. One was ruining my first Xbox, the other was a PS2 modchip install I still have to get back to (I splashed solder on a chip). I left the PS2 unfinished, because I have 2 other PS2's that work, one runs a softmod and has a tray switch installed for the DVD drive.

Installed a modchip in the Xbox successfully, but after moving house the d0 wire came loose. My attempt at resoldering it, left me with a d0 point that was useless. I just bought another and softmodded it.

I've long since done numerous other work that I would feel more capable in doing these, but I have yet to find the need. Learning experiences.

[albino_vulpix]

Guess I can consider myself lucky in that I haven't killed anything yet. I once tried to re-wire a Mega Drive controller, but it was some funky third-party one with unclear pinouts.

I was wondering why the console wouldn't turn on with the controller plugged in! It even caused USB ports to shut down with a RetroUSB adapter.

[Waterbury]

I modded an Xbox in 2003 with double the RAM. I soldered all 400 pins of the extra 64MB of memory and everything worked great at first, I was so proud! However, the perfectionist in me wanted the chips to fit perfectly so I tried fixing a couple of bent pins and they broke off. 

So even though 99.5% of the mod was still great, the whole motherboard had to be scrapped. 

[l_oliveira]

I'm used to repair others mishaps but I've some of my own.
Something that I remember very vividly is the Super NES I fried in 1992 by letting the power switch touch some pins of the S-CPU chip (Ricoh 5A22-01)
Years later the said system came back to life by replacing the S-CPU and S-WRAM chips.
I was so lucky I did not blow the japanese  Ranma Nibbunoichi (Ranma 1/2) cartridge that was connected to it back then... lol

It was not my SNES and for a 15 years old kid having to shell out 200 bucks to pay such damage it was kind of painful...

[Tiido Priimägi]

I have fried some Famiclones by connecting the 7805 the wrong way... that happened well before I know how things worked, ~10 years ago
I have fried some Famiclones by putting in a supply bypass capacitor that was hooked to 12V, and I guess you can imagine what happenes when that got connected to 5V rail

I was ressurecting a SNES, and I heatgunned one part of the mobo too long and the PCB swelled up, so I had to fix all the vias on and around the swelled part...