How difficult would it be to get your hands on a mod chip if it were to come out and how difficult would it be to install (if you already had soldering experience with small electronics). I would be willing to purchase and install a mod chip if one were to be released.
?
Are you talking about the mod chip for switch lite.
There's two modchips from TX right now: SX Lite (for Switch Lite) and SX Core (for all other models).
Right now they are your one and only entry point for anything homebrew related on patched models.
The soldering isn't too easy if you're unexperienced. A few ppl on YT already damaged their consoles.
If you're not good in soldering, let
someone professional do it for you.
The bigger task would be to even
get those modchips right now. Afaik all sellers were burned by Nintendo.
Also
if you're looking to get one, do it as soon as possible because they need to be activated on TX servers once.
At the moment TX servers are frequently going offline and online from time to time (there's a telegram group with a bot, that reports it whenever it goes off/on) so theoretically you would still have the chance to activate the chip right now. Who knows how long this might be the case.
In all honesty: Try to get an unpatched console from ebay, even if that means to ask 1000 sellers to look up the serial on the console's buttom. If at least 20 reply and one is unpatched, you did it.