Bloodgod said:Chip
Wires
Solder
Teh end
I don't know, But IIRC the first mod chip was Messiah chip or something.
Messiah came later. First were the chips that required a swap with GameShark or ActionReplay (Neo, NeoKey) You could solder one internally (Neo), and there was a USB version that still required a single wire to be soldered (NeoKey). Then there were all sorts of "tray eject" chips (DVDKey etc...) that allowed you to swap with GameShark/ActionReplay. Fliptops and slide tools came around that time too.
I still have a bunch of those things around somewhere.
Messiah was the first widely available "no swap" chip, but others were probably developed around the same time (origa, no-swap Neo chip). Each successive generation required fewer wires and had more features.
This is a pretty "loose" timeline...may not be 100% accurate, but the Messiah chip definitely came later, after the "swap" chips.
You hit the nail on the head with the hammer, Fogbank. I remember the NeoKey and using a GameShark to the do swap trick. The bad thing with the NeoKey was that you had to hold the eject button while navigating to a screen to do the swap. It usually took about 45 seconds, but was a pain in the butt holding that button that long. Also, you could only swap cd-r games, so alot of dvd based games were ripped to fit on cd. Some would have the intro or sound ripped from it.
The Messiah was the first non-swap modchip and it worked absolutely perfect. I can still remember people saying "Messiah! Save us from this swapping!" before it was released. Yep, those were the days. The Messiah chip came right after NeoKey, and then Messiah clones followed. I had a NeoKey, Messiah, Infinity and Crystal chip in my systems.