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Never assume...
This is somewhat of a continuation of something I have been trying to put across to this community for a number of years now. See my old forum post regarding this: Old forum post about mod chips and timing issues.
Reason i bring this back up again is i was hit with a prime example of why my concerns are valid and wanted to share the experience with you all. I've been out of the loop from TG for about a year, i was done with my game of choice and sold my consoles. Then the covid-19 lockdown happened and i thought well, with this much time on my hands might as well see if i can improve.
I got my PAL PS1 which has all the seals intact so it's (hopefully) completely original and never been opened or modified.. This is how i like my hardware to be where possible when it comes to WR's.
But i still needed an NTSC PS1.. These appear to have gone up in price considerably in the UK and they are also far more rare now over here so i was left ordering one which has no seal intact so has been opened. Most of them have had lasers swapped out at this point so i just presumed it would be that and went ahead and made my purchase.
It arrived, i tried it, it worked, great.. but something in me was saying, open it, see why it was opened...
So i did...
Ok, everything normal here, no real way to tell if the laser has been replaced but the original laser cable sticker was still there which tells me it's likely the original so i dug deeper to see if a power socket had been repaired or anything else.
Ahhhh... Oh great... I'm sure most of you know what this is. For those who don't, it's a mod chip to enable play of any region game (PAL/NTSC) and also to play 'backups' ... yeah as if anyone did that but that's another story.
My point here is never assume... if you buy a second hand unit, never presume even if the labels are intact as these can be purchased online for purists from what i've been told. I was never expecting a mod chip to be in there as most people over here mod chip to play NTSC games, if you have an NTSC console and want PAL.. you buy a PAL console. They are extremely cheap over here so this really took me by surprise.
If i had used this for competition use do i know how this console would act running NTSC games with the mod chip installed? Chances are nothing... but I don't know? and that's a chance i personally don't take when it comes to WR's. Playing PAL games on this however is another story the timing would be way out as per my forum post years ago.
Point is, check and check again. You don't have to open the console either like this, just try playing a different region game.
Needless to say, this little chip was swiftly removed! I also checked the motherboard model number to ensure it was actually an NTSC-J board.. it is and it is also the last ever board revision made for PlayStation 1 and they are fairly rare to find which is pretty cool to know.
Again I'm not trying to lecture anyone in their quest for WR's but lets all do our part to ensure our hardware is legit and the database is kept clean and legit. It's easy done, I could have done it myself right here but luckily i checked.
I'd also love to see some more discussion on my original forum post as it's been untouched for ages and to me is still a serious outstanding issue. I know not everyone agrees, perhaps i take it too seriously but I'd rather be that way then to submit something which isn't legit even by mistake.
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