PDXModshop started as a hobby. Since a very young age, I was enthralled by technology and learning everything I could about it. I was introduced to video games in the summer of 1991, when I was six years old. My babysitter at the time had to make us dinner, and to distract us, she each gave us something to do. For me, I got to sit in front of a small CRT television with Super Mario Bros. 3 on the original NES. I absolutely loved it, it was truly fascinating.
In 1998, at age 11, my mom had saved up some dough and for my birthday she took me to Circuit City to buy me my first PC. An old HP Pavilion AMD-K6 and a copy of LEGO Creator. It was an $1,800 computer back in the day, it had a 333Mhz AMD Processor, 64MB of RAM, an 8GB HDD, a CD-ROM drive and Windows 98 pre-installed. Much to my mothers dismay, less than a month after she bought it, I had it disassembled on the cold cement floor of our basement (I now know the basement is the worst place for a PC). Needless to say, my curiosity ensured that while I continuously disassembled and re-assembled the PC, failing countless times to get it to work again, I was continuing to learn how it all worked until eventually I got everything back together in the proper configuration for everything to boot. At this point in my life, I had only my PC and a Super Nintendo to entertain me, provided my homework was finished.
Over the next few years, I still had my trusty HP, but evolved from the SNES to the N64 and the Playstation 1. It wasn’t until I attended high school that things really began to take off for me. Throughout high school, I would attend advanced computer classes and electrical engineering classes that fortified my knowledge on how this tech not only functioned on an electrical level, but how each line of code intricately played its part in the grand whole. I didn’t excel much in the engineering, but the software side stuck with me. The electrical side of things would evolve later.
During this time, I first learned of the Stealth chip for the original Playstation. My nephew had one, so I borrowed my neighbors soldering iron and tried my hand at soldering the chip to his PS1. The mod was not successful and afterwards the PS1 did not boot, so I removed the chip and still the PS1 did not boot. I had broken my nephews PS1. I was disappointed in myself for having been too confident at the time and felt bad for my nephew. I saved up money from working in my high school cafeteria and bought him a new one. I didn’t return to modding for some time.
In 2004, a high school friend invited me over to play his XBOX. He had sold his binder and shoe box full of Pokémon and Magic The Gathering playing cards in order to get it off of eBay at the time. What he didn’t tell me was how COOL his XBOX was. He went to start it, and instead of your normal MS dashboard, it instead booted to EvolutionX (EvoX for short), a modified dashboard with limitless potential. He was very nice in letting me play or going co-op in two player games with me, but when I wasn’t playing, I remember that he spent countless hours playing Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap on it, he enjoyed it for the ROMS it could play. It’s been almost two decades since I’ve seen him and his name eludes me, but he loved wordplay, “Stamp out and eradicate superflous redundancy!” he used to exclaim, I didn’t get it at the time, but the statement itself was redundant. Another of his favorites was “Boycott Shampoo! Demand real poo!” Part of me hopes he finds this site, reads this About page; and perhaps remembers me.
His XBOX was the turning point. I swore to myself that I had to have one. It wasn’t until 2008 that I was able to afford my own. I bought an XBOX with an Enigmah chip. The PSU shorted out in smoke less than a few months later. I took it to a guy in Hillsboro for repair and while I was there, I spotted a Xecuter X3CE and asked him if he wanted to sell it. He offered $55 with install. I jumped on it. I inevitably sold the XBOX a year or so later to avoid being short on rent. I still have the guys number in my phone, though I doubt it is still his number. X3CE chips go for a whopping $400 these days, so I will forever be slapping myself for that one. Sometime later, in 2012, I found another XBOX, this one was unmodded and never opened, it was at a flea market for $10 and the tag said it wasn’t working. Booted it to find it needed a new IDE cable and so I replaced it and it worked. It was around this time that I decided to research how I could mod it myself. 2012 was the year that modding truly took hold for me, the year that PDXModshop was born.
While researching at the time, I learned of the font exploit and that you could use a Datel ActionReplay Memory Card and a copy of Splinter Cell as an entry-point to run unsigned code. This exploit was older than Softmod Installer Deluxe (SID) and far older than Rocky5’s softmod tool, though I cannot recall the name of it. Using the memory card, Splinter Cell and a PC memory card reader, I was able to put the exploited save on the memory card and softmod my own XBOX and it was exciting to have done by myself, to say the least. Ten years ago, from the writing of this article, I modded my first console, this was the first time I had been successful in my own endeavors.
I sold that XBOX as well, again desperate for cash. Fret not, however, for I now have a Crystal v1.0 XBOX with a 1.4Ghz CPU upgrade, 128MB RAM upgrade, LED’s that change color and respond to Google, the best SAMSUNG optical drive for the OG XBOX, a 2.5TB HDD, a CPU throttle toggle, two LCD’s that display system info and temps and an OpenXenium mod chip. A crown jewel so expensive that even if I reluctantly attempted to sell it like a fool, nobody in their right mind would want to spend such an extravagant amount of money on that kind of an XBOX (at least I don’t think so).
When I first thought up PDXModshop, at the time, it was meant to be a marketplace of sorts when I had envisioned it, but it never really took off, then DMCA went into effect and legislation became more tough on the modification of intellectual property for the purpose of making a profit. Not to this day did I ever sell any modded consoles or services, but over the last 10 years I have learned countless methods and skills in regards to many forms of consoles, handhelds, phones and other devices. While I cannot risk the sale of pre-modded consoles or send-in services, I can at least share in the bounty, nay, the cornucopia of my knowledge.
PDXModshop is a culmination of all of that effort. A modding encyclopedia of sorts.
What I have learned to mod over the years
I have learned softmods and hardmods for the following systems:
- Android
- Apple iOS
- Microsoft XBOX
- Microsoft XBOX 360
- Nintendo 2DS/3DS
- Nintendo DSi
- Nintendo NES Classic
- Nintendo SNES Classic
- Nintendo Switch
- Nintendo Wii
- Nintendo WiiU
- PC’s and SBC’s
- Sega Genesis Mini
- Sony Playstation
- Sony Playstation 2
- Sony Playstation 3
- Sony Playstation 4
- Sony PSP
- Sony PSVita