if you have good soldering skills the modchip shouldn't be to hard. but i use a pencil tip station for most of my mods so mobo work isn't to hard. the mainboard is very small (3 inches) and the modchip (UP) involves scratching away at the mobo. just, before you try to work on this, go to radio-shack, pick up a few pcb, and work on soldering small wires to small areas, so you get the hang of soldering on such a small scale. It makes XBOX mobo work look like child's play.