newbie modchip questions..
 

thinking about picking up an xbox, but want to get a little more info on the mods

Ive gone the soldering route before (with my old psx), and Im definitly not very good at that ;)

so Ill probably look into the matrix
I have no problems at all with the idea of needing to flash the bios.. so thats not an issue..

what are the advantages/disadvantages of the different mods, compared to each other

and are there any that will let you play online? or will I have to get a solderless one, just so I can remove it and put the original disk in, everytime I want to get online and play with friends?

The main difference between the modchips are they size of the bios they can have, if the chip is pre-flashed, and if the chip is flash upgradable.

Some bios are hacked to boot to a different dashboard name. So instead of booting to a file called xboxdash.xbe, it boots to somehting like evoxdash.xbe. This makes it so you don't have to change the dashboard everytime you want to play online. You can just simply turn off the chip and the xbox will boot to the original file.

Almost all modchips can have a disable switch hooked up to it, so you don't have to worry about taking the chip out everytime you want to go live.

check out this for comparison of the chips:
http://www.hackershardware.com/compare_xbox.php
u could play online if use xbconnect
but for xbl
u would need a swtich to turn off the modchip
as well as the original disk, no backups