Forgot to mention. I got my Wii modchipped, and everything works almost perfectly. So I'll share my experience.
The main goal of any modchip is playing pirated games. In the West, they bashfully call it “playing backups”, meaning, like, “reserve copies”. Sounds like a cover-up for piracy — because you can only make Wii game backups on three models of LG DVD drives. Somehow I doubt everyone rushes to buy those along with the chip. A bonus of the modchip is that you can play games from different regions with varying degrees of success (yes, the Wii has regions too, just like DVDs, for those who know).
I bought the chip here, it costs something around 20 Ls. Prices on this site are lower than others, they delivered it in about a week and a half — which is decent, considering it came all the way from Canada. The chip is called Wiikey 2 — probably the most famous of them all, which is why I chose it. It’s programmable and can be flashed from a disc with fresh firmware, just in case.
In general, you should pick a modchip smartly — disassemble the console and check what version of the required microchip you have. Or just buy the newest one — there's almost a 99% chance it’ll work, especially if your console isn't the newest either. I didn't take it apart beforehand — it's a hassle and I didn't have the screwdriver. But the chip came with the right ones — a small Torx and a three-pronged one, aka triwing. It's a tricky little thing specifically designed so that nobody can take the electronics apart, which is why megacorporations use it so often (I don't have any other hypothesis as to why it's needed). I disassembled and reassembled the console myself, following the instructions. Despite my somewhat clumsy hands, everything turned out perfectly. I didn't solder the chip myself, though — I asked the admin, he loves and knows how to do this stuff, he just asked me to buy a super-thin wire, something like 0.3 mm. I forgot its name anyway, I only remember it was Soviet-style, made of four unintelligible Cyrillic letters. (No, not USSR).
Anyway, the soldering there is pretty precise (almost like “pinpoint construction”, haha), the sizes are in millimeters, so all credit and praise to the admin who wasn't afraid to perform the operation. However, I told him right away that I'm a fatalist, and if the console dies — it's fate. By the way, you can go without soldering — but that kind of chip costs 10 Ls more (multiply by two for dollars) and, rumor has it, is a bit less reliable — plus you can damage the microchip during installation too.
Luckily, everything went successfully, and the Wii fired up right off the bat — you just have to download the games fast enough. First thing I grabbed was Resident Evil 4, which the glamorous dude Jay Lee kept aggressively pitching to me, and Okami, a review of which I accidentally saw a long time ago.
But I'll write a separate post (or maybe even more than one) about the games, right now we're talking about the modchip. There were some problems after all, but only two. The first one — if you insert a disc and then take it out, you won't be able to insert a new one until you reboot the console. This is a known issue, it only happens to some people, and there are some workarounds that don't always work. But I wouldn't say it bothers me much, so I'll leave it as is. The second one — in the game Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the sound and music get messed up sometimes. It seems to have passed now, so this can be considered a total non-issue. Also, Super Mario Galaxy didn't work because of the new protection (it works now, I downloaded a cracked PAL region one) and MadWorld froze once, but I still have to look into why that happened.
So I'm happy with the chip, and the console too. But more on that in the next part.