DufenTech

This is a portable PlayStation system I built for a customer.

Features:

• Runs on 6 rechargable AA’s. Battery life is about 4 hours depending on the game.
• LED backlight modded 5″ Sony PSone screen for more battery life.
• Has AV out, external power jack, headphone jacks, memory card port, and Player 2 port.
• The middle X, Square, Triangle, O are disguised brightness and volume adjustment buttons.
• Handstrap to prevent accidental catastrophe.

Build pics

Parts used:

• ZN-40 case.
• PSone system
• PSone 5″ LCD
• PSone analog controller.
• PSX standard controller.
• Controller/Memory card port from PSX.
• (2x) 3 AA Battery holders
• (2x) DPDT slide switches

Design. Square peg, round hole.

First thing was to figure out how to fit everything in the dimensions set by the existing case. So I cut out all the controller pieces I would be using and laid them out until I was happy with the design.

Case work

First I cut out holes for all the matching button pieces and superglued them in place. Next I filled in gaps with epoxy putty. Then sanded it smooth.

I decided to use smaller speakers than the PSone screen came with. The speakers from a Hip Gear LCD matched up so I used them. To get speaker holes I clamped a piece of scrap PCB to the case to give me a nice even pattern to follow, and then drilled through the holes.

Holes for the power and CD lid switches were rough cut with a dremel, then a utility knife was used to make the square shape. I also cut out areas for the CD power cable, CD ribbon cable, memory card wire, power wires, and CD and battery mounting screws.

Spot putty was applied to the meeting seams and any small rough areas, then sanded smooth.

Painting.

First was a coat of primer. Once primer is dry it is very easy to see where there are uneven spots on the case. Anywhere needing it gets more spot putty and sanding. Then more primer and sanding. Once everything was smooth all the pieces got a nice satin black paint job.

I tried a gloss black paint job at first, but there was just way too much show through so it was quite ugly. So it was sanded down and reprimed, and I went with the satin which looked perfect.

Wiring.

First the LED screens backlight had to be modified. This mod comes from benheck.com. The LCD was taken apart, and the CCFL tube was removed and replaced by 3 ultrabright white LED’s. The inverter for the old tube was cut off. The results were excellent. Without doing this, the system could not run on something as wimpy as AA battery’s, at least not very long.

The flex cable had to be longer to reach through the case and connect to the PSone board. To lengthen it I stole a cable from a junked boombox CD player assembly. I found that it matched up perfectly. I glued a backing to both cable sides and soldered the cables together. Worked great.

The controller boards were cut apart, then soldered wires from the cut pieces to the matching traces on the control board. I used two controllers on this, a PSone model, as well as a PSX model (the one with no analogs). This was because I needed certain pieces from both, and the L2/R2 shoulder buttons on the PSX controller are smaller so there would be more space on the back to hold the system I also cut off the right hand buttons from the PSX controller and glued them to tact switches. I used these for the volume/brightness buttons for the LCD.

I had trouble with the control wiring during testing, where the analog stick would simply spin in the game in random directions. Scratched my head over that for a while. Turned out that the corner posts of the metal casing for the analog stick connected two ground traces on the control board. I soldered a wire re-connecting them and it was working perfectly.

Then I wired the power, video, sound, power switch, CD lid switch, etc. Everything was then superglued/screwed/hotglued in place.