A few mods for some locals

Hey again, it's been a while since I've posted but ever since I finished the TEasy Mod, I've been rather busy getting organized.

I still get asked to do mods by locals, and here's a few. The first one is for my friend d0x, who wanted his Comic-Con PS3 TE dual modded.


Same set up as always

1 x Madcatz Xbox 360 Fightpad
1 x Imp board

Switches via control panel switch, RS = 36o, DP/LS = PS3


The next mod wasn't terribly complex, but it was the first time I've dealt with Dreamcast Agetec sticks. He wanted me to make his twin Agetecs work on PSx as well as DC...no problem. Overall they're nice to work with, the PCB is pretty damn easy to work with. However, the one gripe that I have is that whoever designed the PCB did a piss poor job at using thermals for their through hole spots. Heating up the ground pins enough to solder a wire to was really quite difficult, since the ground plane just acted like a gigantic heat sink.

This first one wasn't bad, the PSX pad was an early version A type dual shock. Super easy to mod with. This wasn't an untouched stick though, someone had popped in a JLF and sanwa buttons, and you can tell they didn't plan ahead when splicing in the JLF. The terminal block that was already there was cut in too close to the PCB for my liking.



The second one was a gigantic pain in the ass.

The pad he supplied me with was a late version A type, which utilizes a flex cable for the tactile buttons. Instead of soldering to scraped traces, you have to solder to the other side of the flex cable connector, which is kind of a challenge since it's got rather small points.


I ran into a bunch of problems. It went smoothly at first, but after fiddling mounting this thing in the case for 20 minutes I finally got to test it. Turns out I had a slight wiring issue and had to re-do it. Then, after unmounting it, changing the wires, and remounting it I found I had a short between R1 and R2...awesome.

So I finally fixed that up, then zip tied everything tight and closed it up once and for all. Now both sticks work on PSx as well as DC. I think I went through about 25 zip ties with this one, luckily they're cheap.

TEasy Mod Project, Part 7, Prototype 2... descendant of Prototype 1

Well, big update. All I can say is that I'm happy with how things have turned out this time around. My measurements were near dead on this time.. allowing me to have a flawless install into a Madcatz 360 TE.




So you can see that there are some obvious differences between this and v1.0. The end header annulus sizes are bigger, and I was worried about them being TOO big. They ended up being just right, so I'm really happy with that. Also, I added silk screen labels to the USB points, and also changed the size and shape of the outlining silk screen.

The last picture shows it sitting inside of the case, the important thing to note is that the holes are DEAD ON to the built in stand offs. I'm super happy about that, as well as the next parts of this update.



Before tearing into the soldering, I made sure of a few things. The first picture shows the press fit nut, I made the hole a little bigger than the recommended size..and it fits PERFECT. A little downward force from some pliers and it goes right into the board. So now if there's any bending at all I should have no problems correcting it.

The second and third picture show the alignment of the pins in regard to the header spots. As you can see I'm pretty much dead on in L-R alignment, there's a slight error in the vertical alignment, but it's not enough to throw the whole installation off (like last time).

Last picture shows the PCB clipped in place, the important thing to note is that the header is no longer in the way of things. Turns out that's not entirely true, and extending the board another .25 mm wouldn't hurt. The top left clip can't open up all the way because of the shrouding, so I'll make that small adjustment and it should be all good.





In order to solder the pins and have them be as straight as possible, I tried stacking multiple PCBs on top and clipping them together. It worked pretty well, and the pins were straight enough to my liking when it was all over with. Although I need some practice soldering this thing together, the receptacles are a pain in the ass since there isn't a lot of pad to solder to. I ended up having a solder joint I couldn't remove because they were so close. So I took an exacto knife and cut between them until there was no more continuity. It's dirty, but it works.

The last picture shows the board installed into the case with the anti-bend screw installed. It worked tremendously well, there was absolutely no bend in the board whatsoever. However, after putting everything together I found that without the bend, the force goes BACK into the TE's PCB. Which is a worse problem.... so for now I think the board bending is an acceptable issue unless someone shows me a prototype that's snapped in half or something.

Now on to installing the board. I wanted to make a demo video to show people just how easy this thing is to use. To make this even more enticing, I shows how to make a dual mod completely solderless. I did this by cannibalizing the B end of a USB cable, and splicing it to the stock cable. I did this because the TE isn't mine, and I didn't want to be drilling a hole where the cord is just to fit the B end of a non-rigged USB cord.


Kind of a chop job, but it works.

Now for the fun part:


Yeah, I crimped another ribbon cable and this time it was long enough to turn the Dual Strike around and angle it enough that the gigantic B end of the plug would fit. I mounted the Dual Strike with some #4 screws and 1/4" spacers, they hold quite nicely.

The best news of all though, it's tested and works 100% :)

That doesn't mean there isn't a little more tweaking to do, but my proof of concept has been created, and I think it's time to go public with this guy. If you've been following my progress, thank you for the comments and encouragement... I'm so close to finishing I can taste it!

I'll also link the video here, but I don't have it uploaded just yet.

TEasy Mod Project, Part 6, I await patiently

Alright, an order has been placed again. This time I wasn't so nervous up until pushing "confirm order," but the second I went to click on it I started sweating again. Oh well, I'm in way too deep now, just gotta hang on and go with it.

Anyhow, here's the final layout I sent in (sort of):


Looks a little more chaotic this time around, doesn't it? That's because the center hole size has been increased, and also the end header has been moved upward a little bit. I had an easier time this round though, since the more I work with the board layout software the more comfortable I get.

After I took a screen shot, I actually adjusted the end header up another 1mm after remembering something. It's off-set now completely, but it'll be easier to manage for the end user, since the shrouding of the header won't be in the way of the clip.

I know now that the receptacle hole size will come out fine, and that the corner stand off holes will be fine as well. What makes me nervous is that, in the end, I had to eyeball the adjustments to the pin placements, even after trying to make another mockup.

In the first round, I was only off by .5mm here and there, and trying to measure that, even with calipers...can be rough. Especially when the only thing I'm taking as "perfect placement" is the corner stand offs. So I pretty much had to clip the PCB in, slide the pins through, and see where they were and then adjust to where they needed to be. It's not the best way to do it, but unfortunately with what I have on hand that's all I've got.

I have a MUCH better feeling this time around though, but still.... if this doesn't work, I may have to start taking donations, lol.

TEasy Mod Project, Part 5, Sanity fading.. mind playing tricks

Well, I got a few pieces of hardware in the mail today. A few drill bits of specific sizes, and most importantly, some specialized nuts for #4 screws.


Those are "Threaded, press fit" nuts for #4 screws. As you can probably guess by looking at it, it basically presses into whatever medium you've got a mounting hole in, and then it creates a threading for you internally in the hole.

The idea is for this to be pressed into the underside of the board, then use a #4 screw, lightly tightened into place. This would press the screw against the case, preventing the board from bending at all. The idea was nice, but unfortunately the mounting hole size they suggested did NOT work at all. 1, it did not press into the hole without making it bigger, and 2, I didn't have a proper bit that's one size bigger. So I ended up having to put a piece of tape over the hole I made, cut it, then press the nut into the hole where the tape actually takes up that minuscule amount of slack around it's diameter.

I made a few adjustments to my pin positions, and decided to try another "mock up" to see how it would go. I was determined to get it right this time, so I decided to bring out the big guns... meet my new friend:


Yeah, this time I didn't fuck around with a hand drill, I used this nice little drill press. Turns out my step-father's old friend had one he hasn't used in years, so now I have a drill press... for free, awesome.

I marked down my adjustments the night before by putting two of my prototypes stacked on top of each other, with the top one having the TE PCB clipped in. I slid the pins through and kind of eyeballed where they were at and where they "needed to be," so to speak. Unfortunately, when I did this I was tired as hell, and I ended up going the wrong way with a few of the measurements. Of course I didn't realize this until after I'd gone through this whole ordeal, but oh well.... they're adjusted now, and unfortunately this mockup has been altered already. I'll show you what I did anyhow, because it's cathartic.

Here's an example of my adjustments (currently fixed), PROTIP: always mark your adjustments near what you're moving, that way if you ever screw up like I did, it's very easy to go back and "undo" what you just did.


You're reading that right, the directional header needs to be .5mm higher than the other headers in that row. I didn't realize this until the other night, but have subsequently made the alterations required.

Here's a shot of what the hell I'm talking about, and why looking at this shit late at night is hazardous to your health.


It's hard to see, but it's definitely higher than the other ones, I fucking hate madcatz right now for putting me through this shit (although I've done this entirely to myself). I'm jumping through hoops to get these measurements right since I don't have any good equipment other than calipers I borrowed from work, and my eyeballs. Honestly though, at first glance they look dead even, but if you stare at it long enough like I have..you start to see things, and your mind plays tricks on you. For example, I see not only the directionals as .5mm higher than the other ones, but I also see the right most header in that top row as .1mm lower than the middle header. I'm going insane.

Anyhow, back to the drill press. So in order to make my drilling as accurate as possible, I clipped one of the old prototypes to the new mockup so that I could get the pin spacing correct:


I went through and drilled out all of the important holes like I did before, and you wouldn't believe how awesomely the receptacles fit into a hole drilled at 1.35mm exactly. Unfortunately the fabrication house doesn't have "exact" drills sometimes, so they'll generally just mark your hole at a larger diameter and get it as close as possible. I'm sure the holes in the prototype that was fabricated are more like 1.39 mm or something, which does make a difference on this scale.


That's the second round of mockups (before catching my screw up), you can see the press fit nut in place, and of course the pins all put into place.


Here's a lesson for you though, no matter what tools you have.... a hand done job will always be off by a little bit. I drilled the holes straight down with a drill press, and they're still magically crooked. You can also make out the piece of scotch tape to the right, modding a mod board... how fun.


Here's the board installed into the case, you can get a better idea of what the screw/press fit nut will do for this thing. You pretty much install the board, then put the #4 screw in afterward, then press the TE PCB on top and clip it into place.



The board "installed," this time I put a shrouded header kind of where it will end up to see if it would be in the way of the board's edge, or the clips. Turns out it's still in the way of the clip in the bottom left, so I moved the header left and up by .25/1mm, respectively. It'll be a little off set with the dimensions of the board, but should work out a little easier for the user.

Anyhow, even though the mockup was kind of a throw away, it still taught me a few things, like not trying to do precision work when you're tired, otherwise you'll end up wasting more time in the end.

If I didn't have screw ups, I wouldn't learn anything, so I just need to keep pressing forward with this. I've invested far too much time and effort to not have this work. Money isn't even an issue right now, I just want to make sure that the past 2 months of this shit have been worth it.

I am excited about putting in for another prototype, and I think I'll send out for one by the end of the week. I read up a little more on the PCBfabexpress website, and they do "barebones" PCBs that don't have solder mask or silk screen, and they're like 30 bucks cheaper with a 5 day turnaround. I may do that this time, because even if it works 100% (which I doubt), it's still nothing but a prototype, and having all the extra shit on there like silk screen doesn't actually do anything other than look pretty. Also, the idea of quick fabrication of 5 prototypes for 50 bucks or less before shipping is pretty awesome.

Again, lessons learned, since I should have done that in the first place...but I wanted to be slick and have something that looked pretty, looking back that was really stupid, especially for something so measurement heavy where you can be OFF BY .5MM and have it completely wreck everything else. Any other project, sure...this one, totally wrong idea.

TEasy Mod Project, Part 4, the balding continues...

Hooray, got a few things in the mail today, one of which was unexpected.





The board came out well, and as a total plus, the drill holes are pretty spot on..almost a little big. Although one thing I noticed was that I never adjusted the end header annulus size for the through holes. Take a look, it's like soldering vias:


Got a little nervous seeing that, so the first thing I did was sit back down at my computer and fuck around with the size of those pads. They're usable, but it's be less of a hassle if I had a bit more room to work with. I ended up with this:


If you look at those in comparison to the original, you'll see they're much bigger. Obviously this won't pass a DRC, but for now I don't give a shit, I just wanted to fix that up before I forgot about it. There's a few other things on the obvious to do list, one of which is to add silk screen to the USB section of pins, somehow I missed that one.. oh well, can't catch everything.



The board put together, but again I missed something. As you can see I needed to cut the shrouding on the header to accommodate for the stand offs. I ended up just taking down that entire front wall to be sure I didn't run into any weird spacing issues. I'll be sure to lengthen the board just a bit, or just hang the header off the side more to give myself some breathing room on the side of the TE PCB.


Put together with the shrouding cut, fits like a glove that's a size too small. And what do we have here? Those are flanged spacers that I looked for for a very long time, turns out the same place that carries the standoffs has these on hand...and for a reasonable price too :).

They are put into the case before you install the board so that it's raised up a little bit. In my first post, I mentioned the length of the pins and what effect they'd have on this whole ordeal. Well, it just so happens that I needed to make some modifications to the pins themselves, as well as raising the board another 1.5mm or so.



The first picture shows the spacers installed, they're a #10 screw inner diameter (.2") to fit around the little lip that the plastic stand offs built into the TE have, FYI that lip is roughly 1.5mm tall. The second picture shows my modified receptacles, they have the crimp tail cut off since 1. we don't need that, I'm soldering them in place, and 2. without doing that this just won't fit. There's only about 9mm of clearance under the board and the overall length of the receptacles before cutting is around 11mm.

This is part of the reason why I haven't locked a price yet, because I'm going to try to get the factory to custom make me these receptacles so that I don't have to dremel thousands of little pins. The last picture shows it installed, as you can see I've designed it so that you can use the stock screws that are already in there, allowing you to install this with only a screw driver... awesome.

That center'ish hole is for a PCB support I have yet to decide on, you'll see why I've allowed for it as a just in case.


After tinkering around with it, and finally getting it clipped in I found that the board still has the bending issue as I saw before. Thus we need a board support, I think I know how to make that work...but it may require going to a company whom I believe charges more than most do for simple shit like male/female hex standoffs. At least that's what a co-worker tells me, we'll see.

I'm not terribly happy on how it went together, it looks okay in the final picture, but there's some weird alignment issues going on that will probably take me the most time to fix. I'm hoping it's a simple fix, but honestly I have no idea how deep that hole will go. It could be a measurement issue, it could even be the soldering of the receptacles. Since they're not super tight in the holes they have some room to move, which causes inaccuracy on the other end. Again, this is all part of the R&D process, but man is it a pain in the ass.

After checking continuity, I decided it was time to try my hand at crimping ribbon cable! I didn't do a terrible job for my first time, it was actually kind of neat.


I matched up everything, and made sure that Pin 1 on the shrouded header was the marked side (it's usually on the side with the little cutout for keying). I really wanted to make sure my pinout was correct, so I crimped the other end with what is probably the most exciting part of this whole thing:


Yeah, that's a direct ribbon cable connection with the Dual Strike! I made sure that the keying was correct on his shrouded header, as it turns out, he's got it turned backward. There's a little arrow pointing to position 1 of the header, and that's supposed to be the front left pin (VCC), but instead it's on the other side. No big deal, I just flipped the connector, crimped it in place, and voila...we have a direct connection.

If I wanted to, I could have actually made a USB B end to the stock cable, plugged it in, and would've been done right then and there with a dual mod on this stick. However, as exciting as that is, this is still all testing..so I didn't want to get ahead of myself. Also, I found that with the length of the stock cable, pointing the dual strike the other way would probably work out best in the TE. However, I didn't leave myself enough ribbon cable to do that, so I ended up with a pseudo-install, lol.


You get the idea though, you'd run the USB cable under and around the TE PCB, and the length of the cable would be perfect for plugging into the front of the Dual Strike.

Alright, I'm tired, and for now, I'm done. More testing will be done this week to try and hammer out how to deal with all these minor details. I believe I'll do one more round of prototyping just to be sure, since I'd rather make sure and spend less than 1/3 of what I would if I went full production and found something still wrong with the design.

The problem is that I've got 4 more boards that have these minor issues, but they're still technically usable, but they take a lot more tinkering than they should. I also don't have any more of those edge holding standoffs, I'm still waiting on the rest of my samples. I hope they get here soon so I can send Jochen (the nice guy that sent me the Dual Strike for testing) a couple of my prototypes so he can take a look and see if he spots anything I missed.

TEasy Mod Project, Part 3

Okay, I lied. After reviewing the pictures I had up, I saw a few things that didn't sit well, so I re-did the layout one last time, ran my DRC, re-reviewed the layout. Now it's been sent in for production! I was sweating bullets clicking the "submit files" button. I swear this has gotta be the scariest 100 bucks I've ever spent, and I have no idea why, lol.

Anywho, here's the final layout, hopefully the drill holes work out and it everything passes the checks that the engineers at the fab house do.



Taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back tends to be the way I work, but so far...using that method 90% of the projects I've ever worked on have succeeded on the first try. I hope like hell this follows suit. I design this way because of something my professor always said, "If you're a good engineer, it should work on the first try." I try to follow that expression very closely, this project is no exception.

TEasy Mod Project, cont.

Okay, so I think I've done as much tooling around as I can without actually sending my files to a board house and just seeing what comes of it. So tomorrow I'll be taking that dive, and the board house I'm using actually has a turn around time of 5 days at a pretty fantastic price (75 pre-shipping...really not bad for that fast of service for 5 boards, and apparently amazing quality).

Here's the final layout, and also the layout viewed in the program "viewplot," which was recommended by the sparkfun tutorial.



I've followed the tutorial to the letter, I've double checked my file formats and NC drill file contents. I've also run the DRC about 100 times, triple checking the board house's capabilities....so yeah, I'm super nervous about this. I don't really know why, I've dropped more money on (quite frankly) far more stupid and less researched things. Guess it's just nerves of my first time ever having a PCB fabricated that I designed, so I suppose it's more of an anxious feeling than anything.

The biggest thing I'm nervous about, is getting the board back and seeing my worst fear of this project...the 1.35mm drills for the 1.91mm pitch. I'm hoping and praying that when they say they can accept spaces down to 6 mil, they MEAN it. Otherwise I'm going to get it back, and when I try to solder my pogo pins, the solder will just leach into the neighboring pad without even thinking to stop. I'm pretty accurate with an iron, especially with .015" solder, but if there's no solder mask between those pads, I'm still fucked.

Planning ahead though, if this works and there's a definite interest for a production run, I'm pretty sure I've decided on the board house to use. It's got a fantastic price, free DRC check, free electrical test, and a slew of other things that make it awesome. I've also decided that I'm going to use blue solder mask when it comes to the choice. I'm thinking that someone will be showing their newly modded stick to friends, and one of the friends says "hey, wtf is that blue board?" because you won't be able to miss that color if you tried :p.