My First Time Portablizing (Ps2)

Includes PS2, Xbox 1, GameCube (but not the Phantom Game Console)

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happy_blimp
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Joined:Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:27 pm
My First Time Portablizing (Ps2)

Post by happy_blimp » Mon Apr 23, 2012 6:18 pm

Hey Everyone!

I recently caught the portable bug when I restored a broken up Sega Nomad to working condition. I am now looking into making my ps2 slim into a portable console. I have read most of the posts on this awesome forum and feel that I can take the plunge into the solder and bondo filled world of portable consoles.

Where I am at now:

I am using a Ps2 slim, SCPH 79001 so it has the really small motherboard.

I am aiming for a rugged and usable unit that will be easy to assemble and troubleshoot.

I wanted a big screen, so I ordered a 7 inch widescreen display. (Ebay link) its 480x234, and 30ms response time. So its not great, but you cant beat the price! It will be hooked up using composite video to prevent the green issue.

As much as I love the sexy curves of a lazer doodle, I designed my portable around the fashionable brick for ease of everything. I got This case from PacTec. Its a black plastic enclosure, Its 7" by 7.3" by 2.25" thick. The usable envelope inside is 5.9" by 6.9" by 2"

The interior design

I designed (and plan on building) the interior first, so that I could be sure the unit would at least work properly.

The case is wide enough to hold the ps2 mobo sideways, with the controller ports on one side and the power/av ports on the other side.

I will divide the case into two, 1 inch thick halfs, with the top half housing the mobo/heatsink/fan assembly, as well as the controller.

The back half of the case will house the dvd drive (cables will have to be extended), speakers/amplifier and one memory card soldered to the 1st player port

The exterior design

I decided to go with a portrait layout, really the case is almost square, but I feel it will keep it as compact as possible.
Image
my paint concept, I have scale models on drafting paper.

The screen assembly will be Frankencased to the front, I may cut out the case to fit it in as far as the ps2 mobo will allow.

The controller faceplate will be Frankencased into the bottom half, and set in as far as the internals will allow.

I will have to see about the best placement for the shoulder buttons, so that they don't interfere with the dvd door.

The back will have a door to access the dvd, and holes for the speakers.

The sides will hopefully have a switchable player 1 port (internal/external controller) , and a second player port and memory card slot. I am also hoping for an av out if there is space. As well as the obligatory power plugs and switches and whatnot

The battery will be external.


If anyone has feedback on my idea I would love to hear it. I have not seen a Ps2 packed into something this small, so there might be some unforseen issues.
Thanks for reading!

HemmitsHacknMod
Posts:21
Joined:Thu Apr 12, 2012 3:19 am

Re: My First Time Portablizing (Ps2)

Post by HemmitsHacknMod » Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:38 pm

How do you plan on wiring controller I am building my own and need help with the controller

happy_blimp
Posts:5
Joined:Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:27 pm

Re: My First Time Portablizing (Ps2)

Post by happy_blimp » Tue Apr 24, 2012 4:48 pm

As far as wiring the controller, I plan on leaving the face of the controller intact, therefore I wont have to really modify the controller wiring much. I am going to extend the wires going to the shoulder buttons.

Heres a link to my controller, disassembled

This is the controller I am using, its a "katana" knockoff controller. It has a simpler circuit board, with simpler analog buttons.

I plan on soldering the wires from to the controller to the Ps2, and installing some sort of switch to disconnect it to allow for an external controller. I still need to research how to switch from the external to the internal controls. When I figure it out I will post it here. Do you need help connecting the controller to the console or connecting the buttons to the controller board?

HemmitsHacknMod
Posts:21
Joined:Thu Apr 12, 2012 3:19 am

Re: My First Time Portablizing (Ps2)

Post by HemmitsHacknMod » Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:30 pm

Buttons to the controller board please

Live_Steam_Mad
Posts:35
Joined:Thu Feb 25, 2010 11:00 pm

Re: My First Time Portablizing (Ps2)

Post by Live_Steam_Mad » Thu Apr 26, 2012 3:21 pm

happy_blimp wrote:I wanted a big screen, so I ordered a 7 inch widescreen display. (Ebay link) its 480x234, and 30ms response time. So its not great, but you cant beat the price! It will be hooked up using composite video to prevent the green issue.
I like the use of a large screen, sounds great. Let us know when you get the screen what the quality is like (dead or stuck pixels, contrast performance, brightness, pure whites, good reproduction of reds) and whether the screen will accept Composite video in either 525 lines @ 60 fields/sec interlaced with NTSC color @ 3.58MHz and/or 625 lines @ 50 fields/sec with PAL color @ 4.43MHz.

I have just got a PSP 1003 and the screen is about 2 inches too small I feel, and having only one poor quality (IMHO) analog "stick" (nub) really sucks in e.g. Tomb Raider Legend (TRL) where having 2 very good quality sticks on the PS2 (to control movement of character and the camera simultaneously) is a huge advantage.

I have a TRL (USA NTSC version) game backup running on my soft modded (via PS2 memory card, ESR and FreeMCBoot) PS2 slim from a USB memory stick (OPL Loader) but the loading times really suck (because it is at USB 1.1 speed since it doesn't have a USB 2 port), the loading times are similar to from it's DVD of the same game.

In contrast, I have a hard modded Fat PS2 with laptop 5400RPM HDD and wow it loads my TRL game backup (i.e. when you die and restart the level at that point) in a few seconds, maybe 20x or more faster!

So I just bought an IDE HDD adapter for the PS2 slim (only works on 7000x) and I hope to make a portable based on that. Then the loading times would be short with everything and I could have quite a lot of games on the HDD, and I could maybe use a miniature 1.8" HDD drive (e.g. 40 GB is available for reasonable prices) and still have a nice portable PS2 made out of it.

I notice that the Composite Video output is very sharp with zero noise or interference or diagonal lines etc on my SNES JR (NTSC USA model, SNN-CPU-01, Rohm 9729 BA video chip) but quite blurred on my older, large SNES (NTSC USA model, SNS-CPU-RGB-01, Rohm BA6596F video chip), and blurred on my hard modded PSX (SCPH 7502, UK model, Rohm BA5977FP video chip), and blurred on my hard modded Fat PS2 (30003, UK model), and blurred on my soft modded Slim PS2 (75003, UK model), when all are fed via my Sony STR-DA1200ES amplifier and then into my IN76 video projector, via a cheap Composite cable between projector and amp, and using cheap PS1 and PS2 and SNES Composite cables.

The RGB output of both my Fat and Slim PS2 are very dissappointing, my Fat PS2 has noise and interference (vertical wavy lines on black screens), and has diagonal lines on large areas of color, but at least it's very sharp, and my Slim PS2 also has the herringbone patterns on large areas of color but again at least it's very sharp and this time has has no noise or other interference. I have tested this going straight into the back of the projector on RGB + Composite Sync, and I have no noise or diagonal lines on colors when I test e.g. my Pioneer LX60D HDD / DVD recorder, so it would appear to be an unshielded / ungrounded cable issue on the Slim and the Fat just has noise that you can't remove.

********

Later UPDATE: when using RGB SCART from my PS2 Slim, taking C-Video as sync half way along the cable from the C-Video socket on the RGB cable, INSTEAD OF taking C-Video as sync from my SCART adapter block that I have to use with the IN76 projector, picture looks nearly perfect in 625 lines @50Hz with only sometimes faint diagonal lines on some colors, and totally perfect 525 lines @60Hz, and no noise or wavy lines, using the same cheap 3rd party RGB cable as I used with PS2 Fat. Not quite as sharp as the PS2 Fat though on RGB, about the same sharpness as S-Video from the PS2 Fat.

Component from my Slim is pretty nice in 625 lines @50Hz with only very faint diagonal lines on certain colors, but at 525 lines @60Hz has some problems with quite a bit stronger diagonal lines on some colors, but there is no noise or wavy lines , again using the same cheap 3rd party RGB cable as I used with PS2 Fat. However if I remove the C-Video from the socket half way along the RGB cable (RGB cable becomes Component in Component video mode on the PS2) then the 625 lines @ 50Hz picture's faint diagonal lines become noticeably more pronounced, and the 525 lines @ 60Hz picture becomes a diagonal line tastic picture, not good, even though my Pioneer LX60D gives me a perfect picture in Component on this pj using the same cables when in 525 lines @60Hz. Again this Slim via Component is not quite as sharp as the PS2 Fat was though on RGB, about the same sharpness as S-Video from the PS2 Fat.

********

I will order an official Sony cable for RGB if I ever find one at an affordable price. I have just ordered an offical genuine Sony S-Video cable for PS3 (for use with my PS2 and PS1, to sidestep the crappy picture problem via Composite) and I'll see what that's like when it arrives. I have tested the S-Video output direct from my Pioneer LX60D to my video projector and out of my 3 S-Video cables that I have, 2 showed diagonal lines on colored areas and one didn't (must be a shielding issue on the 2 bad quality cables?). Also I will order an official Sony Component cable (my usual method of linking my Pioneer to the projector since I get a perfect picture) for the PS2 and see if I can sidestep the RGB picture problem of my PS2's.

PS Vita would be very nice but there's no Tomb Raider Legend for it yet (my favourite game) and now I have used the PSP I feel that the 5" diagonal screen is still going to be too small, even if it has got a beautiful OLED screen. So even a normal LCD 7" screen would be better for me since you see everything much better when the screen is bigger.

I will be following this and other people's PS2p portable PS2 projects and hope to follow in their footsteps with a super sharp 7" display and a 1.8" HDD for super short loading times. Someday LOL.

Cheers,

Alistair G.
Last edited by Live_Steam_Mad on Fri Aug 31, 2012 8:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.

happy_blimp
Posts:5
Joined:Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:27 pm

Re: My First Time Portablizing (Ps2)

Post by happy_blimp » Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:30 pm

I have noticed the same composite video blurring on my original SNES too, but my model one Genesis is really sharp. You can really only tell the difference when you switch back and forth between the two. When I put a new LCD in my Genesis Nomad, I hooked it up to the av-out plug composite. It had terrible lines and blurring, almost unusable. I twisted the composite signal wire and the screen ground together, and found that fixed all of the problems. Through experimentation on the Nomad I found about a full twist every 3/4 inch made the most difference with the small wires I was using.

With this ps2 I am going to experiment with different wires and shielding techniques and see what works best. I am leaving the disc drive in, the 79001 has a really compact drive with three small ribbon cables. I am sure the disc drive will cause interference issues with the video signal.

I could run freemcboot with the usb, but I have a huge collection of ps1/2 games from my high school years that I want to play the good ol' fashioned way.

As for the screen, I will make a video review of it. There seems to be a lot of info on the smaller sizes, but not too much on the 7" units.

happy_blimp
Posts:5
Joined:Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:27 pm

Re: My First Time Portablizing (Ps2)

Post by happy_blimp » Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:23 pm

I got my case today, its black, and the exact same texture of the slim ps2 case. I cut out a hole in the back and mounted the DVD drive. It fits perfectly, and now I just need to add an open button. I had to extend the wires to the spin motor, and soldering to ribbon cable is a real pain. I tested the fit of the motherboard and controller board and everything is good, and there is even room for batteries in the sides. Everything so far is just hot glued in for test fitting, and will be attached properly once everything is fabricated.

Here is the case, with the drive installed.
Image

I am now looking for batteries that will get me around 1 hour of run time that I can cram into the newly found empty space. I am also still waiting on my ebay screen.

Live_Steam_Mad
Posts:35
Joined:Thu Feb 25, 2010 11:00 pm

Re: My First Time Portablizing (Ps2)

Post by Live_Steam_Mad » Sun Apr 29, 2012 8:35 pm

Well my Official PlayStation S-Video cable arrived and WOW did it ever make a huge difference to the picture when used with my hard modded PSX (7502) that I mentioned above. Now it's very sharp, and completely noise and interference free, and doesn't have any sign of herringbone / diagonal lines on any large areas of blue / red / green / yellow / orange etc and Tomb Raider 1 (NTSC-U, USA version, 60Hz @ 525 lines / interlaced / 3.58MHz NTSC) looks just perfect on the 45" diagonal screen.

I waited 16 years to cure this problem! Finally I can see the PlayStation 1 logo in all it's glory LOL with subtle shading etc. Couldn't see that subtle stuff on it before with either my cheapo RGB or composite cables.

Now when I get a minute I will test the cable on my Fat and slim PS2's to see if I can have a perfect clear picture from any of my PS2's before I finally get ready to mod one to make a portable.

EDIT: OK I just went and tested with my hard modded Fat PS2 30003 UK model and wow the noise that was present on the RGB cable is completely gone on the S-Video cable, the wavy vertical lines are not there, the sharpness is great, the colours are great, and there are no diagonal lines. A perfect S-Video picture from the Fat PS2. I'll go and test the slim in a mo.

EDIT 2: Yep I thought so, now my Slim PS2 via the S-Video cable is giving an absolutely perfect picture, with no lines / no noise / no herringbone patterns. Very nice. If I now use a simple S-Video -> Composite adapter that I have, I should get a better picture on the LCD, would be great for a portable.

I also just read on Sony's PlayStation forums that Sony have no plans to bring out PS2 games under emulation on PS Vita from the PS store. Now that sucks.

I got the S-Video cable from Amazon UK ;-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000 ... 01_s00_i00

https://picasaweb.google.com/1019326674 ... VideoCable

Cheers,

Alistair G.

happy_blimp
Posts:5
Joined:Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:27 pm

Re: My First Time Portablizing (Ps2)

Post by happy_blimp » Thu May 03, 2012 2:34 pm

Update!

I got the controller faceplate attached. I used epoxy putty to attach it from behind, then bondo filler to fill the gaps and smooth it out. I mounted the shoulder button on the side, and angled them slightly. Its fairly comfortable to hold, considering its over 2 inches thick.

Image

I considered moving the controller and video ports to the top of the unit. But then I decided it was too risky for a first portable. The memory cards and controllers will be on the left, and the power and video out will be on the right side.

Does anyone here have experience with how hot the 79xxx series PS2's get? I'm wondering if it will need any more fans than the stock fan and heat sink.

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