Worklog PS2 Portal

[Skibub28]

For my project I've decided to make a ps2 portable that's based off of the Playstation portal. The current plan is to take a dualshock 2, cut it in half, and have half on either side of the screen. However, because I've decided to simultaneously build @Redherring32 's TinyTendo, my budget is quite small, so I'm going to be trying to make it mostly out of parts I've already got on hand.

For supplies I've got a 7900 motherboard, freemcboot memory card, sandisk ultrafiltration flash drive, and 8200 mAh battery that I was going to use for a raspberry pi laptopna few years ago. As for the screen I have a 5 inch hdmi monitor display also from the previously mentioned pi laptop and I'll be using one of those crappy ps2 to hdmi adapters. I've also got a box full of semi-functional dualshock 2s to make a frankincense and the ps2 controller boards from @ohkin86 .

Currently I need to buy a step up converter and another hdmi adapter as my current one's fried, and then I can start designing and building.

For the step up converter I was wondering if something like this would work?
https://www.walmart.com/ip/USB-Lith...2?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=101047887
(It should also be able to double as the charging circuit)

 

[Lemoncake]

Ah, I love it when Patter the Natter’s pipe dreams become reality

 

[Skibub28]

Episode I: Under the Dremel
While waiting for other parts to arrive I got bored, and decided to start on the controls side of this project. With next to no planning I began, and the first thing I did was take out the Dremel.

Here we have our specimen of Controloshellus Sacrificialus all taped up in order to keep the opposing shells in line.

One dremelling later and one has become two, though I evidently wasn't careful enough with the dremel as shown below...

meaning I'd half to do the top shell again. This brings my redo counter to 1.

Next up to figure out how to mount the innards, starting with the joysticks. I immediately desoldered one from the sacrificial board, only to realize that it would be much easier to mount if it was still attached to the board. ‍♂

Here's the result once I resoldered the joystick.

Now the quickest and easiest way I had to mount the joysticks was hot glue, so if you're repulsed by this viscous polymer, now is the time to avert your eyes from the series of following images.

For the buttons I'm using the squishy blue facts that I bought from @YveltalGriffin.

I had to wire the joystick module prior to gluing it in, as that was the only time I had access to the solder points.

Next up was to wire it.

I spent quite a bit of time melting the coating off of magnet wires, as I needed a total of 44 to complete wire both half's.

Here's the first half wired. I realized that I'd have to hook up around 10 wires from this half alone to ground. Then I realized that it would make my life a lot easier if I were to wire up all of the ground points together internally. This brings my redo counter to 2, but also brings the amount of wires I'll need down to 34 so I guess it's worth it.

The inside of the left half, (I forgot to take a photo of the right.) I used a bunch of resistor legs to connect ground internally.
View attachment 79f01829-bc7b-4562-8ca2-3e4d4633d6ff-1_all_510.jpg
Here are the two finished halves next to each other, and now that this stage is done, we can get a pretty good idea of approximately what the final console should look like.

And this brings my first update to a close. Hopefully I'll maintain the motivation to see this project through to the end.

 

[Teatimetim]

Loving the frankencase!

 

[MRKane]

I agree totally! Frankencasing is a lost art now and it's very dear to my heart as it's something I spent the better part of a decade doing!

 

[ohkin86]

PS2 Portal is a good idea, and I am also preparing to create it

 

[Skibub28]

Episode II: The Controllening
I started hooking up wires to the controller board. I got the right joystick working, but anytime I tried to hook up the face buttons everything would stop working and it would act like I was holding dow on the dpad. It turns out that I needed to hook up the other end of any of the voltages to 3.3v instead of ground.

This is where my past decisions came to bite me in the butt. The bits of the original controller board that I'd cut off to hold the joysticks had the other end of L3 and R3 hooked up to ground. This meant that I'd have to take both controller halves apart to disconnect the button from the ground plane. Today I learned that it's a lot harder to intentionally pull up a pad than it is to do it unintentionally.

This brings my redo counter to 3.

After that I melted the ends off of the rest of the magnet wire (with is now my least favorite part about any of the projects I do, it takes waaayyyy too long.)

Here's a shot of it once I finished wiring both halves to the controller board.

I wired it up to the cable that came from the sacrificial controller, plugged it into my ps2, turned it on, opened ip the controller testing software, and voila! It worked!

My only issue is that it seems like I might have some stick drift, so I'll have to test it in a few games to see if it's an actual problem or not.

(P.S. I learned while working on this that ohkin86's controller boards allow the left stick to simulate the dpad, and the right one to simulate the face buttons on the menu screen. I also learned that if you only have the right stick hooked up, pressing the circle button on the main menu screen will work as a down press, allowing you to fully navigate the menu with only one stick.)

(P.P.S. Thank you to @Stitches and to @ohkin86 for helping me figure out how to use the controller board.)

 

[cheese]

I'm going to be trying to make it mostly out of parts I've already got on hand.

Honestly, sometimes this is the best way to do it! While an infinite budget will always give an amazing end product, the creativity required when the budget is 0 can be just as impressive

Can't wait to see more

 

[Skibub28]

Episode III: Double Trouble
Good news: My hdmi converter boards and my charging/power management boards arrived.

Bad News: The controller board that's built into the screen I'm using isn't interpreting the signal correctly.

As you can see here the screen is outputring two copies of the video input stacked on top of each other vertically and then cuts it off about halfway horizontally. I've tried messing around in the ps2's settings to fix this but had no such luck.

The issue is not present when using the same hdmi aadapter on a normal tv or monitor.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? It would be nice if I didn't have to buy a new screen for this project.

 

[ohkin86]

The reason for your trouble is that your LCD driver board does not support 480i signals, which may require a minimum input signal of 720p and PS2 will not meet the requirements.

 

[MRKane]

I'll note that I hit a lot of stuff like this, even when buying the same screen (previously known good) from the same manufacturer. What I did as a last-ditch resort was used a s-video to HDMI adapter that magically worked like a charm, and didn't show a noticeable quality difference when I compared it on my TV. I know that's not a solution, but this is a frustrating problem.

I even went down the rabbithole of trying to programme custom firmware to the RTD2660H chips, and while it was interesting I couldn't get a good solution that way either.

 

[Skibub28]

That's why I decided to use the ps2 to hdmi adapter, which seems to make it work with all other screens except this one.
Since my last post I have tried this screen on a variety of other consoles and it always will only partially display the screen, but ps2 is the only one where it doubles the output.

 

[Skibub28]

Episode IV: Time for a Trim
I didn't get much work done for a while as I was procrastinating buying a new screen, but then I realized there was plenty more I could do without my final screen, such as b̶r̶u̶t̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶m̶u̶r̶d̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ trimming the motherboard.
Here's a Pic of our patient all taped up post op.

And then I got to take out my favorite tool, the dremel. (mwa, ha, ha.) Now while it wasn't the prettiest operation, I do believe that the enslimening was a success.

I sanded down the edges of the board, hooked up the battery and hdmi converter, plugged it into a monitor, pressed the power button, and...

I got nothing.

Luckily for me I was just being an idiot and thought that the battery that had been sitting on a shelf for the last two years would work fine without charging. So I let it charge, hooked everything up all over again, and this time it worked! Mostly.

The picture doesn't show it to well, but the output is in black and white 4:3 and only in the bottom right corner of the screen. However, I don't know if this is because I messed up the trim, messed up the wiring, had been messing around with some screen display settings in an application that was pre-installed on my freemcboot card, do not currently have the freemcboot memory card wired up to the ps2. Or a combination of any of these things.
If you have an insight as to why this has occurred I would greatly appreciate it.

That's all for now. Next update I'll hopefully have the controller, memory card, usb, and fan hooked up and confirmed working.

 

[Skibub28]

So I've been having an issue with the system turning itself off. When the system is turned off the output from the pd board is at 8.5v, but when I turn the system on it drops down to 7v or lower and then keeps on lowering to around 5v which is where the console shuts off.

I was wondering if this is potentially caused because the amperage being supplied isn't high enough? (I recently looked back at the ebay listing for the pd board and it says it has a 2 Amp max output) link to pd board

Edit: would something like this work instead if I were to pair it to a separate charging circuit? Link

 

[Rararagi]

So I've been having an issue with the system turning itself off. When the system is turned off the output from the pd board is at 8.5v, but when I turn the system on it drops down to 7v or lower and then keeps on lowering to around 5v which is where the console shuts off.

I was wondering if this is potentially caused because the amperage being supplied isn't high enough? (I recently looked back at the ebay listing for the pd board and it says it has a 2 Amp max output) link to pd board

Edit: would something like this work instead if I were to pair it to a separate charging circuit? Link

At the edges of your trim i see some half cut components, this can cause several problems and instability, i believe it is worth paying attention to these areas before changing the regulator board.

 

[Skibub28]

Episode V: I'm a Very Black And White Console Living In a Colorful World
I removed the two cut chips from the edge of the board, but sadly this did not make the system stay on longer, so I fashioned up a makeshift powerfully with the ps2's original powerfully. With that powering the board it no longer shuts off.
I've been transporting this thing from my work area to my monitor on a flat cardboard box and decided to tape the power supply the box, after a few near disaster where a heavy thing would fall off and start pulling everything else along with it.
View attachment 1000002199.jpg
I got the memory card, controller, usb ports (and fan!) wired up. Don't mind the ridiculous amount of extra wire. The current plan is to unsolved the easier side and then cut it to length while assembling the portable.
It kind of reminds me of those boards with the red strings that people obsessed about solving a mystery use in the movies.
View attachment 1000002196.jpg
The screen is still in black and white. I sure hope that this is just me wiring things incorrectly, because the app with screen settings doesn't like to recognize inputs from my split controller.
View attachment 1000002193.jpg
I almost like the black and white. What do you guys think, should I keep it, or fix it and go to color?

 

[StormEye45]

I almost like the black and white. What do you guys think, should I keep it, or fix it and go to color?

try to see if you can be able to fix it

 

[MJMT]

I almost like the black and white. What do you guys think, should I keep it, or fix it and go to color?
[/QUOTE]

I'm not an expert but, I remember cases like that when the tv was looking for component input but it was getting normal composite