My List Of Planned Mods

[MiL0]

My Gp2x arrived last night and although I thought I could live with the joystick its dead zone immediately started to piss me off. I started taking apart a snes and dreamcast joypad plus an old original GBA I had lying about to see if I could use any of the parts to replace the joystick with a proper d-pad. I then thought whilst I'm doing the mods I might as well do a few more! So here's the list I'm gonna attempt to do:

- replace gp2x joystick with a snes or gba d-pad
- add a proper analogue volume control
- change the battery chamber so that I can charge the AA batteries without removing them from the unit.
- add a dedicated usb host socket which can be optionally powered from the power supply socket

What I need is some advice from anyone else who's tried any of these mods before. It'd also be nice, if anyone has their gp2x opened up, if they could take some decent hires photos of the motherboard so I can have a look at what needs to go where before I go and open up my brand new gp2x.

Thanks in advance!

oh and I'm also looking into creating 2 ps2 joypad style handles for extra grip which could contain C or D cell batteries for extra battery life... anyone tried this before? (this would obviously involve quite a hardcore case mod!)

 

[Gruntfuggly]

You'll find stacks of stuff in the forums if you do a few searches. Some of your mods sound interesting, so make sure you keep us up to date with what you've done...

 

[Aninhumer]

I don't think the "handles" idea would be comfortable, as the gp2x is much taller than a ps2 controller, although I guess if you heavily modded the lower section you might be able to make it work.

 

[sand_man]

I'm not sure that converting the volume buttons to an analogue wheel would be such a good idea because some apps rely on these buttons for functions other than volume.

 

[MiL0]

it'd be an additional volume control, not a replacement... a variable resistor / Potentiometer between the speakers ought to do the job?

i'm picking up a dremel and some new soldering iron bits shortly so I can go ahead with the d-pad mod... pix up soon :]

 

[MiL0]

Okay I've just finished cutting out the snes d-pad circuit board (see picture below). Got 2 questions:


1) Do I need to sand/remove the top layer of material from the circuit board to reveal the conductive area (as shows in the red circle)


2) If I do the above, would I solder the two wires onto the two parts circled in yellow? (and then for each direction)


Thanks


http://www.miloandprolix.com/images/snescircuit.jpg < image here (apologies for the size!)