What you need is a 30mm hole saw and you can start making more holes for you stick.

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I took the time to use quick connect terminals so I can change button layouts or upgrade easier in the future.  The PCB comes from a PS1 Dual Shock and requires no soldering at all.  Holes had to have the tabs removed and widened with dremel to allow the Sanwa’s to fit properly.

Artwork was printed on Epson R380 inkjet, laminated and then used double sided tape.

With the proper adapter, this baby will work any console.  XBOX/PS1/PS2/PS3/Gamecube/PC/etc.

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Material:

Hori Wii Fighting Stick $50
Playstation 1 Dual Shock (Early A revision) $8
PS1 to XBOX converter $10
PS1 to gamecube converter $10
PS1 to PS3 converter $20
20-22AWG wiring

Tools:

Soldering iron
Solder pump
screw drivers

Why an arcade stick?
I have an XBOX, Wii and PS3.  My favourite console is the original XBOX.  Once softmodded it is one heck of a machine.  I can play hundreds of arcade games from the past on MAME-oX, FBA-XXX, and many others consoles like NES, SNES, Genesis.  There are tons of native fighting games for it too.

I consider myself an old school gamer.  I find myself playing more of the older games then the new ones.  My first video game machine was an Atari 2600 and I grew up sticking coins into arcade machines.  A gamepad just doesn’t do these games justice.

Why take a perfectly good fighting stick and shove an ancient PS1 gamepad inside it?

It’s really hard to find an arcade stick that works with more than one console these days.  I wanted to have only 1  stick to work on all my systems because of space. The PS1 Dual Shock is one of the most popular gamepads ever made.  It’s easy to find and is well documented.  The PS1 Dual Shock is also one of the simpliest and has a lot of buttons.

There are lots of converters for the PS1 controllers to work with other systems like the PS3, 360, Gamecube, and XBOX.  It’ll probably be compatible with future systems too granted someone makes converters for them.

Why not make your own from scratch?
An arcade stick is in a sense just a box with switches.  Very simple.  However,  I’m not very crafty with wood since I don’t have the tools.  I decided to just gut out a premade one from Hori since I had one lying around not used.

Why not use an X-Arcade works, it works with all systems too.
Those are just too big for my tastes.  I need it compact.  Also it costs a lot if you factor in all the converters for your systems.

You can use any current generation arcade stick and convert it to a PS1 compatible one.  I chose to use my little utilized Hori Wii Fighting stick.

Let’s start.

I decided to go with a Hori Wii Fighting stick because that’s what I had at the moment.

The first thing is to find a PS1 controller and dismantle it except for the PCB and wiring.  There are many revisions of the PS1 Dual Shock.  The one I’m using is SCPH-1200 A (early revision).  There’s H, M, etc.  The best one to get are revision A (later) and M.  Those actually require solderless connection points to the PCB.  But if you can’t find those, an early A revision is easy to solder.

Check out slagcoin’s site for the PCB diagram for this controller (SCPH-1200 A)

Next we open up the Hori stick and desolder its PCB from the buttons and chuck it in the trash.

Wire up the ground wires.  I use black wires and daisy chain the ground wires to go to one common ground on the PS1′s PCB.

The black wires goes to the common ground connection.

Now all the signal wires connected to the PCB.

To strengthen the connections, I use hot glue.

The completed stick with a TAC PS1 to PS3 converter.  This stick will now work with other consoles with converters

My next step would be to paint it, and put in arcade quality buttons from Sanwa.  I’ve ordered them and should be putting them in soon.

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If you have an iPhone but didn’t get a data plan be in for a shock after you see your bill. When out of range of a Wi-Fi access point, the iPhone will automatically connect via EDGE/3G periodically incurring expensive charges. Usually 5 cents per kilobyte. Here is how you disable it.

1. Launch Safari on your iPhone
2. Go to iphonenodata.com
3. Tap the “Disable EDGE/3G” button
4. Tap “Install”
5. Tap “Install Now” to confirm

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You’ll need:

Shifter boot (about 9″ in length)
zip tie
sharp knife

1. Twist off the stock knob

2. Remove the retention ring at the base of the shifter

3. Remove the stock ugly rubber boot

4. Put retention ring inside the new shifter boot

5. Cut slits to allow the tabs to come through (about 1 inch from the base)

6. I replaced the draw string with a zip tie for a tighter fit and cleaner look

7. Put shifter boot on

8. Stretch the leather on the boot by pushing down and at the same time, clip in the tabs

9. Start putting back your shifter knob

10. Tighten up the zip tie

11. Cut off the excess

12. All done!

More pics here:

http://zenphoto.ehsia.com/2008-09-08…yaris-resized/

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The following tutorial shows how to convert to MVPD files. For those that don’t know. MVPD can only be played on 1st generation iPod Nano’s that have Linux installed. If I have time I’ll write on how to do that. But until then, read about it at ipodlinux.org.

Software needed:

EZBuilder
AVISynth
KLite Mega Codec Pack

• Download English version of EZBuilder.
  • Download iPod Nano MVPD profile
• You need codecs, I usually use the Klite Mega codec packs from free-codecs.com
  • This has every codec under the sun, DIVX, Xvid, RM, QT, etc
• Download and install AVISynth. I’m using 2.5.7
• Unzip EZBuilder to a directory (www.7zip.org to download decompresser)
• From the iPod_nano_MVPD_profile_20070720.rar file:
  • copy “mv_encoder.exe,” “mpvd_builder.exe,” & “cygwin1.dll” to “..\ezbuilder\tool” folder.
  • copy the folder “iPod nano MVPD” to “..\ezbuilder\profile\tool” folder.
• Copy the videos you want to convert into the MediaFile folder
• For SRT subtitles, put them them in MediaFile folder with the same name as the movie. ex. shrek.srt with shrek.avi
• For SSA/ASS/IDX/SUB subtitles, put them in Subtitle folder
• Run ezbuilder.exe
• Choose [1] iPOD NANO MVPD
• Wait, encoding times varies with your CPU, I have core2duo 1.8Ghz and it converts pretty fast.
• When your file is converted, it should show up in the DoneFile directory
• Copy the WHATEVER.MVPD file in the DoneFile directory to your iPod Nano
• Launch mvplayer from Linux and watch

Hints:

1. Try not to have funky characters or spaces in your file name

2. Use the NTFS Link Shell extension

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In order to make this happen, you need to download and install the NTFS Link Shell extension.

Right-click on a media file you want to link to and chose “Pick Link Source”

Go to the ../ezbuilder/MediaFile folder and “Drop HardLink”

Now you’ll see that the files show up in the folder just as if they were copied/moved in that directory. But really it’s not, it’s just a link to the source.

Run EZbuilder as usual and it will convert it without problems. After you’re done, delete the “hardlinks” in the MediaFile directory, the originals will remain.

So that is how you save time from copying/moving files to the MediaFile folder as well as space. Sometimes you don’t have enough HD space.

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