Dragon PSX Pad

I've managed to get my boards into a project box now, and wire up the analogue on/off switch. This is all built from parts I had lying around, and whilst the box is a bit on the big side it does mean that I can add another board and sockets and have 2 joysticks. Or add an interface for something else.

Cocktail Cabinet Update

I've managed to complete some more of the cabinet over the last couple of days. I've added a nice trim to the inner and outer edges of the top, and fitted a plastic top. The lack of the latter was beginning to worry me as it left the monitor face up and exposed.

'Doctor Who is a man and should stay that bloody way' says Ga5ket

'Doctor Who should be a woman' say female scientists - Telegraph

Goddammit! Why the bloody hell does this shite keep coming up. Doctor Who is a bloody man. End of bloody story. Now can we get on with running around and saving the universe?

PSX Dragon 32 Joypad

Some time ago I blogged about modding a Dragon 32 controller to take PSX internals so that I can use it on my emulator. I've spent a couple of hours working on it, and this is my progress to date.

Removed the circuit boards from the PSX pad, a Woolworths branded knock off.
Using a Dremmel I cut out the section of the pad that holds the right nubbin.

Removed the potentiometer from the Dragon joystick, and unsoldered the connections to the fire button. This button will directly activate the PSX pad circuit board. No damage to the controller, so I can always return the controller to it's pre-modded state. These things may not have a soul, but I do.

I tidied up the nubbin casing, and glued it into the Dragon joystick case. This will give me a secure mounting point for the actual analog control later.


Sawed the nubbin circuit board in two, one to fit inside the Dragon joystick, the other to be hidden away in a project box. I've got tons of old pc cables lying around, so I cut up an old RS232 cable, and salvaged a com port from my parts bin. I soldered the cable to the joystick end,

and the com port to the main PSX circuit board.

After testing all the connections for continuity I plugged it all together, retested and found that I'd swapped the connections between the plug and the socket, so I had to redo the socket end. Once I'd done that and retested it everything looked ok, so it was time for a test on the emulator.


Bugger me, it all worked! Ok, so it wasn't rocket science, but this is my first project in about 20 years, and I did expect some major problems along the way. I've still to add a proper joystick to the controller instead of the nubbin, but this is how it looks so far

Treasure Hunt

A reasonably good day today, 6 games and 3 books

PS2
Getaway: Black Monday
Project Eden
Resident Evil: Outbreak
£1.99 each

XBox
Serious Sam, £2.99

PC
Atari Anniversary Edition, £2

PSX
True Pinball, £1

Grand total £11.96

PlayStation Home

Unexpectedly this morning I've received an invite to the closed beta of PlayStation Home. I'm downloading it as I type.

Useful to know: GMail

The Elonex Onet that I use is a little slow using the standard java interface of GMail, and you can't set GMail to use the html view on a per machine basis, but this page shows you how you can set up a bookmark which does the same thing. Nice.

Short version:

Use http://gmail.google.com/gmail/h/ as your bookmark when you want to access html view instead.