I preordered an xStation sometime in August and finally got it last week. The xStation is an optical drive emulator (ODE) for the original Playstation. I sidelined it since I got it because there was no instructions on how to install it on my old SCPH-1001 Playstation.
Well, this morning, there was a tweet from the maker of the xStation. He had just put up the installation guide for my Playstation revision!
After verifying that my board matched the one that was put up online, I got the soldering station set up and opened up the Playstation.
First thing to do was getting pins lifted off the board from this IC. Since getting back into the habit of modding, there's a lot I've learned and been getting more and more confident doing things like this. With a proper soldering iron tip (I didn't have one, but I made it work) and a hook probe, this was easy.
Here's the IC with the legs separated from the board. There was only 4 legs of the IC that needed to be lifted.
That little white oscillator in the middle of the pic was the next area. A filter and resistor near to the oscillator needed to be removed from here.
A few more components needed to be removed from the bottom of the main board. There were 3 SMD resistors that were removed (at the center of the pic).
I've been pretty leery about using quick solder boards (QSB) on mods (see the GBP mod). I've watched a few videos on how some modders do it. I took some of their techniques and eventually got this board installed with no issues. No-clean flux and a steady hand does it easily.
Now, at the end of the install, I had an issue. Basically, I didn't solder one wire back there to the QSB (marked IO16). Me being tired, misread the install instructions and forgot to install this. So, just imagine a wire going from that IO16 solder point, then installed it to where it needed to go to.
Here is where the xStation lies. I'm gonna print a mount like how I did with the Gamecube. I also have to try and reroute that ribbon cable a little better.
So, other than the hiccup that I mentioned earlier with the one connection, I put the necessary files on a tester micro SD card and put it in the xStation.
I was missing this screen the first time. After getting the point soldered in, this came up.
After having the xStation find the games that I had on the SD card, it loaded the games list.
This was the first game I tested with the xStation: Wild Arms. It was one of my favorite RPGs.
And yes, it loaded up just fine!
I was happy with the results. So, after closing that up, I moved on to my next project: A Game Gear recap.
I found a blue Game Gear a few years ago. I haven't tested it until about a month ago and was greeted with a white screen with sound. So I ordered some recap kits last week from Console5.com. I felt like tackling it tonight since I already had it degunked and all the battery acid removed as much as I could.
There's a few consoles that I would like to get recapped, so I ordered them all at the same time.
I made short work of the old caps on the board. After removing them, I cleaned it off with some alcohol and a toothbrush. I also needed to use a fiberglass pen to remove some really stuck on gunk from the leaked capacitors. The pic above is the aftermath, with all the new caps from the kit installed.
Simple job to do. Nice to see the old console come back to life. I didn't have the back connected, so I just used a model 2 Genesis adapter to test it.
I still have to do the power and sound boards, but that requires me to get my desoldering station and my hot air rework station out. I'll save that for tomorrow night.
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