Well, in the last hour or so i’ve completed my first psp modification, albeit a very simple one. It involved just putting a PS2 Analog stick onto the psp, replacing the small nub. If you wish to attempt this yourself, you will need a PS1 or PS2 controller that has the sticks (and preferably a broken one, cause you wont be able to put it back together). Its pretty simple: Remove all the screws on the back of the controller, pull out one of the sticks and then sand it back until the part in the middle is longer than the part on the outside (this is to allow movement). After I completed it, the psp looked as follows:
Even though the picture isn’t clear, you get the point. There are a few problems with this course of action though. One of which is that the D-Pad is a pain in the ass to use, although, this can be remedied (a little) by sanding the ‘ring’ on the outside of the stick back smaller (but dont touch the size of the hole).
My controller after I was done.
I tested how the analog stick fared in a Medium difficulty race on Need for Speed: Most Wanted with my BMW M5 GTR I. First problem was that if i needed to activate slow-mo mode, it would be very had to touch ‘down’ button on the D-Pad. Another side effect i found was that the original psp nub (no matter how small it is) offered greater handling than the PS2 counterpart.
Very bad picture of how the Analog stick should look like after you’re done.
Overall, I think i might stick with the original PSP nub until i get enough time (and the balls) to do the harder mods that involve replacing the PSP nub with the PS2 one. The difference with this mod and them is that it involves soldering a few things to the psp PCB, and that i reckon it’d fare a lot better than the psp nub under the conditions that if it were attached to the side of the psp. Another possible side effect of doing the mod mentioned above, is that i’ve read on the official sony forums (http://boardsus.playstation.com) that putting an analog stick the size of the one shown above, is that it might put more strain on the actual stick inside the psp and cause it to snap off, although, I do think that would be very doubtful.
PSP Specs:
2.71 Running SE-C
Non-TA-082 Board.
Edit:
I just realised you have to shave off the ‘Y’ looking bits ‘supporting’ the thing that connects to the actual stick inside the psp. This seems to improve handling in NFS:MW a lot more.
