September 9th, 2001

 Work feverishly commenced on the case for the PSp, as I had dubbed it. I spent several hours measuring stuff with my trusty dial caliper. One thing I knew for sure, the unit had to have the Dual Shock control sticks. The rumble feature would have to go take a hike, it just sucked way to much power. Also, it had to have a memory card slot and a second player controller port so I could whoop up on people in Street Fight Alpha 3.

OFF-SUBJECT FOR A MINUTE...

Later that weekend, Mike and I were drinking, um, milk and he questioned my practice of trying to 'portable-lize' everything. I told him it was fun! He had some suggestions for future projects, here are some of them...

PPp - "Popcorn Popper Portable" A portable popcorn popper... for what purpose I'm not sure. I told him it would take enormous amounts of power. Maybe if there were any drive-in movie theatres left it'd be useful...

CFp- "Ceiling Fan Portable" A portable ceiling fan that you can suction-cup to any surface! Take that breezy, ceiling fan-fresh feeling with you wherever you go! Oh, and maybe you could stick Glade Plug-In's into it... hm... Actually, the CFp isn't the worst idea ever...

OK, BACK ON SUBJECT...

I know that last part was pointless, but I wanted to give you an insight into my creative process. Also it was probably the last laugh I had that week...

September 13th, 2001...

After a terrible Tuesday that none will forget, it took me a few days to get back to work on this thing. But I realized that we all must carry on, for if we let the tragedy affect our normal routines, ideals & dreams for too long then terrorism has won. And we can't let that happen.

On a sub-note regarding the tragedy, when I went to the Classic Gaming Expo, I fully expected the X-Ray guy at the airport to ask what my VCSp's were in my carry-on bag. I mean, think about it, custom-wired units with bundles of rat-nest connections? They didn't question them at all, not in Milwaukee leaving or Vegas coming back. Although it can be annoying to be asked, at least it shows they have concern. But they didn't. Anyway, that's my story about less-than-stellar security checks, back to the PSp...

Unlike my previous systems, which had 2 halves of a case each an inch thick, the PSOne has a front half an inch thick and a rear half somewhat different...

In the smash hit 1989 movie "Back To The Future Part II", Marty escapes the Cafe 80's and runs into the park. He then grabs a Hover board from a little girl. Well, if you look close the girl has a CD player on her head. It's just a knob holding the disc in place and the disc spins freely in the air.

WELL! I thought, if it's good enough for the Year 2015, it must be good enough for my project. As you can see by the above picture, I skipped all formalities such as 'drive doors' and 'disc covers'. The center motor has those little metal balls that actually hold the disc down and the disc spins freely (it cools your fingers while playing, no, really!). The black edging that looks like a smile keeps your fingers from hitting it.

The CD assembly is one portion of the rear, it screws to the thin back-plate which has the battery connector. The battery holder on this unit is the same as a VCSp Rev 3 and Gold.  In the middle of the back-plate you can see some holes, that's where the shoulder buttons will go. In total 5 pieces have to be screwed together to form the PSp, as opposed to 2 pieces for a VCSp.

Note: The CD assembly from the PSOne had a VERY short data ribbon cable so I had to buy a used 1995 model Playstation from Funcoland and use its ribbon cable. I also had to extend the cable that powers the motors.

September 16th, 2001...

I spent the day routing the cases. I drank 2 Diet Pepsis and ate a candy bar. The operation took about 6 hours, it was not as difficult to rout as the VCSp Gold, probably because the Gold had that rear-mounted cartridge slot that caused me much distress...

September 17th, 2001

It was time to start putting the controls and other objects into the now-finished cases.

The front of the case is your standard inch-thick Ben Heckendorn special. One difference between it and the VCSp case however, was that the PSp required about 7 different screw post sizes inside, whereas the VCSp has 1. The above photo has a good view of the Memory card / Player 2 port at the base of the unit.

As with the Rev 5 VCSp, the screen portion of the PSp is raised to allow a little more space inside the unit. The buttons were all custom routed by me, except the original analog control knobs and the red "Toggle Analog" button, which was from Radio Shack. The coloring in the middle is actually black metallic vinyl with hundreds of tiny horizontal blue lines, it has a nice effect. It kinda looks like the web site's background, hm...

NEXT- Chapter 3: The Wiring Menace