September 17th-20th, 2001...

It was time to start wiring things together. On the left is the >somewhat< hacked up PSOne board and the front half of the case, viewed from the rear. At this point, only power, audio & video are hooked up, no connections have been made to the control pads. The right-hand photo has some lines indicating what things are.

The front half of the case is 1 inch thick, just like all my Atari stuff. But in this case, I wanted to fit the following in the front half of the case:

Video screen, triggers, D-pad, both analog sticks, Select & Start, volume & brightness controls, power ON switch, video out, DC in AND the PSOne board itself.

Now, consider a VCSp Rev 5. The front half of the unit contains the screen and controls. The back half of the unit has the Atari motherboard, power jacks and battery. To be fair, the PSOne board is thinner than an Atari board, but I was still biting off a lot to chew with my goal.

But, through careful positioning I was able to fit all those things in 15/16th's of space. (Remember, the case is 1 inch thick but 1/16 of that is the front panel) One boon to me was to have the curved 'flair-outs' on the sides of the unit. This allowed the joy pad and triggers to 'get out of the way' of the other stuff, namely the screen.

One problem that occurred, when screwing the unit together the wires all bunch up, something I don't always consider in the design phase! But, after a while it all fit together.

NEXT- Chapter 4: Detail for a Dream