I have a friend that is an avid Street Fighter fan that has been playing it for the past 15 years. He came to me with a project to modify his old custom Xbox Street Fighter controller to work on his Xbox 360. I said sure thinking that it would be an easy project, but when I opened his controller, it was a freaking mess. I ended up just gutting the old controller and modifying a new wired Xbox 360 controller.

So once again, I am here doing a write up for all you DIY’ers. This was not an easy task, so all you newbies beware. I can not take any responsibility for your mishaps with in this conversion.

First off, the components that were used. When I opened up this controller I was happy to find a Happ Perfect 360 Electronic Joystick. For those that you don’t know, the Perfect 360 is probably the best joystick out there in market. As Murphy’s Law stats: If anything can go wrong, it will. I searched all over the net and did not find any instructions on how to wire up the Perfect 360 to the Xbox 360 controller. I found out that no one has done this modification, but I thought I give it a try.

This joystick isn’t just plug and play but can be used with a few relays from Radio Shack. The relays I used were a compact 5VDC/1A SPST Reed Relay (Radio Shack Model: 275-232). I chose this one because it was small and has a fast response time—who wants their controller lag in the middle of their game.

And the last few things are the housing and the buttons. I am not going to go too much into detail on this portion because these should be self explanatory. The buttons can be found on Happ and al over eBay. A hot glue gun also helps out to cover up live circuits and to make sure those solder connections stay.

So, depending if you are building it from scratch or gutting out an old one like I did, you need to start off with a clean empty box with the button and joystick in place.

Next thing is that you need to take apart your Xbox 360 controller. This can be done by removing the 7 screws from the bottom of the controller. There is one screw under the sticker with the serial number as shown below.

The controller board should now be exposed. From here you can pull this board out and pull of the vibration modules as well, as these are not needed to complete this joystick.

Now for the fun part—the wiring. You will need to solder on 2 wires to each of the button’s terminals. I like twisting my cables for a much cleaner look.

The joystick needs a 5V power source and luckily the USB provides just the perfect amount. You can tap into this power by finding the power connections on the back of the controller as shown below. The red wire is the 5V draw and the black is the ground.

From here, the next easiest thing is to wire up the buttons. The Xbox 360 controller as a little switches as well, so what we want to do is “short” the two terminals that complete the circuit of the buttons. This can be easily observed by looking at the bottom of the button pad and the location of where they connect. For the right and left bumper you will see two prongs under the white button switch and those are the buttons you need to “short.” Be careful because these are small soldering points. I used the hot glue gun here to cover all the solder connections to ensure a firm stay—you don’t want joystick to die on you in the heat of an intense game. The controller map is located below.

Now for the harder part, wiring the Perfect 360. This requires the relays explained above as the joystick gives out a singe 5V output. This is where the relay comes in. There is a wiring schematic on the back of the package so I’m not going show the drawing but I’ll explain it as I tell you how to wire it up.

You will need to connect the coil terminals to the 5V power wire as well as the Up/Down/Left/Right terminal to the relay. A relay is activated when power flow through the coils. When it is activated it connects the “common” terminal to the “normally open” terminal. Now that your electronic lesson is done back to the joystick..

So how do we wire this up? What I did was connect four wires to each of the terminals on the relay and as show above to get started. The two terminals that are located farthest apart are the “common” and the “normally open.” The other two are the coils. One side of the coil goes to the power source (I tapped into the red wire where the Perfect 360 gets it power) and the other side to the U/D/L/R terminal—one relay per output. Remember to use hot glue gun the board so your connections do not get loose-they have really small areas to solder on. I also used the glue gun to hold the relays in place.

Clean up the wires and Viola! You got your new arcades controller. Time to whoop some ass on street fighter, or get your ass whooped on like the good old days. At least it will be in style!

To find more pictures of the install, click here.

Ever wish your video iPod had a bigger screen? Just imagine watchign your iPod with a 7″ LCD screen. Philips has come up with the perfect solution. It is their stylish Philips DCP750 portable DVD player. Not only does it play DVDs it incorporates your iPod and is able to display that dinky sized movie on its own LCD. There are not hassles of external dongles or wires as it already has a pocket to place your iPod in it.

Here is a cool little case to protect your iPod from that sudden splash from the poolside. This portable iPod speaker system protects your music so you can share it with everyone by the pool. The awesome thing is that it floats in the water, has a shatter proof body, has a clear case to even see your movies, has shock absorbers for your iPod and also has a 30 hour battery life. It seems like the perfect iPod accessory for the summer.

I have been having trouble with one of my iPod Nano for some time now and all of a sudden last week, I go the dreaded “folder and exclamation mark” error. For some of you that do not know, the iPod Nano like most iPods have a diagnostics mode. In the Nano, you must restart it by pressing the “MENU” button and “ACTION” button down at the same time. Once it restarts you must press the “PREVIOUS” button and the “ACTION” button. This will bring you into Diagnostic mode.

From here you can test out unit to make sure everything is running properly. In my case, the battery showed low voltage and low amperage—my battery was shot. I fix it by purchasing a batter on eBay for under $8 dollars.

First what you are going to need to do is open up your Nano. This is the hardest part, so take your time. What I used was a little skinny screwdriver I had in my computer tools. You must wedge in between the rear metal face and the front clear face. I started from the bottom right and bottom left up to the top. There are about 5 tabs you need to pop out on each side. Once it is off, it should look like this.

When I opened up my iPod, it looked like the battery exploded.

Well now for the easy part. As you can see in the image above, there are 3 points where the battery is soldered onto the board. The battery I purchased off of eBay had some really short wires so I decided to use some of the wires from the previous battery—this was made easy as the battery I purchased had the same wire coloring.

I personally like using a twist and solder method as you can see below—the reason is that I just found it to holds better from my old stereo installing days.

Now that you are done soldering, tape up the connections to ensure that there will be no shorts. I reused the yellow ESD tape to hold down the wires. Now that you are done with this turn on your nano and test it out. Once you are sure that it works, go back into the diagnostic mode and check that it reads the proper voltage—3.7V. Now put it back together and you have yourself a new iPod for UNDER 10 DOLLARS—why pay Apple another $80 for something this little?

I have posted a few more pictures here.

A few weeks back my dog was running around the house and ended up knocking down my ibook and what you see is the result of it. I have taken this opportunity to help all my fellow ibook readers what to do in an incident like this–so you can keep on reading this blog!

This is for all you DIYers. I only recommend this to those who feel that they are technically inclined to do so. This was performed on a G4 ibook but I believe it is the same on a G3 ibook aswell. I will tell you soon when I repair another ibook with a broken screen. So if you do fit this criterion, keep on reading!

DIY ibook screen replacement

First things first. Unlock and remove the battery as shown below.

There are 4 screws on the top cover you need to remove—two on both sides of the laptop. These take a T5 screwdriver.

Once you take these 4 screws out, you will be able to pull off the top cover and be left with something like this.

From here, you will need to unscrew the 8 screws that hold the front bezel on. There are on two on the sides and 4 on bottom.

*note: You can see the 2 gold fittings where the screws connect on to the bezel here.*

*note: 2 screws are on the center hinge and two are on the far right and left. The left one is under the white tape in this picture.*

Slowly peel the metal tape shown below to reveal the LCD plug. If you do not peel this back, you damage the connector when trying to release the LCD off the frame.

Now all that should be left is the LCD on the frame mounts. Now, there will be 4 more screws holding the LCD on the frame.

We are almost down now. All you need to do is unplug the LCD connector that was shown under the silver tape and then the lower power connector show in the picture below.

To finish up, just repeat everything in the reverse order and now you’re your ibook will look as new as you first got it, minus whatever other abuse you put it through.

Here is the finished product.

For more pictures, click here. I repair many laptops for similiar reasons, if you are in the Bay Area and need my services or just need a tip, please contact me.