Sony PlayStation XStation Install Guide - a new Optical Disc Emulator for the PS1!

hey guys welcome back to fix it friday the weekly youtube series where we talk about video game console repairs mods and restorations so today i've got something really cool and new and exciting to show you so um i have finally received an x station so an x station is an optical disk emulator for the original ps1 this is a really awesome product because nowadays it's actually kind of hard to find one of these that still works the the lasers that were used by sony they're all collectively starting to fail and um technically you can buy replacement lasers but they're honestly pretty expensive in fact sometimes they're just as expensive as the console itself and uh they're you know knockoffs uh that are made in china so who knows how long they're going to last and so you know if you're really fond of your childhood playstation and you want to be able to play games on there then what the x station does is it allows you to play games directly off of an sd card so it emulates the optical drive that that's in here so what i'm going to do today is take apart this ps1 um this guy happens to have a bad laser so it's totally useless as it is anyway so we're gonna replace this uh with the x station i'll show you guys how to do the installation okay let's get to it okay so we're gonna start by just taking apart the console and um this console that i have here this is a 5500 series ps1 and you can tell which version it is by looking at the label so not every playstation is compatible with this mod you have to take a look and see um which version you've got uh the types that are compatible are listed on the castle mania games website but um but yeah i would recommend if you can to find a 5501 because that's also compatible with the ps1 digital hdmi mod um so yeah i've removed the six screws that are on the on the bottom there and then you can just lift up this top here and disassembly of this console is actually very very simple so sony actually puts arrows um in the locations where um you've gotta put screws in and take screws out so we're going to go ahead and remove those screws really quick okay so now we're going to go ahead and remove this cable here this is for connecting the power supply board to the logic board and we're also going to remove this guy here which is just friction fit into place and this and those are the two sets of cables that connect the optical assembly to the logic board um this little cable here this is for the controller ports uh so yeah that's about it now we're gonna go ahead and remove the upper portion of the rf shield there we go and like i said before you've got a couple more screws left behind but um i don't know if you can see this in the camera but sony helpfully puts arrows where they are all located so later on it's easy to put things back where they belong okay so first thing we're going to do is a few little modifications to the case and to the rf shielding on the bottom and this is necessary just because there's going to be a ribbon cable that loops through here and so we just need to make space for it so the first thing we're going to do is just remove these little posts right here and i'm going to just use some flush cutters and just snip them out of the way so that takes care of that they don't have to be perfect they just need to be mostly removed and then here's the rf shielding on the bottom and so this whole region over here needs to be cut and thankfully that's pretty simple so you just have to come in and you see this like little section here you can just like snip with your flush cutters and now i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to use this uh set of pliers just kind of move it back and forth and work it if you have like a vice in your in your workshop that's also very handy because you could just grab this whole section with the vice and go back and forth i happen to not own one of those but you know it's no big deal i'm just going to do this really quick okay so that's that um i'm going to just flatten this out because i don't want this to come up and either cut my hand or cut the ribbon cable that's going to be coming here so just out of precaution just flatten this out there's a little bit of extra extra metal shielding here too and i'm going to cut that too but that's easy just come in like this and there we go so the uh the case is ready so let's go ahead and move on to the uh the logic board okay so the next step in the installation is um revolving around this particular chip here so there's a couple of different pins that we're going to have to lift um off of this uh board here and specifically it's uh pins 45 46 47 56 74 77 78 and 80. um so i'll put that in the description so that if anyone's um trying to do this then you know they have a good idea of what to do but um you can see how the chip is labeled just by looking at the board here so you can see here's here's pin 80 right here so it's just a few on on this side and then i think three on this side so eight total so five here three here so i'm going to go ahead and get started with that but basically what we're going to be doing is we're going to be applying heat and we're going to be using these these fine forceps to uh to lift up the pins do okay that's a few of them got three over here it's actually quite tricky because there's one that's sitting in between these three that does not get lifted so you've gotta keep that guy down while simultaneously pulling up all the others i'm gonna have to go back in here and confirm everything with the microscope and uh probably clean this up a little too i think there's still some there's a little bit of a bridge here with the solder so i gotta clean that up there we go but uh but yeah so that's what i'm gonna be continuing to do [Music] so all right well that's uh basically what we got to do here and uh it's definitely difficult and you could see that i think probably this side is the worst because you've got to count six away from the corner here to get this guy and then this section is also very tricky because one pin gets left behind and then all of these guys get removed then also two pins over here get left behind so uh so yeah but it's all finished now i'm going to go ahead and verify everything looks fine underneath the microscope make sure that there aren't any bridges and i'm just going to inspect the general health of those pins i just don't want to have them damaged or anything all right so so that's we're going to take care of that now and then we'll move on to the next step all right so the next step is going to be soldering on this little adapter board and basically this is going to tap into all of those points um where that chip used to contact and it's going to basically bypass what that chip used to do so so this is the opposite side of the board this is the underneath underside of the board and um the kit actually comes with two different qsb's so this version here this is intended for a playstation that's the 1000 x series it's like the earliest model of playstation that's not what we have we don't need this um so what we're gonna be doing is using this little board here this is for the 5000 series um version so what you got to do is basically um you know you can you can find an image with um where the install points are but you can see that there's a whole bunch of solder points on this qsb and you just got to make sure that it's held in place and that everything is lined up and then once that's all lined up you can go ahead and start soldering everything into position so that's what i'm going to go ahead and start doing right now [Music] so [Music] [Music] all right so most of the solder points have been taken care of but there's actually two places that we are going to have to um we have to scrape away some of the solder resist so you see there's like a little point right here so in order to access this area you just have to scrape away the solder mask and i have a scalpel for this [Music] there you go so it's a little easier to do this underneath the microscope but basically you can either use a small fiberglass pen or a scalpel and you can scrape away the solder resist over here and when it's nice and shiny then you know you're kind of good to go and then at that point if i add some flux and if i solder this region then we should be okay okay there we go so that one's all set so i'm going to go ahead now and move to the final one which is yep it's right here i'm just going to shine some extra light on it because i can't see it too well there we go so i'm just gonna do the exact same thing i'm just gonna use the tip of my blade this blade's been through a lot but you don't need something special for this in retrospect it was probably even easier to do this before i added the board but that's okay you live you learn okay that should be enough okay i think we're pretty much good all right so i think now this qsb has been completely installed all right so one of the last things we're going to have to do here is uh we're going to have to tap into the clock signal so this is the crystal oscillator right over here and we're gonna start by just getting rid of this little surface mount resistor here and um just gonna put some solder on both sides and i'll just come right off and we're gonna go ahead and tin this little test point right here and now final thing is i'm going to just take a wire and i'm going to solder it to that test point and then the other end is going to go to a pad that's on the qsb all right so there we go that's the last little connection and i think we're basically good to go now all right so to finalize the installation we're going to go ahead and pull the bills back and we're going to take this flex cable and insert it in with the blue component facing towards you and then you just snap these bills back into position all right so i've reassembled the entire case and screwed the uh rf shield back into position and so now the final thing we got to do is install the actual x station board itself so um you can see i took the other end of the flat flex cable and i installed it here with the blue side facing up like this um so what we're going to do now is we're gonna install these little feet to um stabilize this thing so that when it's standing it's uh you know gonna stay in a fixed position so you see these like three holes here that um they don't have like anything silver on them they're just holes so that's where the feet go so there's two feet that go on one side here and and these of course come with the kit and just push in like that and there we go alright so those are the three feet so now we're gonna have to get the cable kind of into position here um i believe it goes yes it goes like this so so what you want to do is just kind of bend it a little bit like this and since i'm testing right now i'm not going to bend you don't want to crease the cable the cable can can get damaged so you just kind of put a little bit of pressure on it just to kind of have it stay in position um and then down here too there's also another bend that you can that you can make and then again that just kind of helps to get everything stabilized and uh yeah that's that's a good good enough um for now so we're gonna go ahead and test this thing out and see if it works all right so uh i got everything all assembled and i just wanted to kind of let you guys know about a stupid mistake that i made and so that way if you're doing this installation you don't make the same mistake i did so i had everything assembled but i did not have this front lid on this top lid on and i was trying to power things on but it just kept going to the memory card management menu it was not going to the um the x station loader screen so i thought maybe i had done something wrong but actually no i had not um you actually need this top cover on because something needs to be pressing the little switch here to indicate that the lid is closed so the x station uh doesn't uh bypass that so if the lid is open then the x station menu is not going to load properly so what i've done here now is i've just put the lid on top and so when i power it on it's going to go straight to the x station menu [Music] and it basically loads just as though it's a real game [Music] so what i'm gonna do is put a link in the description for how to set up the sd card because that's outside of the scope of this video what i really wanted to do here was just show you how to actually install the x station um but but yeah i went ahead and i set up the um the card it was very simple and i just put a game on there it's soul blade this is uh my test game that i use to um test playstation ones and playstation twos so it's really simple you just drag and drop your game on and then you just hit the x button to load and that's about it and uh it pretty much works from there so you know this is a really nice option if you've got an old ps1 maybe your childhood one and you really want it to work again and it has a bad laser because this lets you play your entire library very conveniently on an sd card and all the games work perfectly all right so if you guys like this content it would be great if you could give me a thumbs up or perhaps subscribe to the channel i have fix it friday videos out every friday and um yeah let me know what you guys think in the comments below and thanks so much for watching and i'll see you guys next time [Applause] [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Long Island Retro Gaming

Views: 46,797

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Id: xcOiWIZw6Ek

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020