PlayStation Development Network

Today I decided to clean the PCB from one of those second revision controllers, as it felt, that it's dirty and bit worn out, X-button didn't work properly. But, of course, it could be, that the controllers are just so worn out, that they can't be saved, unless I would put Dual Shock stuff in, because those are generally concidered to be better in terms of reliability.


Edit: No impact. The new membrane rubbers I bought for these controllers are faulty, changed them back to originals and oh boy, how good the contact of the buttons was again.

There should be some way to get the buttons back working. I don't know which is the best (and longest lasting) method, but some ideas would be cleaning the contacts with contact spray or some other liquids, or 'repainting' the contacts with conductive silver, or search for 'remote control buttons' for some more repairing ideas. Also make sure that there's no 'gap' between the two contacts (ie. that you've reassembled the case properly, and that the case does hold the pcb in place).

The weakest spot I had noticed is the white 8pin ribbon cable between the controller's mainboard and daughterboard. After tracing the signals & too much fiddling with the board, I ended it up with four of the eight wires being broken close to the solderpads (despite of the glue that was intended to prevent that). But it's easy to repair, normal ribbon cables (like those used for HDDs and FDDs) do fit in nicely with same pin spacing.

Btw. thanks for the photos! The three SCPH-1180's are all having the same "SD657" chip, which is also used in my SCPH-1150. So the software protocol should be 100% same, and even the rumble should work (when installing the missing components).

nocash wrote:There should be some way to get the buttons back working. I don't know which is the best (and longest lasting) method, but some ideas would be cleaning the contacts with contact spray or some other liquids, or 'repainting' the contacts with conductive silver, or search for 'remote control buttons' for some more repairing ideas. Also make sure that there's no 'gap' between the two contacts (ie. that you've reassembled the case properly, and that the case does hold the pcb in place).

The weakest spot I had noticed is the white 8pin ribbon cable between the controller's mainboard and daughterboard. After tracing the signals & too much fiddling with the board, I ended it up with four of the eight wires being broken close to the solderpads (despite of the glue that was intended to prevent that). But it's easy to repair, normal ribbon cables (like those used for HDDs and FDDs) do fit in nicely with same pin spacing.

Btw. thanks for the photos! The three SCPH-1180's are all having the same "SD657" chip, which is also used in my SCPH-1150. So the software protocol should be 100% same, and even the rumble should work (when installing the missing components).

I cleaned the contacts with eletronic cleaning spray (isopropyl alcohol). But the issue was with the rubber switches under the buttons, I had bought new ones that are for Dual Shock 2, but those will fit into these older controllers as well. Now I noticed, that they were faulty; they had rounded ends, that touch the contacts on the PCB, but the original rubbers had flat ends. I put those originals back to the controller after cleaning them and the controller started to work so well after that. Those original rubber switches are pretty soft already, hence why I changed them to new ones in first place. But the new ones are just bad, stiff and has bad contact. So I'm not recommending to buy those spare rubber switches, as they are defective.

Ribbon cable is fine, I checked that.

No problem, glad that you liked them and hopefully they provide some useful information to people, who wanna learn more about these Dual Analog-controllers.

Slight update on the Dual Analog working on the games.

I noticed, that the analog pad mechanisms are actually pretty bad in these, I'm right now using the second revision model for gaming, as I felt that the first revision (round axle analog pad mechanisms) was a bit special, so I keep it in safe. I noticed with these second revision ones, that the analog pad axles grind against the mechanism chassis, metal against metal. So that definitely doesn't feel good in games. Also, the analog pad mechanisms are not in straight line, you need to put your pad into ''half past twelve/one o'clock''-position, in order to go straight for example. Or then then ones I have are faulty ones in that part.

Another update.


I researched some information about the controller and found this image from webarchives:





That's right, a black/dark grey Dual Analog controller. I think that either it is a prototype, promo or developer version of the controller. I remember that Net Yaroze controllers used to have that same matte look in them. Nevertheless, that version would be like the holy grail of PS1 controllers, propably so super rare, that the value of it would be mindblowing.

Omg, that picture I sended previosly was a part of this collection, that I managed to dig up from the web archives:




And the whole information about those is written in this archived PS1 gaming page from the 90's.

https://web.archive.org/web/19961128102 ... ogpad.html

So, there was a plan to have different colours with Dual Analogs, Sony had planned to go with this controller properly, but we still need to dig up, why they stopped making them and brought in the Dual Shock instead.