Drive Transplant

Apr 25 2006

Operation successful. The patient is alive and well.

I managed to break my PSP on Saturday. I dropped it onto a concrete floor when it fell off my jacket pocket as I was dressing up. The battery popped out, the drive shot the media out. It was quite a pectacular crash. My friend noted “if it survived this, I’m getting one”. So I put the battery on and power it on. Smile on my face. “Look”. But then the UMD drive went reading on and on …

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After not getting any specific date from a local SONY Service and the need to ship the PSP to Prague, I decided to order the drive and apply czechnology. If you’re not in a hurry, these guys have the drive fairly cheap. I wasn’t sure to trust the $8 shipping either.

The process went fairly well, except it took a lot longer than I expected. I did manage to screw things up in the process. When trying to open the outer drive bay door, my screwdriver went a little too deep and broke the knob on the side. Superglue saved the day. Also when putting back the controller buttons I didn’t position the pad precisely (it fits into the LCD frame) and the right button didn’t work properly. Apart from that it went fine. So now I can compare the insides of the PSP and the gp2x too as I broke the gp2x’ headphone connector as soon as I got the console. It’s like comparing a macbook pro to a didaktik M (my first computer). A milimeter is a lot of space inside the PSP. Being inside the gp2x is like being inside a rintimpin.

Now I need to start looking for a decent case.