Hrap wear and tear

Tech Talk
#1

Firstly, some of the plastic shielding for the wires has started to open up and expose the wires, its at the start of where the cord begins to come out of the stick

http://www.tolkano.net/frayed.cord.jpg

I could probably just tape it up but id rather a permanent fix than a patchup

Id imagine replacing the cord itself would be easy but i doubt its possible to get new hrap cords, or even 2nd hand ones for that matter

I imagine option 2 would be to replace the pcb and rewire it all? And maybe do the spiffyshoes a-series hack which i read about somewhere

The other thing is one of the rubber feet has fallen off the bottom and i have no idea where its gone and finding adhesive rubber feet is alot harder than i would have thought :sad:

Suggestions?

#2

Tekken 5 sticks do the same thing. Custom sticks FTW. Hopefully someone can help you out.

#3

The best thing would be to replace the cord with one from a cheap pad or an extension cable. To do this you need to desolder the original cord from the PCB inside the stick case which is made more difficult by the fact that the area where the wires are soldered to the PCB is covered with hot glue that you need to scrape off without scratching the PCB. If you want to do a top job you should also remove the grommet from the original cord and put it on the replacement cord:

http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/3811/s2023005ul8.th.jpg

This can be done (I can) but it may be difficult for some people. If you don’t think you can do any of these things try the ghetto tape fix or have the job done by someone who can. Buying another HRAP just to get the cord would be silly IMO.

As for the feet, you could get them from Mouser:

http://www.mouser.com/catalog/628/1507.pdf

Just look for one with a similar size. Replacing all of them would be better though so there’s no difference in height.

#4

Me has a spare HRAP cable (not brand new) but no wear or tear on it.

Pm me if your interested, work somthing somthing out? :wonder:

#5

Well I have the same problem with a later version of the HRAP 1. After opening the PCB bit up (for the first time) the broken cord connecting to the PCB is attached via a n 8 pinned white connector thing. Is it possible to simply replace that? At this point I don’t understand how soldering will help.

Any help would be great I don’t want it to be out of action for too long.

#6

My friend had the same problem with his hrap. What I did to fix it was repair the PS2 cable (even though replacing the wire sounds a bit easier).

How I did it:

  1. Cut the wire at the grommet where is it stripping
  2. Strip the PS2 cable on either side, carefully! Take some wire cutters and use the cutter to lightly cut through the rubber insulation
  3. Back up the copper shielding/paper shielding. When you strip off the rubber, there is a copper crosshatch around the wire and a paper wrap. Just pull them back/cut them off. I took about an inch and a half on either side off.
  4. Strip the small wires for each color (I think they’re 26 or 28 guage…)
  5. Solder corresponding colors and electrical tape the solder up.
  6. Re-wrap the wire up so you can’t see the mess!

This will fix the problem plenty fine, but is a bit of work and you lose a couple inches and it is a bit of a pain in the ass. Works for free, though!

#7

I also have this problem at the moment with a cable to fix for the exact same reason. Will be following Hahano’s advice, a very timely thread!

#8

forster, what the hell are you doing here? lol

hahano, that’s really helpful thanks, is it possible to go into a tiny bit more detail on stages 3 and 4? or have you been as explicit as possible? I’m really new to this and I don’t want to do anything wrong. Thank you kindly :slight_smile:

#9

Three in a row lol… Good luck on fixing that man…

#10

Alright.

#3 - Stripping the PS2 Cable: First step, of course, is cutting the wire at the spot of breakage. Be sure to cut out the mm or so of messed up wiring, or just plow through it with the cutters. Take the wire cutters, the actual cut part (unless you have a super duper huge stripper) and lightly squeeze (enough to get through the rubber, but NOT into the innards of the wire) around the wire. This should enable you to fully remove the rubber shield around it. Directly below this rubber is a strange wire crosshatch of copper (my best guess for its purpose is magnetic shielding [reduce interference]) and below that a paper/cloth tube (thermal control?). That stuff should peel back or rip off, leaving you with 8 (I think) different colored wires.

#4 - From these wires, strip them (I used the 24 guage (.5mm) stipper spot on my strippers) down. The wires inside are very interesting, and don’t be alarmed that the wire looks like cloth on the inside. I thought at first: Oh fuck! Fiberoptics! but the inside of each colored wire is really a ridiculously thing copper strand wrapped around a piece of string stuff (fuckin crazy robots). The nature of these wires are thus altered (the reason I had to solder, they don’t just twist together). Soldering these wires is sure one hell of a pain in the ass, but possible. I taped the end that goes to the PS2 to the bottom of the HRAP so it would actually stay in place, and then proceeded to solder/tape the wires up. At certain points you need rougly 6 hands, but it’s managable.

If you need any more help/more questions feel free to post or PM me. Thanks and good luck!

#11

I’m off to finally try this out now. I’m going to get my dad to help me, lol. Thanks for all the info. I’ll post up if it all goes to plan.

EDIT: turns out a very helpful friend had a spare HRAP cable that he simply connected to my PCB and it all seems to be working perfectly. I’ve printed that info out though and I’m sure it’ll come in useful at some point, thanks a lot hahano

#12

Question to the OP, did you wrap your cord around your joystick a lot whenever you put it away in storage?

I NEVER do this, and I’ve had my T5 for over a year and have never had this happen to me. I always keep it in the collector’s box with the cord coiled & rubber banded.

#13

My friend did wrap his cable around his stick, and that is why it split where it did. I think the grommit puts added strain on one specific spot, so when I fixed it I didn’t put the grommit back on because of that reason. Now he wraps it around and doesn’t have a problem because the cord has much more free play.