Cracking Open the Sony PlayStation Portable

Package contents

Here is what you get in the basic PSP package. If you can't clearly see what's in the shot, you are looking at:

- 1x PSP
- 1x manual
- 1x battery
- 1x charging cable

I can tell you're excited.

I think this is the mouth

Staring down the gaping maw of this ferocious beast I almost decided not to do it.

But being the brave soul that I am I decided to disassemble it anyway.

Screws

There are a total of 7 screws that prevent you from diving into this portable game machine in a very real way.

This screw was the most obvious among them, so I started here.

Shiny

Man, that Sony logo really grabs the light!

I kept this shot mainly because of the cool flashy logo, but it also shows two more of the screws holding this thing together.

So far so good. I haven't even had to work to get these out. My luck wouldn't hold out.

Screws and battery enclosure.

I was, for a moment, perplexed as to what else was holding this thing together.

It was then I noticed the battery compartment and looked inside.

More screws

Here you can see two stickers. In the foreground you can see two screws, one silver and one black.

These two screws have twins just like them hiding under the smaller sticker.

Those guys are sneaky.

We're in!

After removing those last 4 screws, we're in. The top fell off without any effort at all.

You can see the button pads on the left and right. At first I wasn't sure what those metal circles were at the bottom of the screen, but those are button pads also.

A closer look

Looking closer at the right side of the PSP we can see the pads, a ribbon cable and the power supply plug in.

The ribbon cable connects the buttons at the bottom of the screen.

You can also see the power switch on the lower right edge of the unit.

Now the other side.

The other side looks similar but isn't quite as complex.

In the same place as the power switch on the other side, you see another switch. This turns the wifi on and off. I guess this is to save battery power.

The squarish metal piece there is the receiver for the analog stick input.

Looking a little deeper.

After a little fiddling I was able to get the circuit board off of the right side.

I would later find that I had disconnected a ribbon cable in doing this. Fortunately I was able to reattach this.

You can see the end sticking out from under the screen, just left of center in this shot.

Without this connected, the unit wouldn't power up. It's kind of important.

Left side again

The circuit board on the left was easier and less destructive to remove.

It was also less exciting underneath.

Screen removed

Removing the screen was a real pain in the tail.

It required a good deal of prying and tugging. I later discovered that this was because the buttons at the bottom of the screen, at the top from this perspective, are on a piece of metal that I later removed. It had been glued on and didn't want to move.

Once I got it off, it was a piece of cake getting the screen off and on.

Under the screen

The screen is attached via several ribbon cables that all run through the aluminum chassis you can see here.

I never really got under this as it was held in place by some strange snaps that I couldn't get to without special tools.

Buttons removed

In this shot you can see the button bar removed. It was a lot easier to get around once that was out of the way.

Disassembled?

This was about as disassembled as I could get it. I'd have to break something to get any deeper into this puppy.

Gears... everyone likes gears...

In this last shot of the disassembled PSP you can see the gears and mechanicals that allows the PSP to spin and read the game or video media.

As you can see, I was able to get the chassic moved a little to access this.

Reassembled and working!