How to add 2 USB ports to a Joytech XBOX controller

This tutorial will show you how to add 2 USB ports to a Joytech controller.  Why a Joytech one? Well, firstly I had one lying around waiting to be abused, and second, they are dirt cheap. Some pictures are clickable and will display a larger version of the picture for clarity, these are marked

Parts I used:

The item in the middle is an old ATX card from a PC-Chips motherboard, they can be had from computer fairs for a quid or two. To be honest, it's the only thing I had lying about that had USB sockets on. The wires were from an old case I stripped, chosen only because they are in standard USB colours.

Take the ATX card and remove the metal mounting plate and ribbon cable.  The cable just pulls off, and the metal plate required some brute force and ignorance.  That is, I bent it about till it snapped!  Should leave you with this:

Now, we only need the USB ports, so we cut the rest off:

I started to cut this out with a Stanley knife, but in the absence of anywhere to put a straight edge down, it wasn't very easy, I ended up using a decent pair of scissors. This board is of the paper variety anyway. I then sanded the edges to a nice clean finish, leaving this:

Now let's look at the bottom of this little board:

You can see we have four solder points for each connector, and clearly the rightmost one is for ground.  Cut two pieces of each colour wire (Black, red, green, white) about 5cm long.  Strip the ends and TIN THEM.  Then cut each tinned piece so the metal protruding from the insulation is only about 2mm long. Solder these pieces of wire to the little board like this:

Then wrap the whole thing, except the bit where the USB plug will be inserted in insulating tape.  Use plenty round the outside so the module is a snug fit inside the memory card slot of the controller.

Take the controller and using a small Phillips screwdriver, remove seven screws from the underside:

Leave the controller this way up and lift the base upwards.  Put the top (which is now on the bottom :-) aside for a bit.  Now turn the base (which is now on the top) over:

Look carefully at the electrical connections to the memory card ports:

Now, insert your newly manufactured USB port module in the top memory card port, putting the wires through the holes in either side, so you have four wires, one of each colour coming into the controller, near to the LEDs.

Carefully solder these wires to the back of the memory card connector as shown here, note that one set of wire is soldered to the board, and the other to the pins which serve the upper memory card connector. Note that this operation is performed on the top of the PCB as it saves removing the PCB. 

That is, from the left:

BLACK    NO WIRE    GREEN    WHITE    RED

Tidy up the wires so they will not interfere with any of the buttons.  I found it easiest to bend the LEDs out of the way and use these to hold down the wires.

Turn the whole kit and caboodle back over and place it back on the other half (is it now the top or the bottom?) of the controller checking no wires are getting pinched and put the screws back in.

That's all folks!

You are now ready to test the mod.  Plug a USB keyboard into one of the ports and fire up Evox Dash.  You should find that you can use the up/down/enter keys to navigate the menu.  If not don't panic just yet.  One of the keyboards I tried (a black IBM one) does not work in Evox dash, but works just fine in Linux.

Any comments, good bad or indifferent please to: chippy@rutson.co.uk