Searching for replacement parts for an aging game console controller
My general question ... where do you folks go when searching for replacement parts for aging technology, particularly pertaining to game consoles? I've come across iFixit, and of course there's Amazon and eBay as well, but I've been having some difficulty finding a particular part.
My specific issue is, I have an old Dualshock 4 (model CUH-ZDT2U, with PCB/motherboard model JDM-055) that is on the outs. It started experiencing some stick drift, so I took it apart to clean the contacts in the joystick housing to the best of my ability. In doing so, one of my kids managed to get a hold of the controllers' guts and break off the vibration motor wires from the board.
So, after taking the board and chassis to a local Makerspace, I got the wires soldered back onto the board. So far so good! However, the stick drift is still an issue and the vibration connection isn't that great. So now, I'm hoping to find some replacement parts - namely, a replacement board with the chassis and motors included.
One of the main reasons why I'm trying to refit this old controller, rather than replace it outright ... is because my wife bought the controller (and the PS4 it came with) as an anniversary present years ago. I'm the sentimental type and I'm trying to keep as much of this old controller going as I can, Ship-of-Theseus style. In addition, these controllers don't come cheap - $70 seems to be the basement these days for a new, in-box controller.
I've taken a swing at purchasing replacement parts off eBay - however, while the controller models matched, the board models did not. iFixit has the exact parts I need, but they are out of stock and their stock is inconsistent. I found another site - Fasttech.ca - that purports to have the same parts, but looking around online I've found a fair bit of discussion surrounding this site and the fact that it may be less-than-reputable.
Any advice on where else I might be able to look for parts?
What you can try is go looking around for another controller listed on ebay as 'for parts' and then salvage that. Such listings are much cheaper because they deal with broken merchandise with the expectation that the buyer will fix it or scrap it. You could also try finding parts from mouser or digikey which match the same specs of the motor, assuming sony didn't make a proprietary motor (which given it's a dualshock controller they probably did).
This is what you need to do for old tech which is no longer being manufactured - find broken "donor" units which you can take parts off of. People do this all the time for amplifiers and stereos, and also computers. I'd like to assume there's a warehouse somewhere with thousands of spare parts for these sorts of things, forever locked away.
Coincidentally, I've already taken a swing at that!
My aging controller (which I'll refer to as "copper") is a model CUH-ZCT2U. I found an eBay listing for a used, broken controller ("donor") with that same model designation - only for me to find out that not all models are the same! When I opened up the donor, I found out it has a motherboard/PCB model JDM-040. My copper controller has a PCB model JDM-055 - the donor board isn't compatible with the rest of the copper controller, and the donor board was a donor for a reason.
I'm fortunate in that the seller provided a return policy! Searching eBay for "JDM-055" doesn't find many donor boards - at least, none still attached to the internal chassis with the vibration motors.
I'll poke around on mouser and digikey though - thanks for the recommendation!
Have you considered preserving the sentimentality of the original by turning it into an art piece or something?
Thankfully, the JDM-055 is one of the more common specs of DS4 controllers. Not so thankfully, replacement boards seem to be $30+ across the board, from what I have seen. (Source: I use the exact same controller.)
I know you tried Ebay already for the whole controller, but it also has has sellers with the board in-stock, such as here and here. It looks like it will be a bit of a wait on shipping, though, and you may want to look around and message some sellers to find out more about the boards before you buy.
AliExpress has listings for JDM-055 boards as well, but it looks like they tend to be refurbs with varying quality, as noted in the comments of this listing, for example.
Everywhere I have seen, the board and inner-frame appear to be separated and sold separately, I'm sorry to say. Hopefully somebody else has an idea as I assume you are trying to avoid more soldering. When the motors were yanked, did their solder pads tear off the board, requiring you to score the traces to reattach them?
Just some food for thought, after you find a replacement board, if you would like to future-proof your device, you might consider removing the old potentiometer joysticks and soldering in some hall-effect ones. They do not suffer from stick-drift like pots do, but they may also feel slightly different when in-game, so you may want to read up on them. Food for thought, though! Here's a reddit thread detailing one user's experience, with further links to updates and a video on stick calibration.
Oh, one more thing, if you are interested: you can swap the old USB micro-B connector for a USB-C with a replacement board. Another future-proofing idea if your connector starts to get flaky. The mechanical strength of USB-C is much better.
Thanks for the advice! Trick is, I don't have easy access to a soldering kit, nor am I very experienced soldering. It's been decades since I last soldered. So while finding boards is easy, reconnecting the vibration motors is less straightforward -at least for me.
That said, I do know some folks that can help with soldering, and I do still have the motor and chassis assembly - so might be I can get help in that way. Hmmm ... that might be the simplest approach, come to think of it. Thanks for jogging my thinking on this.
@Tuaam has the right answer.
Drift is inevitable on the kind of sticks these use; it’s not that it’s dirty so much as the material is being scraped off. The best course of action is to desolder the existing stick and replace it with a known-working one. You likely just need to redo the motor connection as well. I would suggest looking up an in-depth soldering tutorial and maybe even picking up a trainer kit so you can get familiar with it because soldering is not something a beginner will be good at the first time.
DS4 is not that old, so I would not be surprised if someone had a stockpile of these parts new, though. But I doubt I can google better than you can.