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So my Freeplay Zero arrived yesterday and I've had my GBA housing earlier in the week. I had already modified the shell as much as I could without the Freeplay.
Now I've cut everything to the guide as close to possible. The screen fits in perfect without any pressure, the X/Y holes are about as perfect as they can get but it doesn't seem to be fit as it should. The B button feels fine as does the start and select but the D-pad and A button feel like they have no travel, super mushy and not what I remember the GBA feeling like. The volume wheel will also not spin freely once the back is screwed on (I did widen out the hole) and the piece of plastic does not touch the power switch at all.
I can't find any bits of plastic pushing on anything and am starting to wonder if the aftermarket shell and pads I bought are a dud. Looking for any advice or suggestions. I'm willing to take photos but I'm not sure if there's anything to show.
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09-02-2018, 01:42 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-02-2018, 01:44 PM by Ordinary Vanity.)
Not a dud. You simply need to carve more of the shell away.
My volume wheel would not budge when my case was tightened. I had to clip the solder pins shorter on the wheel, and remove some plastic around the slot where the wheel sticks out. Now it works fine.
I also had to cut some of the silicone from the B and A buttons because after installing button caps, my X button would get stuck. Also shaved some more plastic there and now it works fine.
As far as mushy-ness goes, there's a mod for the dpad involving some thin cardboard, but idk about the b and a buttons.
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I think that Ordinary Vanity is spot on. I have never seen a dud shell, but I have seen combinations that require more/different cutting than others.
He's also right that the pins that stick out the "back" of the volume wheel and headphone jack sometimes need to be clipped off.
I don't know why the A and the D-Pad would feel weird. I do know that some people have reported that their silicon rubber button pads are duds. I think it's very rare, but the rubber itself can be a problem. You can find kits of these for under $1 on eBay if you're willing to wait for shipping from China and under $5 if you need something in North America. I might jump to that conclusion on the DPad, but it would seem very odd to me that the B works fine but the A doesn't. I wonder if something else is impeding the travel.
It's also possible that there's some plastic pushing against something (like the volume wheel area as an example) and when you screw the shell together it flexes the board or shell and it causes things (like the A button) to bind. Do the A and DPad work fine if you take the back of the shell off (and are only left with the front with the circuit board attached to it)?
Photos can help, but there's nothing here to pinpoint what to show. If you'd want to post some general photos, maybe one of us might spot something that needs further modification.
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I have come close to completely solving my issues. I'll post my solutions just in case some one else is looking for solutions.
The power switch issue was fixed by trimming more of the plastic around the L/R buttons. Specifically the long bottom piece, hardly any of it remains on mine and it works fine now. This also improved the volume wheel issue but I think just trimming the plastic around it gave me the biggest improvement.
The A button was super simple actually. I guess I never closely examined the actual buttons because when I did I noticed a mis-formed piece of plastic on the bottom of the button. Chopping this off completely fixed the mushy feel. The D-pad still doesn't feel right but I'm still poking around.
A new issue has showed up unrelated to hardware after getting everything hooked together. After taking out the battery and tearing it down when I try to boot back up the power switch will no longer work and it will only boot through plugging the Pi into a USB cable. Once I format the card and place the .img back on the card it will boot as normal. Not sure what is causing this but its frustrating.
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I have a set of rubber pads in the mail right now. I couldn't find any visible oddities on the plastic or the rubber.
I just discovered that flipping the battery from top to bottom or bottom to top also fixes this which saves me a lot of work.
