PS One Screen Slashed to Bits!

Grand Theft Portabilization

Ah, a personal holy grail of mine. I bought a PS One screen a while ago because, well, let’s face it, $130 for a 5-inch TFT screen? You can’t beat that!

BUT (there’s always a butt) the darn thing consumes around 1 amp (not milliamp, AMP) of power at 7.2 volts. You hook this thing onto a PSOne and it uses as much or MORE power than the game system itself.

So, where to turn… Where indeed! White LED’s! Of course, the PSOne screen has this really odd bulb thing going around the backlight plastic. It’s U-shaped and covers 3 sides of the plastic. Well, I ditched that thing and stuck in 3 LED’s, each pointing down a side, much like marching soldiers or that scene in Tron.

If any of you other tinkerers would like to give this a go, just wire (3) 3mm white LED’s in parallel off the PS One’s +7.2v power source and put a 22 ohm resistor in front of them.

The end result? A screen that now consumes only 350mA when running, a mere 35% of the original power sucking. GEE! What could I have in mind for this screen? Only time will tell!

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