I have received several emails from people explaining that their circuit board layout differs from the one I have pictured here. What seems to be the most common difference is that the L3/R3 buttons are moved to the side of the analogue stick rather than in front. What this means is that the solder points change for the mod. I have received one image that shows the "side button" board layout, but the picture is of very poor quality. If anyone finds that the circuit board layout differs on their controller and has a digital camera, I would appreciate it if you could send it in. I'll post up the pictures along with alternate instructions when I get them.
Attempt at own risk! I am not responsible for damaged controllers/personal injury.
We've all been in the situation where we were in a merry-go-round type fire fight, or where we needed to make a sharp turn to avoid fire. Quite often what happens is that in the act of jamming your joystick to the side, your thumb will push the joystick down, hitting the L3 (or R3) buttons. SOCOM is an excellent game, don't get me wrong, but the game designers should have picked better controls; L3 just happens to be the firing mode toggle button, and R3 just happens to be the reload button. So if your weapon is in automatic (4 shot) fire mode and you accidently hit L3 during a fight, you're sitting there with a weapon that will only shoot a single shot each time you pull the trigger--essentially you're dead. This is extremely annoying! The designers tried to fix the problem in SOCOM II by providing an option to switch the firing mode toggle to the select button, but then you get the scoreboard popping up when you're in a fight. This is equally as annoying!
What I decided to do was to add a toggle switch to my L3 button. I've only dealt with L3 here because it's the most annoying of the two, R3 is useful in battle and isn't really worth toggling off. The controller in question is the stock PS2 dual-shock controller.
The first thing to do is to take the screws out. Any small phillips screwdriver will do. Make sure you keep the screws somewhere safe, I've already lost one of mine. Once you have the plastic casing off, you can unscrew the actual circuit board from the casing inside; this is held in with one screw. Separate the circuit board from the plastic casing, and make sure to support the weight of the dual-shock motors as the weight of the motors is greater than the support provided by the two wires holding it to the circuit board, so they will fall off. Don't worry if your buttons go flying all over the place, Sony has designed them to only sit in their proper location (using little guide-legs on the sides of the buttons), so they'll be easy to put back when you're done. Now that you have your controller in pieces, we can start with the actual mod.
Look at the top of the circuit board (the side which the joysticks are standing on). Notice that at the base of the joystick there is a little push button switch with a plastic leg from the joystick sitting on top of it. That plastic leg will push the push button down whenever you push the joystick down (try it). Make sure you know where the push button is. Looking at the L joystick now, we have to disconnect 1 of the 4 pins that attaches the push button to the circuit board. There is an annoying bit of white plastic that goes around the outside of the push button that needs to be cleared. I tried cutting it, but that turned out to be too difficult, so I just took my soldering iron and melted the plastic away so I could access the pin with my wire cutters. Here is the picture (take note of the cut pin that I've bent up).
You must cut the exact pin that I've pictured above, so make sure you've got your orientation right! I suggest you don't cut the pin completely off, but bend it up like I have. If something goes wrong, you can always solder it back together. Once you've cut the pin, you can now put the circuit board back into the the top half of the controller casing. Set your buttons in place, put your dual-shock motors back into their position, and put the single screw in to hold it all together.
Now, pick a place to attach your toggle switch. The type of switch isn't really important because there is a bit of leak that occurs through the open circuit normally. I decided on the smallest switch I could find, an "SPST Slide Switch" (3A at 125VAC) from radio shack. The switch has 3 poles, but we only need to use 2. It works like most 3 pole switches, when the switch is up the top two poles represent a closed circuit, when the switch is down the bottom two poles represent a closed circuit. So we can use either the first two poles, or the last two poles. I decided on mounting my switch on the left side of the controller in the bottom portion of the casing. I had to remove (break off) some of the plastic support pieces inside to clear room for the actual switch. I drilled several holes into the side, and then glued the switch into place with two part epoxy. Here is a shot from the outside.
If you pick this position, note that the casing of the controller curves slightly, and the entire body of the switch doesn't really make good contact. I managed to bend the (upper and lower) flaps on the switch to contact the casing, and then applied the glue in those places. Make sure you don't glue the switch together or it won't slide. Wait for the glue to dry completely before using it. Some may find that screwing the switch into place may be easier--that will work fine, but make sure the screw heads aren't going to bother you during play.
Assuming you've got the switch set in place, you can now solder wires to the 2 poles on the switch (ribbon cable works well here). Here is the picture of my switch.
Once you have the two wires attached to the switch, you can attach the other end to the circuit board. We are attaching the wires to two pin solder points for the L joystick push button switch that we worked with earlier. Here is the picture of the attached wires.
Again, make sure you have your orientation right when soldering the wires to the circuit board; you must attach the wires to the exact points as displayed above.
After you're finished soldering the wires to the circuit board, you're ready to put the controller back together. The most challenging part here is the L2 and R2 buttons. Make sure that the rubber backing for the L2 and R2 buttons is sitting in the proper position before you screw the controller together. I found it easiest to use a little screwdriver to hold the rubber down while sliding it into the bottom half of the controller casing. The actual plastic buttons need to be pushed out as far as they can go before doing this, or the rubber is going to get caught on the inside of the plastic portion of the button. Take your time, you'll get it back eventually.
Once the controller is screwed back together, you can now test the mod. Flip the switch to the on (in my case, up) position to enable the L3 button. Put your weapon into automatic fire. Flip the switch to the off (in my case, down) position to disable the L3 button. Now try pressing the L3 button--nothing should happen. When you use the controller for other games, just keep it in the on position and it'll work like it did originally. If you're planning on using this mod for SOCOM II, I have found that it works best when using the select button as the firing mode toggle and L3 as the scoreboard. That way you can easily switch firing modes, and you only have to deal with your switch when you want to view the score.
