An alternative gaming top case

Ian Stirling OpenMoko at mauve.plus.com
Mon Jul 2 14:38:38 CEST 2007


Frederic Kettelhoit wrote:
> But there is a redesign of the board for the accelerometers, the wifi, 
> and the 3D Accleration. It would not be much more work to put a 
> connector under the top case. So if you want to play games, you just 
> take the top case and the back case, remove them, take the new gaming 
> cases, add them. The little hole below the screen would be removed, 
> instead of it, there would be a d-pad. I am not a hardware engineer, but 
> the OpenMoko project built a whole phone, so it should be easy to add 
> some small buttons, I think.

I have in the past suggested an additional connector inside the phone.
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Expansion_Back

This would bring out:
Battery +
3.3V
USB D+ (simply connected to the external connector)
USB D-
SPI SCLK
SPI MOSI
SPI MISO
SPI SS
0V

A connector similar to Digikey HFL110CT-ND - a 10 way vertical mount 
cable connector next to the battery connector. This is around $.30 at 
1000, and slightly cheaper ones are availabe.

In use, this is coupled to a replacement or modified middle-case of 
plastic, 
(http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Image:Gta01b_v3_case_empty_white.jpg )
which with a bit of FPC goes to a connector mounted on the middle-case 
that engages with a modified back when plugged in.


A much cheaper alternative would be to bring any of these signals not 
present out to  an enlarged debug connector.
This would mean that a $10 or so adaptor cable would be needed for 
anyone with an old debug board, but...

A small flex cable would then again be used to bring the ~10 wires - 
eliminating unneeded ones - back out to another user-accessible connector.





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