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“If something wears out after the warranty expires, here’s an independent online store with a full inventory of all replaceable parts, along with the instructions for how to fix them.”
Bonus “Fuck Nintendo” points: pirate their games and put them on the Steam Deck.
This is the way.
Oh, your Stick is drifting? No problem, send it in.
What? You don’t want to wait? Sure, in that case here’s a manual to easily fix it yourself.
Bluetooth controller drifting? Here, you can adjust the deadzone yourself and get realtime feedback to make it easier.
That or you can just buy a controller that doesn’t cheap out on the joysticks for less than what any of the main console companies are charging.
So far, I get about 6-8 years out of whatever generation PlayStation controller I get. PS3 controller battery eventually crapped out. PS4 controller got pretty bad stick drift.
Tried an Xbox 360 controller once, it got stick drift after only a year.
My original 360 controllers are still working in pristine condition.
Amy recommendations? I’ve been considering getting a new controller, but I use one so rarely. For the longest time I’ve used I think an ancient PS3 controller, or my old Steam Controller (which is great for some things but sucks for others).
I personally use a 8bit-do controller because of its hall affect sticks
Or, get some third party Hall Effect sticks, and have an enjoyable afternoon or evening of tinkering.
No soldering required!
No soldering on the switch either though and Hall effect joysticks are a thing for it as well
I havent bothered to try taking mine apart:
Does Nintendo still insist on using the triangle screws nobody sells? Like cuntsm
Yep, but the kit includes the screwdriver
While technically true, you will lose the capacitive touch functionality of the sticks (the steam deck knows when your thumbs are touching the sticks) unless you desolder the old thumb caps and resolder them on the new sticks.Edit: You’re right. It appears newer Hall Effect Sticks for the Steam Deck come with the capacitive caps pre soldered, while the OG Gulikit Sensors required desoldering the original caps and resoldering them on the replacement board. That being said, it was super easy to do, even for my butterfingers that last touched a soldering iron in highschool more than 15 years ago.
I have heard about that being a thing, and honestly I would have no problem getting a small soldering kit and learning how to solder…
https://www.handhelddiy.com/products/steam-deck-oled-tighter-hall-joystick
https://www.amazon.com/Joysticks-Steam-Deck-OLED-Thumbstick-replacement/dp/B0D2P24S9P
So these are for the OLED, which has a very slightly different internal board layout than the LED…
But both of these say they are pre-soldered, no soldering required, and they still have capacitive touch working.
… Am I missing something?
EDIT: These seem to be basically self contained, All in One, small board, stick/base and thumbcap units.
Maybe earlier 3rd party Hall Effect sticks were… not so comprehensive, and required the soldering?
Or maybe I am confused?
With those you don’t need to solder, they come with the caps themselves.
When I did my swap (OG Deck), I couldn’t find any Gulikits that came with the caps and I bought
https://www.gulikit.com/productinfo/854122.html
Which don’t come with any caps and required soldering. Nice that there are now options that don’t require it.
Ah ok, so you were even earlier to the Deck modding scene than me, and it has evolved toward being even easier since.
Whew!
I appreciate your pointing this out and explanation, I wouldn’t want to have been unintentionally spreading misinfo.
… Nor would I have wanted to get my own Hall Effect ‘no soldering’ kit and then learned… actually there still is soldering in some other step or on some other component, that the ‘no soldering’ kits actually just mean ‘less soldering’.
The Deck is great to mod.
I really wanted one of those transparent Atomic Purple shells for mine. Then thought, might as well swap the sticks since it’s already opened up.
Well the transfer into the new shell requires complete disassembly, which was quite bit more involved then I anticipated. The screen is glued to the top half of the shell. Getting a bit impatient, I shattered my screen as I was trying to pry it off. You need to heat the adhesive and remove the screen before it cools. I had done a couple of phone screen repairs in the past, and let me tell you, they use a lot less adhesive and because they are so small, you’ll easily be able to pop it off before the adhesive starts becoming super sticky again. Not so much with the Steam Deck.
Well, the Deck HD (1200p) screen was only like 10€ more than an OEM replacement, so I might as well. (I quite like it, much sharper and more vibrant than the original and FSR can still give you good results in games that can’t hit the resolution, but the battery life did take a small hit).
Long story short, I love my Atomic Purple Steam Deck HD with Hall Effect Sticks, where one cosmetic mod led me to do two hardware upgrades. I don’t regret it, but I doubt I would do it again. I just love how much you can do it.
Only one small mistake I see here. Assuming Nintendo will say please. The same amount of time it takes them to say please, you’ll blink and be in a courtroom facing piracy charges.
Please understand
Brother I require OATS
Careful with SD; they quickly wear out with lots of small writes. I once fried one as homedir while trying to compile Firefox.
I’d like to know more about this- as far as I know they are solid state, meaning no moving parts (ergo more reliable)
they’re more reliable but they still wear out, but i don’t really think it’s a problem you need to worry about, just have in the back of your mind that you’ll want to make a backup after a while so you’re not sitting there with a dying sd card with all your data on it.
But also IIRC flash storage specifically fails to write data as it wears out, so it’s not like the data is gone.
Hmm, for now only about the general fragility, due to simple controllers. But i think i have an article about this saved somewhere.
Btw, if you reformat an SD, I/O and lifetime will fall sharply, because of some block size parameters differing, above mentioned article goes in detail about this stuff.
Edit: it wasn’t this but has some nice info too:
Sounds like you got a shitty SD card. High endurance cards are recommended for frequent writing.
Can’t say for sure, because all are mixing high quality with recycled from the scrapyard quality. The big names only a bit less of the scrapyard.
Yes, this. I got a 1tb micro SD card a few years ago for my hacked Switch (Fuck Nintendo, especially now that they’ve went after emulation) and finding a LEGITIMATE SD card was very hard, especially since I wanted the high-capacity and they don’t just sell those at Wal-Mart. Be VERY careful about buying SD cards folks, lots of scammers out there in the markets now.
EDIT: forgot to add that I received TWO duds, fake SD cards that were NOT 1tb, when trying to get my SD card
How annoying is that! Where did you get the fakes?
Another question. Is that a separate issue? Like let’s say if you buy from Best Buy:
Sounds like @[email protected] was saying it’s still a crapshoot even if it’s totally genuine. Like if you buy 10 for 10 different handhelds, maybe only half of them are still working after a couple years but the rest of them last two or three times longer… <speculating>
Yes, that.
Each write to a memory location wears out that location slightly degrading it’s oxide layer. Flash memories compensate for this by “wear-leveling” which spreads the writes around to different locations to make sure the device wears out evenly.
It will mark bad locations and stop using them. If you run with the device almost full then it cannot effectively wear level and the few open locations will be overused and wear out.
It’s not specifically small writes, it’s the number of writes to any one location. But of course it’s faster to do small writes so you end up with more if they are all small.
Also, there are flash memories optimized for performance that will wear out faster and others that are optimized for longevity that write slower.
Keeping the device cool will extend it’s life also.
For longest life, keep the device cool and mostly empty and minimize writes. In critical applications find a device that optimizes lifetime over performance.
Hold on, i think i now remember: this one was about SD usually having smaller block size, so each small write causing a multiple in blocks written, i think?
Endurance SD cards made for cctv cameras are the way to go. The Endurance versions are slower and slightly more expensive but they last a lot of writes.
Are SD cards not still the standard storage for digital cameras? I can think of few things designed to produce more small writes than a digital camera.
This person is confusing me. I use SD cards for my cameras and drones and routinely move files and reformat them with no issue. I have several cards that are over 6 years old and used daily. SD is the standard for all current cameras and drones.
I’ve only heard about SD cards data getting corrupted when doing lots of small writes. This was something people talked about when the raspberry pi first came out I think. But, I’ve been using micro-sd cards for years for all sorts of things and never had a problem.
I’ve had an SD card in my dashcam for 6+ years now. Constantly writing and over writing from -20F (sometimes lower but it’s protected so I’ll stop at -20) to well over 110F when baking in the summer sun.
It’s got a battery so it continues to run for hours after I shut it off. Used to go 17 hours on the battery but that’s probably way less now.
My point being that the SD card has been rock solid in very extreme conditions for 6 years now. Sure I made sure to get the extreme use version, I but don’t buy this kind of thing on eBay or Craigslist and you’ll be fine. Maybe stay away from Amazon too.
A digital camera has several megabyte writes, every once in a while, filling up the SD card evenly. Even bad SD cards usually have many thousand write cycles before they degrade, so that’s not likely to be an issue. What is worse is if you have a log file, for example, that is stored in a fixed position on the card and gets updated several times a second
Don’t they have different screens too though?
From the original decks, the top tier screen can be achieved with a matte screen protector
Exactly. The two higher editions are OLED, 7.4”, 90 Hz, which is a huge plus, vs the LCD, 7”, 60Hz display of the old/cheaper one. Plus the battery has 25% more capacity for the OLED editions. But between the top two, it’s just storage and cosmetics/accessories.
They do, but usually have the older/less good screen on at a fairly steep discount (presumably until they run out of stock of it)
We have basicly everything you play games on, so also both of these. But the Steam Deck is absolutely the gigachad, even moreso than my actual gaming pc if you just look at hours used.
If you forced me to get rid of all my devices but one, it’d probably be the Steam Deck that’ll be left. And yes this consideration included my gaming pc and smartphone.
The only regret I have about buying the Steam Deck is being so late to the party, having acquired it but 6 months ago.
The mod abilityof the deck and the openness is a killer feature of the deck. It’s an excellent device.
They don’t say please, they just threaten you with legal ramifications.
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Memory is not storage.
In the end everything that is storage can also be used as memory. You could print it to paper and scan it back in when the cpu requires it (and write a memory interface to do so)… It would just be terribly slow if you don’t use something like DRAM
Sure but that’s the opposite of what was mentioned.
Storage can be memory.
Memory cannot be storage.
the fuck are you on about lmao
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TmpfsYou can use a ramdisk to use memory as storage. And if it’s volatile memory just be sure to never power it down. Ignoring the applicability of it of course.
Not with that attitude! swapon!
Bro why you gotta remind me of the swap file nightmares with w98 ha
I just wish the Deck was a bit lighter.
My one complaint is that the shape is kind of awkward and I’ve cut off circulation in my fingers holding it
I wish the steam controller wasn’t discontinued, IIRC it was some patent bullshit. But you could use one of you have it or get any other controller and use it with the steam deck
I have one, and plenty of controllers, but I’d trade a bit of battery life and horsepower for weight. I don’t play AAA games on mine, and I know I’m not alone, so they’d be smart to release a lite version.
And it’s not just the weight. My wife has small hands and can’t play it comfortably because it’s so large. I bought her a WIN400 and threw SteamOS on it and that works alright. Something that size would be amazing from Valve (but without the really fucking stupid control placement).
Small form factor handhelds with power under the hood are definitely a thing, but they’re like $1200. I bet Valve could drop the power by 40% and sell it at a reasonable price point.
Fair enough, I guess they probably wanted to target one set of hardware to begin with and this is what we got with a few minor variations. As popularity grows more choices will probably come further down the line.
My primary concern, too. It’s fine for my man-hands but my wife and children still would rather use a switch (or literally have to, as I try to get my 3 year old to reach buttons). A deck lite would be lovely.
We just use a neck roll placed in the lap or on the stomach to rest it on while playing. It is a bit on the heavy side, but it is the first generation consumer handheld with that kind of power so I can excuse that.
With the KillSwitch case from dbrand, the Deck is both heavy AND sturdy feeling. The grips on the case are AMAZING though, and really help with the heaviness. I bought the entire kit for mine, because I thought it looked sick, but I can highly recommend the case to anyone who would like the protection and ergonomics that the case can give you.
I like the heaviness, personally. Gives it a “premium” feel to it, but that is my opinion of course!
A deck the size of a miyoo mini plus would be awesome. But very impractical. I want it.
I am in so much pain that MP4 is finally coming out and it’s on this shit.
MP4 checklist:
- Video format? No, that’s old.
- Mass Effect 4? No, that would be ME4.
- ??
metroid prime 4
not very prime then is it?
Mario Party… 4? Aren’t they on like 9?
That and the Air Ride sequel man. All I can hope is that people get emulators going fast.
There’s work already being done ;)
Nintendo will come down on them like a ton of thwomps.
Also on the original Switch, though.
I recently learned that the eshop on the Switch is a browser and the eshop you buy from is a website which is so funny to me for some reason
That would explain the slow load times
I have both. So far the only advantage the Switch Lite has is that is lighter and pocketable. The Steam Deck is not just about gaming which it does so well, it has also become my main and only PC outside of work. I have it hocked up to my TV more often than use it in handheld mode.
I’m very sure you can even run blender on it
and given that it’s a gaming device blender probably runs pretty alright, too, especially if you stick to the eevee engine
