Commander Tim pointed me toward the Hori EX2 fighting stick. Unfortunately it comes with a square restrictor plate, more meant for fighting games. Not good for Pac-man. So I purchased a Sanwa octagonal restrictor plate. I only had to drill four holes for the screws… fit right in. The results are above. The previous restrictor plate is loose in the lower left.

A couple weeks ago, the DVD drive stopped working. A little more involved modding for the replacement of this. This project involved desoldering the controller card from the old drive, then resoldering this card to the new drive. This went surprisingly well, considering I’m not the greatest solderer in the world.

While I had the Xbox open, I did some other modding. I purchased a new case that came with LEDs. Also purchased the Talismoon “whisper” replacement fans. Whisper is in quotes because it isn’t totally quiet. The Xbox definitely needed some cleaning, here is a picture of the dirt that had accumulated on the heatsink. Now you know one reason why Xbox 360s overheat and die.

So here is the final result. Pretty fancy, eh. A touch quieter, but I am sure it isn’t quieter than an Xbox 360 slim. The octagonal restrictor in the Hori EX2 increased my 5 minute score on the Championship II maze for PC CE DX to 1.4 million from 1.22 million.