PSVita 3G to Memory Card Adapter – IndieGoGo Campaign by Yifan Lu
The day has finally come upon us.. Sort of that is. It’s very important to point the specifics that will, sadly enough, make this not feasable for quite a few of you out there.
How exactly does the adapter work?
First things first, it’s not like the PSP memory stick to MicroSD adapters. This one uses the USB 2.0 port in the mini PCIe form factor on the PSVita 11xx. 11xx you say? Yes, this adapter requires a Vita Wifi+3G (i.e The Fat 3G models that didn’t sell awfully well) because they’re the only ones that have the port required to fit in Yifan’s adapter. You can always get a Vita 1100 motherboard and stick it in your WiFi only Fat PSVita (1000) if you so desire. Vita 1100 boards are available on AliExpress for about $25 but you would have to fully disassemble your Vita to get them installed.
How is this installed?
You have to open your PSVita to pop in the adapter. Fortunately, according to Yifan Lu, it’s only as complicated as when you change the battery. Before putting in the adapter, make sure you have a high capacity and high quality SD card to avoid any issues. With HENkaku Ensō, the board should work automatically on system boot (but now you can apply taiHEN even on Fat Vitas without a memory card).
Can I get my hands on one?
Unfortunately, they’re all sold out since the campaign was a success. You can however buy a prototype board to help out Yifan Lu with testing it. These go for $5. If everything goes as planned, the 100 backers that paid $20 for the board should get it in September.
Yifan Lu is open to anyone wishing to mass produce the boards so maybe they’ll be available to the public someday (or until some Chinese company looking to make a quick buck copies them…). Hopefully, we’ll see an adapter that goes in the normal memory card slot for all the Vita 1k and 2k owners some time 😉
Campaign page (you may still get a prototype board to help Yifan out + more info): https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ps-vita-3g-to-microsd-card-adapter#/
Amazing, yifan lu thank you for every thing you have done to revitalize my vita! Cannot wait for it to be mass produced!!
WHY DIDN”T YOU TELL SOONER I WOULD HAVE TOTALLY BOUGHT THAT
They sold out in less than a day.
A day is a very long time.
More like an hour. He did not plan this well whatsoever. There is a tremendous demand for these.
The big question is, though: a high demand from PS Vita owners, or scalpers? It wouldn’t be the first time. See: Dreamcast SD card adapter.
When I bought mine, the campaign hade been up for about 7 hours, and there were still 55 boards left after I bought mine. So saying that they didn’t even last an hour is a heck of a lie.
This is a research project. He’s not trying to make a product.
If you can use it with 3.61+ this may lead to interesting things
This won’t help people who were silly enough to update, its just an alternative for memory storage, it won’t work on stock firmware and is infact likely to cause issues during updates if the system assumes the 3G modem is there when it isn’t
D’uhhhhhh
Well, you can’t…And it will still lead to interesting things. Just not for anyone that doesn’t have Henkaku, which is only for 3.60.
Highly unlikely. To use this adapter, you have to load a custom driver via Henkaku.
last
first!
I saw the campaign within minutes of it going live on my indiegogo app and no sooner than I go to the store to put money on my debit card than it sells out… All 100 of them went rapidly!!! 🙁 At least he’s releasing the source code and schematics so others can produce them. He estimated that only about 75 out of the 100 would be 90% compatible (in terms of not having problems installing them properly)… I suppose I’ll be fine with my 64GB JP memory card and Enso beta for now! 🙂
The boards from AliExpress do work and to take apart the vita is really easy
I second the fact that opening up the vita and switching boards aint hard.
just bought a MB 3G from ebay, before it becomes overprices as the NES mini classic…
And what exactly would a MB 3G be?
I’m extremely thankful I purchased the WiFi + 3G model when I was in Japan. Once this becomes mass produced, I will buy one for sure. In the meantime, I decided to support Yifan Lu by buying a prototype board. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to solder in a couple components and have a working board!
Wifi model is unfortune?
Yay! I’ve got a fat one……… errr, Fat 3G I mean.
Nice , i already have a 3g model
i would love to see something like this
thanks
Perfect work, but why not to use ebay mini pcie to micro sd adapter: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-TF-Micro-SD-Card-to-Mini-PCI-E-Express-with-half-Bracket-Memory-Card-Reader-/261913240684?hash=item3cfb3ee46c:g:4EgAAOSwRgJXhg~M only thing I see is power consumption, from images I see this one also uses usb d+ and d- lines.
ask him on twitter
It is because it is not following the mPCIe standards. The pinouts are different. Also from the description he mentions that the length of the 3G board doesn’t follow either the short or long mPCIe standard form factor.
Missed that, thanks. Then we should wait for China to make more of these opensource boards 🙂
About 4 million Vitas were sold. Not sure how many 3G versions were made but regardless, I doubt more than 10,000 people will buy this, in the end.
So… they won’t be bothered. What will happen is people will make drives to setup small runs of less than 1k or so each time.
🙁 Pitty, I guess then fastest option is to make it myself, schematics are public (https://github.com/yifanlu/psvsd) and parts are on aliexpress.
Forgot to mention that the connector isn’t even a PCIe interface. The 3G “mPCIe” module is really only a USB 3G module that uses the mPCIe connector. As stated in his description is uses USB and some of the other pins are debugging pins. You can clearly see TX,RX, and another pin used in Serial programmer interfaces, CTS (though no RTS or DTR). Wonder if we can solder a USB flash drive to the USB pins and use VitaShell to mount as a memory card.
USB is a general purpose interface, so only thing limiting this would be drivers (maybe also 5v power supply for flash drive), but PS TV does exactly that. This would be nice to plug small USB flash drive at the top of your PS Vita (by removing mystery port and replacing it with USB).
That’d be simply nicer cuz I don’t plan buyin’ a 3g model.
Thanks for the article, Aurora. Looking forward to future updates.
Why not use the game cart slot for the microsd adapter? The game cart is big enough to fit the microsd.
It would be very hard to put there anything and price of this adapter would go up quite a bit.
Luckily it’s all open source anyways…
unlucky that he suspects the yield of functional boards will be 75/100 for those backers.
He knowingly very largely underestimates the success rate to be sure to meet it. In practice, pretty much all boards should work.
Thanks for the article, Wolola. Looking forward to future updates.
So… can anyone sugest Yifan-sama to open more $20,- (with hardwareshipping) options?
The first 100 were gone before you could blink the eye..
The extra $ I paid for my Vita at launch wasn’t for nothing after all!
Got mine at launch at the 3G was cheaper for me because it came with bonus items!
Good update… have fun for all those able to use it… i got a wifi so no chance for me (yet)
How much could I get for my 3G Vita unupdated as I don’t use mine.