Sony PS3 controller repair - Mar 2025

Fixing a PS3 controller that has lost its mind

DESCRIPTION

I’m not that much of a gamer, I do not enjoy playing that much for some reason.
I found my old PS3 in my mom’s attic the other day, I just wanted to have a look at what was on it, so I brought it home and plugged it in.

To my surprise, the controller that used to work fine decided that it was time to click everywhere and move the cursor by itself.

The controller had gone MAD, and this got me irritated

After fiddling around with the internals of the controller I identified that a piece of foam had deformed over time and no longer made proper connection. I put a piece of cardstock behind the foam, and, after spraying contact cleaner, the controller started working properly again.

I call this a victory, I was not planning on making a post about it but I thought that it might help others.

GALLERY

The very dusty controller

The back of the very dusty controller

Internals of the controller

Internals of the controller (further disassembly)

In red on the right the piece of cardboard

The piece of cardboard under the faulty foam