Hey All, just finished my second padhack/stick build, this time for someone else. A fellow Shoryuken.com forum member gave me the opportunity to try my hand at putting together another Genesis fight stick. This time, the Mayflash F300 case was used, as well as a Sanwa JLF and Sanwa OBSF-30’s of the customer’s choosing. There was a bit of headache dealing with controller PCB’s that did not want to be padhacked, initially. But those hurdles were overcome, and what you see below and in the linked video is the final product. One cool additional feature that I incorporated on this one is the ability to switch between 3-button and 6-button mode on the fly.
Hope you like it. Thanks for looking!
These are excerpts taken from the video I sent to the customer, of thorough play testing upon completing the build:
MK-1627 was the PCB I used for my first build, and apparently got lucky with that one. That is what I ended up using for this build.
The first PCB I tried to use for this build was a cheap Tomee 6-button ($6 shipped off ebay) pad, in the interest of keeping the cost of the build down. That thing was complete garbage, and had no ‘mode’ functionality…which is possibly what leads to part if not of all its inherent defects. I didn’t become aware of it until after wasting time on it, but there are plenty of reported cases of these controllers not working out of the box.
The second pad I attempted was the MK-1470. Spent a good couple days sorting out issues on that one, and got it 95% working, but for whatever reason, it would randomly start up in 3-button mode. Whichever mode the PCB was start in, it worked fine in that mode. But, not being able to absolutely control whether it started as a 3-button or 6-button controller was enough of an issue that wouldn’t be acceptable to me or the customer, that I eventually went back to what I knew worked.
I would be interested to find out if any 3rd-party Genesis 6-button controllers other than the MK-1627 can be hacked, particularly 3rd-party fightsticks. But, I’m afraid that won’t be an R&D effort I’ll be funding any time soon.
I’ve tried using a hyperkin pad before which seemed to work fine until I noticed an issue with the C button not working properly. Unfortunately Idk if it was a issue with the pad before I started the padhack or if I caused it somehow
^There is also the Tototek, for PS/PS2 to Genny, but some of us like our current gen tech interfacing as purely as possible.
Interesting. Foolishly, I didn’t test the Tomee before starting in on it, so it could have been working fine out of the box, but there’s enough documented cases on the webs about the exact same symptoms I was experiencing with that PCB, that I’m certain it was just junk to start with. The MK-1470 I tested before starting in on it, and it was working fine as a 6-button pad. Very odd stuff, for sure.
I read on google, that taking a discrete input ( meaning onebpin equals one signal. And is uncoded) and pad hacking a genesis controller is tough because the Sega 6 button pads have multiple grounds. Sonif your design assumes one ground, you’re scratching your head.
But, I made a design where any input can be remapped to any control, and when i heard that the Edladdin Colecovision Super Action PCB uses 2 separate grounds (“commons”) and based on my design, i though to marry a button to a unique coreesponding ground, and instead of using a DB25. use a DB37 for 18 inputs, 18 grounds, onre for each input. and an extra pin for voltage.
By the way, switch controllers have 18 digital inputs, if you ignore but thumb sticks.
Even though I doubt an 18 input control would have 18 grounds, having 18 grounds makes a flexable input joystick easier if dealing with multiple grounds.
Have I made my hired hand’s job easier? If there initially 12 inputs and 12 ground, which grounds should be united before being soldered in a Genesis 6? And where do the inputs and 2 or more grounds get soldered
I see no documents on Genesis official 6 button pad searching Google. Plenty of Saturn, but no Genesis 6es.
