Complete noob trying to mod Hori EX2 fightstick

Hi, I’m attempting to mod my Hori EX2 fightstick using the Joytron Paewang Revolution PCB and the problem I’m having is that the pcb is not being detected as a controller by my xbox when I plug it in, meaning absolutely nothing works. I haven’t yet set all the wires to their final positions, but I hooked up one of the buttons to activate turbo when pressed (at least I think I did it right), because I thought that the problem might be that turbo needs to be held to activate the controller for the first time. I have some possibly very simple questions.

  1. When wiring the push buttons or joystick, does it matter which wire is ground?
  2. Should my PCB be detected when I plug it in to the xbox for the first time regardless of whether or not I held turbo down or not?

Any response is appreciated. Thanks.

  1. For the buttons, the pin/pad closest to the centre of the pcb is the ground. All ground terminals on the buttons must connect to this point, but the buttons themselves do not care which of their terminals is connected to ground. For the joystick, the points where the red wires connected on the Joytron are ground (rather than black). It does matter which terminals you use for this (assuming stock hori stick), but I can’t remember which is which.

  2. If it isn’t set to xbox mode, then it won’t be recognised, so hopefully what you’re experiencing is just a symptom of this that will be fixed once you get the buttons hooked up correctly. If not then I cannot help :frowning:

modding an ex2 is not for complete noobs, i include myself in that

The Hori EX 2 is one of the worst sticks to try to mod.
For the Quality of the stick and the amount of effort required you are better off with a completely different stick that will cost you more but is less headaches.
You are even better off trying to put authentic arcade parts in a Joytron stick.

You want to make sure the Paewang board is set to Xbox 360 mode. You could also plug the PCB into the computer first to see what mode it comes up as and if the PCB works before you installed it into a stick.

The following images are from a Kitty Mod but the format is still the same. Minus the obvious name changes your PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the screen should closely match mine

There is another example from FreedomGundam here

Hi guys, thanks for the responses. Of course, the next day after I posted this I worked on it and got it all working, the issues I was having just went away. I know that the Hori EX2 probably isn’t the best choice for a stick mod, but I just wanted to tinker and not have to worry about screwing up an expensive fightstick (My EX2 is already broken).

I did start having another problem as soon as I finished and closed it all up, where it worked perfectly on my ps3 but wouldn’t be detected anymore by my xbox. I think the obvious problem is with the turbo button. I will be sure to make a separate post if I run into any more issues, but for now, I think I’m good. Thanks again.