Doa4 mod tutorial (photo galore D:)

Before reading on, I should point out this mod is purely hellish and not really reccomended unless you have some experience.

I took the pictures after I modded it so not every step is illustrated but I’ll try my best to explain.

Buttons (unfortunately no pictures)

Buttons are ironically the easiest part of the mod not to say they are easy at all. After you open the case, using either solder braid or a solder sucker, remove the soldered contacts between the PCB and the buttons and seperate the two. Remove the rest of the screws holding down the PCB so that the PCB can be moved out of the way. Remove the 6 buttons.

Get a medium sized curved/circular file that has an arc that is less than the arc of the button holes. Using the file, file down the tabs that are used to prevent the hori buttons from slipping. You’ll notice even with the tabs removed, you still can’t fit a sanwa button into the hole. That’s because the holes are 1 1/8th while a sanwa button is 30 mm wide. So use a file and file for another 15 ish seconds all around and try to fit the button again. repeat until it fits. You may want to designate a sacrificial button for testing hole size. Snapins will definitely fit. I’m not sure if there is space for screwins, but if there is not, you can always hot glue them down from the inside and that should be just as good as the nut. Depending on how you place the PCB inside, you may need to bend the pins of the buttons for everything to fit. Also, be sure to electric tape the PCB so nothing on the PCB shorts with the buttons.

Joystick:

Since the doa4 stick is so insanely flat, you’ll find that you need an extra half inch to fit the sanwa stick if you want proper mounting height. So we’ll have to do some modifications. After removing the doa4 stick, remove the shaft and all parts attached to it. We’ll be swapping these parts with the parts on the sanwa stick.

from the right (top row), the e-clip is from the hori stick, the white actuator is from the hori stick, the spring is from the sanwa (I think), the black spring holster thingy is from the sanwa (it is vital that you use the sanwa one), and the conical piece is from the sanwa. The shaft itself is from the hori stick. the remaining parts don’t really matter. Assembled, it should look like this (sorta)

Going aside, we’ll need to make substantial modifications to the sanwa stick chassis as well.

Start by cutting off the clips on the black chassis that hold down the restrictor plate, they protrude too much. We’ll use screws to hold the gate down instead. Take the gate, and remove the stubs that stick into the holes on the microswitches. We need to clear these holes so we can send screws through them. YOu can do this with a drill bit or a knife (careful). Then, cut/dremel the portruding parts of the gate so it looks more like this

and

instead of

these stubs also get in the way. Make sure none of these parts are any higher than the screw heads wel will be putting in later. The screwheads should be the highest part of your stick and they will prevent the metal plate from touching the shaft. The plate will be portruding about 1 mm which is unnoticeable.

Finally, if you plan on using the doa4 360 pcb, you’ll need to modify the sanwa pcb because the doa4 pcb has no common grounds. To accomplish this, use a dremel or something similar to break the traces on the PCB like so

We’ll be soldering straight to the microswitches instead like this

There are 4 spots on the doa4 case to put screws through which happen to match up with the 4 holes that go from the gate, through the 4 microswitches and then out the top. We’ll be holding down the stick with 4 screws through these holes. Unfortunately, the doa4 screws are too short. I happened to have the tekken 5 screws which are exactly like the doa4 screws except longer which were perfect. If you don’t have these screws, you could use the doa4 screws and not send the screws through the gate but starting straight from the 4 holes of the microswitches. You’d then have to make space for the screwheads by drilling another hole from the bottom (the side facing the switches) side of the restrictor gate. The gate itself can be held down by the tabs on the black sanwa chassis so long as you don’t shave off too much of the tabs. I’m sure that’s confusing without pictures but too bad. I had t5 screws :D.

Once thats done, it shoudl look something like this

(I know it’s only 3 screws, I could only find 3).

You’ll find now if yo utry to use the stick, the stick will feel really short. this is because the doa4 stick is suppose to be mounted higher than the sanwa stick. To compensate, I added a small nut to the balltop screw as a spacer (you can use washer or w/e instead).

There is a better photo of the nut above for those of you who haven’t noticed. If you did all that right, the sanwa stick should feel arcade accurate.

Wiring:

Wiring is HELL. Nothing has common grounds. Wire the stick as seen in the pictures above. Wiring the buttons should be pretty straightforward as well. Just wire it as it was with the original buttons. Once your done, the inside should look something like this (messy)

but the top side should look like this (sexy)

For additional photos of wiring and other things, you can look here http://s55.photobucket.com/albums/g140/chippermonky/Joysticks/doa4mod/

Feel free to ask any questions or add your own comments and suggestions here.

MY STICK! YOU KILLED IT! BUTCHER!

But yeah, noice stuff :stuck_out_tongue:

how come you just didnt get rid of the secondary pcb and just wire the 4 buttons from the main pcb? thats what i did, conserved some room. either way tho, great job. i wanna mod with a sanwa or seimitsu soon, this could come in handy

Damnit. That means (4 directions + 8 buttons / 4 ) 3 analog switch IC’s to force it to use a common ground. But at least the PCB is a much nicer shape for modding, unlike the other 360 controllers.

Great job on the mod.

Why not just remove the JLF PCB and put 4 regular microswitches in there? You’d be able to use .187" QD’s, make future replacement easier, and it would drop the thickness of the stick by thickness of the actual board, about 1.5mm.

nice job on the mod. haha i was just working on one a few minutes ago actually but instead i came in from the top and did some countersinking on the metal plate so the screws are flush thanks to some advice from poon.

haha i even did that shaft replacement thing. corners still don’t feel as solid though with the white plastic shaft thing under the e clip.

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n5/akuma001/PICT0119.jpg

my idea to combat the shaft problem was to make a “riser” of sorts that the bottom flushes into and gives the stick an extra .25 inches in height, then cut a hole out so the stick has enough clearance to work fine
i’ll find a camera to post pics since thats what i did
albeit i didnt blend it in with the stick so it looks poor

I didn’t want to mess around with the top so I went in from the bottom. All the holes were tehre anways. I like the doa4 artwork anwyays :3.

man i should have worded that better o.0

i went from the bottom to
you know how the bottom metal plate is the problem with the sanwa?
i added a 1/4" piece of wood inbetween that and the whole case.
so the case sits on top of the wood, make sense?
i put holes so that those little hills go inside of the wood.
the wood kinda doesnt hold but when screwing it back together i made the screws tight enough to keep it in place

…too much explaining, in about a hour i can show what im talking about

just out of curiosity. do you guys put anything underneath the main pcb to prevent it from touching the 2 buttons? reason i ask cuz i obviously desoldered all the buttons and did some rewiring and was scared that the button pins were gonna touch the pcb where the buttons were originally wired, frying everything.

just curious

bump :3

i actually electric taped the bottom of my pcb and the inside of the plastic metal base just in case. looks like chippermonky did too if you look close enough.

ah yes, i see it. i wasnt really concerned with the bottom plate cuz when you screw the headset port back down, it puts the pcb back in place, unless you ditch the headset and are using the stick for another console. but better safe than sorry. thanks!

bump!

good lord, filing away at the holes on the metal panel was more of a bitch than i thought to get seimitsu snapins to fit. takes a while to do it

you must have been using a shitty file XD. Filing took all of 10 minutes for me.

i guess so, either way, its all said and done now. they fit fine. i was just afraid i would open the holes too much and end up killing the whole project heh

lol. I told you!

lol yes you did

Ha, I knew I saw this thread before… Finally found it.

Chippermonkey, you rock for making this thread. :tup:

Imagine all that negative reputation if i was to ask for help… Perish the thought.

Oh good, I found the thread too. I hope I won’t get chewed out for bumping such an “old” topic, but I have a couple of questions:

I’ll be using the EX2 stick which is apparently exactly the same as the DOA4 stick, just with different art. Is it absolutely necessary to keep the stock PCB for the stick itself or can we use the Sanwa one?

Which Sanwa would be best for this? I was thinking the JLF (despite it costing $9 more than the JLW) because it apparently just uses a plug and doesn’t require the ground to all of the switches (it’s part of the wiring harness or something), but I want to make sure it won’t be a huge pain in the ass to get this all to fit into the casing of the thing.

Would it be difficult at all to change the art underlay?

I would love to get this all done before VF5 comes out, but so long as it gets done at some point I don’t care about how long it takes.

hikaru, get the JLF from me if you want to do this mod. Its 18 + shipping. PM me or check my thread in the trading outlet.

Also, there is another way to mod this shit. I’ll post it up in a few days if I feel like it.

In a nutshell. Those 4 plastic stubs that the screws go into sticking out of the doa4 case are in the exact same spots as the 4 holes in the sanwa JLF chassis but won’t fit. You MUST CLAMP DOWN THE JLF first and then widen the 4 holes in the JLF and then it slips right on and you can use the original DOA4 screws. Much easier. Not arcade perfect mounting height but who cares about mounting height anyways. Also, this way, there is much less modification needed to be done on the sanwa stick itself (as in all you have to do is widen those 4 holes.