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.
