Thank you so much. The stick is a Chun Li TE-S, let me know if there’s anything more specific you need to know about it. The LED representing LB doesn’t work at all. The pictures are posted below:
With start held down:
With start let go:
I’m not sure about what the RJ-45 lines should be but judging by the readme file it’s recognizing the system as USB?
Also sadly I don’t currently have access to an o-scope.
It does recognize it as a USB, as it should based on what it’s saying.
Setup your supergun and converters, and power everything up, but without the stick plugged into the FGW converter. Repeat the steps you just did so I can see what it says hooked up to the converter.
Of course you have a messed up turbo led. we wouldnt want this to be easy or anything. Damn you Murphy and your shitty law.
Oh wait, sorry about that I thought your first suggestions said converter, that WAS with the supergun 
I’ll run another test on my PC.
EDIT: Lights on PC are identical to supergun.
Then the Kitty isn’t seeing the activity it needs to go into Kitty mode. It’s not seeing the clock line nor the command line go down, nor the attention line going up. Run the exact same thing on a real PS2, and you’ll see a very different set of lights.
So, the Kitty isn’t going into PSX mode because it isn’t seeing the activity it expects to see on the RJ45 lines. Not on ANY of the three RJ45 lines it’s looking at.
Start looking all over the converter. Since the problem is on at least three lines, chances are it’s either a complete RJ-45 disconnect in the stick (which would be obvious when you try this on a real PS2) or something putting the converter to sleep or shorting it out.
Alright I’ll start checking those tomorrow. I double checked the sticks in the PS2 (the laser is dying so tonight I couldn’t get it to ready any games) but I was able to verify X, O, triangle, square, and all directions functioning on both sticks again. Would it help me debug this if I stick wires and measure voltages between pins on the female PS2 adapter on the converter? I’m trying to figure out the best way to check if there’s a short. I visually inspected the solder joints on the converter and everything looks fine, I didn’t see any accidentally connected joints or anything like that. The wires are soldered too close to the board for the female connector for me to be able to get good readings directly off the board.
I just measured the voltage between each pin (or input, I guess) on the female PS2 end from the converter and took a few pictures of the converter itself in case I’m missing something that you guys can point out. Here’s what the voltages looked like:
ACK - 5v
CLK - 5v
ATT - 5v
VCC - 5v
CMD - 5v
DAT - 5v
The only difference was that ATT seemed to sit around 4.2 as opposed to the 4.75 that the rest measured at. Here are the pictures, I apologize if they’re difficult to see, the lighting in here makes it really hard to get good pictures of stuff like this. Also, please excuse the messy stripping, wiring and soldering job, this was my first soldering project in 3-4 years.
Shot you a quick PM, Toodles.
I have another firmware idea to try in mind, but wont be able to build it until late monday. Im currently in a car headed to Seattle.
Yeah, no rush, I saw in another thread that you’re off to NW Majors this weekend. Have fun!
Just so you know, this is at the forefront of my mind, but I need to get a ton of packages put together and out the door. So I havent forgotten about you, it’ll just be late tonight.
http://www.godlikecontrols.com/download/kitty/TEKittyTroubleshooting2.zip
If I did this right, then you’ll still plug it in with the slider on RS and Start held down, but it wont try to detect until you press ‘A’. So plug everything in, wait a deep breath (with Start still held), tap ‘A’, take a pic, release Start, take a pic, and that should help us out. Sort of a ‘mid stream’ check of the lines.
Thank you so much again for all of the support you’ve given me on this. I followed your instructions and here’s what came up. Just as a reminder, the top right turbo led does not work (I forget what button that is now and my stick isn’t nearby at all).
With start held (after hitting A of course):
After letting go of start:
As Im sure you can tell, this is good news. It does properly detect a PSX system.
So, this is very important so I want to make sure we’re on the same page. The way it should be done is that the converter is fully plugged into the supergun, the supergun and arcade board are fully powered on and at the attract mode screen, and THEN you plug the arcade stick into the PSX end soldered to the converter. Is that correct?
Yeah, that’s pretty much how I’ve been doing it. I keep the converter plugged in to the JAMMA harness at all times basically, then when I test something I’ll power it up with the dual shock 2 plugged in to the converter, let it boot into the game then put it to the test menu, then I’ll go into the “input” menu and confirm at least that controller is working (obviously without using the ds2 I have no way to get into the input display menu), then I’ll unplug that and try the sticks. After I wrap up whatever tests I’m doing I’ll occasionally plug the DS2 back in to confirm that it’s still working and the converter didn’t get unplugged or anything.
Here’s what the pictures are telling me. The converter are working chucking out the PSX requests for data on the lines, but for some reason, it stops doing that when a stick is plugged in. It resets and restarts, and the time period when the converter is slowly warming up and turning itself back on is also the time period when the sticks try to determine what they’re connected to, so the sticks dont see the chatter it should, but the pads just patiently wait because thats all they can do.
So, two things I can think of that can be responsible for that sort of behaviour:
I dont have a great mental picture of your setup, and dont know if the converters are resting on anything conductive or not, but definitely check and try to keep physical movement of the converter to a minimum when plugging in. But frankly, I expect its power.
You need to absolutely verify that the DB15 pin you’re using for power is connected to the +5v on your power supply. Do a continuity test with the system powered off, ditto for ground. If that looks good, take a peek at the wires; if you’re using some obscenely thin wire like 30 gauge, you may wanna swap that to 24 gauge or thicker. If you’re already at 24 gauge or thicker, dont sweat it. Lastly, a beefy capacitor on the converters should keep it powered. I’d recommend picking up a couple of these:
http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/ECA-0JM221/P5112-ND/244971
Solder the leg with the stripe to one of the GND holes and the other leg to on of the VCC holes.
It’ll act like a battery, and when the stick draws all of that current, most of it will come from that cap, keeping the voltage to the converter (hopefully) high enough to keep running and not hiccup.
Yep, that all makes sense. This is getting exciting again since it’s progress 
I’ll answer the ones I can since I can’t test anything now while I’m at work, then I’ll post later this evening.
1 - Setup: I have the converters laying in little hard plastic containers at all times (these, to be specific http://www.target.com/p/Clear-White-OXO-LockTop-12pc-Food-Storage-Set/-/A-13291867#?lnk=sc_qi_detaillink) to avoid any potential issues. I also have the ps2 end hanging out of the top with enough slack that unplugging/plugging in the controllers really doesn’t affect the rest of the converter at all.
2 - Wiring: Can’t do the continuity tests currently but all of the wiring I’ve done (so between the DB-15 females and the converters) is around 22 or 24 gauge, I don’t remember which offhand but we should be good on that front, and the JAMMA loom I have lists 22 gauge on the site. I’ll double check the continuity of +5v and GND when I get home, and if that looks good I’ll probably head to Fry’s and see if I can find the right caps in person.
Thank you again! I’ll update in a few hours when I have a chance to test the rest of it.
If you’re getting caps from fry’s, the important things to watch for:
Anything else is just details.
Oh okay cool, glad to know it’s a little flexible I was just going to try to find any with same voltage and capacitance. Just checked the continuity from psu to db-15 male off the harness on +5V and GND and they both look good. Off to Fry’s in a few minutes!
EDIT: The lowest voltage caps they had was 16v and the highest capacitance in those were 100uf. Not optimal but giving it a shot.
For the sake of having this all contained in one post, I soldered a 16v 100uf cap between a VCC hole and a GND hole on the controller converter with the correct polarity. No improvement. Sticks don’t work, pad does. I put the first troubleshooting firmware you gave me back on the kitty (the one to test right away), and here are the results:
With start held:
After letting go:
The interesting thing is that it seems to recognize it as PSX, but the rest of the LEDs are significantly different than the first time I tested with this firmware (post #61 in this thread). I’m not sure how these should look in ideally so I can’t really come to any conclusions.
Test steps:
Start up like normal with pad plugged in, went into input mode
Ran test with kitty, photographed results
Switched back to pad to confirm functionality still
Went back to kitty to double check previous results
Did you flash a release firmware to the Kitty for this testing, or try the MC Cthulhu stick?