Madcatz TE fightstick "please reconnect controller" error

Tech Talk
21

Ok, this is the model of my stick, just to clarify:

And this is it opened up, and he PCBs are, from what I recognized from my previous post:

It goes like this: Buttons -> PCB1 -> PCB2 <-> Chimp ->PCB3

If i’m not mistaken, the PCB1 is just to map the regular buttons+stick, so if it was this the deffective one, the buttons wouldn’t work for PS3 as well.
The PCB3 is just bellow the USB wire compartment, and it seems to just map the turbo buttons Home/Guide. Again, I don’t think that this is the problem.
Finally, PCB2 is directly connected to the Chimp board, and to the USB wire. It’s the one that’s probably deffective.

So, it seems that I don’t even need to check PCB1 and PCB3 right? The problem, whatever it may be, will be on PCB2 only, or on CHIMP, right?

22

And here are the inside photos:

Chimp - Front:

Chimp - Back:

"PCB 2" - Front:

"PCB 2" - Back:

Everything seems to be OK, no loose wiring, no wiring touching one another, etc… but then again, I don’t know wich wire means what, I noticed that a couple ires are soldered to 2 “points” on the PCB, but since i never opened it and the stick worked for 1 year, I guess the solder is probably right

23

I noticed that when I plug the controller in a PC or XBOX, the leds that go up on the CHIMP are BL and RL.
But on the Xbox, it should be the BL and GL right?

When I force xbox mode (connect usb holding LK, MP, HK) the lights are BL and GL, but the controller doesn’t work, not even in the PC

I also tried connecting via the USB jack on CHIMP, the results were the same, it works on PC/PS3, but it doesn’t on XBOX

24

Ok after more research, I found out that my chimp is not put together the way it usually does. It seems that most people use the USB jack of the CHIMP to connect on the videogame, and my USB cable goes out of the Madcatz PCB, that’s why i’m not counting on a loose wire on the USB cable, or else nothing would work.

I gonna ignore the regular buttons mapping (A, B, select, home, etc…), because if they have a bad connection it wouldn’t stop the controller from beign recognized on XBOX 360.

That left me with only 6 mappings, from CHIMP to Madcatz:

USB Out: 4 mappings: VCC, OD-, OD+, GND.
These 4 wires are mapped from CHIMP to the Madcatz pcb from the bottom.

One thing I noticed (the red circle) is that there is a solder bridge here, I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but it connects the GND wire wth that 5th USB cable wire that no one uses.

These same 4 wires are mapped to the Madcatz PCB from above, directly to the original Fightstick USB cable (red circle on the picture).

I think it’s impossible that there 4 mappings are with any kind of problem, because this would make the CHIMP board not work on PC/PS3 right? Since they share the same USB mapping.

Wich leave us with the last 2 mappings:
XBOX Out: 2 mappings: XD-, XD+
These 2 wires are mapped from CHIMP to the Madcatz pcb from the bottom.

One thing that I tought as really odd is that the VCC and GND aren’t connected, but, they never were, since I didn’t found a single wire loose on the stick when I opened it, and well, the stick worked for a year…

Before I make any other stuff on my stick, please enlighten me on this:

There are only 2 possible conclusions right?

  1. The Madcatz PCB died
  2. The wires connecting XD+and XD- are broken from inside

Am I right? Or are there any other assumptions that we could make based on this?

Edit: I redid the wiring of XD+ and XD- with new wires, and it still doesn’t work, unless it’s something else i have no knowledge of, i’m pretty sure that the Madcatz PCB died

25

Before making that conclusion, if you feel up to is, unwire the Xbox 360 PCB from the Chimp, and wire a USB cord back to the Xbox PCB and plug that into your PC.

26

But the USB cord is already on the Xbox PCB

That’s what i’m talking when I said that somehow the guy that modded mine, did it differently than the usual dual mod (the normal dual mod is the USB cord coming out of the Chimp)

Well you can’t see from the photos, so I did a paintbrush about how my dual mod is done:

As you can see, the CHIMP board is kinda “passive” in this mod, everything passes primarily through the Madcatz PCB, wich is why I’m excluding the USB wires from the problem

27

Well, actually, since the USB cord is directly connected to the Madcatz PCB, even if the XD+/XD- were not connected at all, the stick still should work right? I Mean, the Madcatz PCB it’s directly connected to all the buttons, stick and the main USB cable, the CHIMP is just “sucking” that information in to itself.

Pretty sure that the Madcatz PCB died when you think about it uh? :frowning:

28

Wait, what?

I think you wired the USB cord completely wrong there in your diagram.

Yeah you did it wrong

Your Xbox PCB USB goes to the XD- and XD+ side of the Chimp and only the Chimp, the OD+ and OD- side goes to the USB cord.
In a Chimp Dual Mod the Xbox 360 PCB never is directly wired to the USB cord.

That is not how it supposed to work. The Chimp is not a parasite, it needs to be set up as the freaking Boss PCB and the Xbox 360 PCB sucks in information when the Chimp decides it will allow it.

Here I use your Diagram to show you what went wrong

THE USB cord supposed to go directly to the Chimp First.
There are 2 IC chips on the Chimp, one is a switch and one is the PS3 controller brains.

The Switch listen on the USB what data its getting on the USB line, if its Xbox 360 information, the Chimp then hands over the workload to the Xbox 360 PCB
If it not Xbox 360 Information the Chimp complete takes over.

The Buttons and stick is wired to both PCBs. But the main USB line going in needs to go directly to the chimp and not to the Xbox 360 PCB.

29

I know, immagine my surprise as I opened my TE and saw this, and then went to find a tutorial about how to install CHIMP.

Again, this controller worked like this for about a year, I didn’t do this dual mod, I just discovered that the dual mode was done this way because, after 1 year, the controller stopped working on xbox360 (last week) and then I decided to open it.

The point is, the “wrong way” DOES work, it was working until last week.
Actually, this wrong way still works on PS3 and PC.
But I guess i’ll try to desolder everything and do it the “right” way, I don’t have any more options really.

The guy who dual modded it had a booth right next to Madcatz’s booth, on EVO 2012. Do you happen to know who is he? If he posts here, he can enlighten us as to why he modded it that way.

30

There’s a difference between something that works and something that works well.

31

I got no clue who modded your stick in the first place, or how he got such a ass-backwards method to work in the first place.
I was not there at Evo 2012 and I never been to Evo so the Dude at the table next to Mad Catz Booth could be anyone. Even the better known Modders here did some shit wiring jobs in the past.

I not so long ago was asked to repair a stick that Gummo modded in the past, it was such a mess that I told my client I needed a certain amount of cash to even tackle this issue (as time is money and there alot of work to be done), But since they were broke I refused the job. Don’t get me wrong Gummo is one of our better Modders, and even I hired him in the past to wire up projects for me. But even Gummo (in his early modding days) did some terrible work.

That is 100% true, I don’t care if the previous mod worked because guess what its not working now, I am showing you how it should it been done from the start. I can’t even explain how your stick worked in the first place with how you showing your diagram and how its been wired.

  1. You first need to undo all that wiring
  2. Test the Xbox 360 PCB by it self, see if its even working (completely disconnected from the Chimp).
  3. Test the Chimp by it self.
  4. If the Xbox 360 PCB is working then you have to wire it the correct way.
32

I’d be very concerned if there was actual damage to one of the PCBs. Things just don’t suddenly stop working for no apparent reason after a year.

33

On madcatz PCBs this is actually a common thing :open_mouth:

Well, the stick is dommed on xbox360 anyway so why not? I’ll desolder everything and give it a try, i think that in a way, the work is done right, because the OD wires from the CHIMP goes to the back of MCZs PCB and then is soldered at the bottom, on the USB solder points.

Basically both CHIMP and MCZ’s PCB are connected to the USB cable.
As you can se here:
Pedro Filho uploaded this image to
This is the back of MCZ’s PCB. Those wires identified in red are the “USB Out” of Chimp.


This is the front of MCZ’s PCB, those wires identified in red goes to the USB cable.

So yeah, in a odd way, CHIMP board is connected via USB Out to the USB cable, but it passes through MCZ’s PCB first.

Anyway, i’ll remove the CHIMP from the stick and try it clean, but I’m with no hopes about MCZ’s PCB

34

Ok new update.

I removed CHIMP from the Madcatz PCB but I didn’t desolder the wires from it (just removed the chimp part) in case it is working and i need to dual mod again.

While inspecting the PCB I noticed that the 2 wires that were connected to XD+/XD- doesn’t have this “000 bridge thing” between the 2 spots (you can see that the 2 points above it has them).

Can this have anything to do with the problem? What is this “000” stuff?

One funny thing I noticed is that when I turn my xbox and plug in the controller, it doesn’t recognize it (as expected) but when i close the circuit between those 2 wires in the other solder point, the videogame freezes.

35

Wow I guess that’s the problem… When I use the same wires to re-connect the “bridge”, my PC recognized it as an xbox controller! The moment I let go the wires, PC says that the device was disconnected.
I guess the PCB is alive then, I just need to solder both points together right?
Like this?

Should I do it? Or i’m going to mess everything up if I do?

36

What’s with that giant glop of solder on the orange wire connecting 2 contact points?

37

I guess that giant glop is connecting both the GND wire and the “5th-never used USB wire”.
But yeah, seems ugly as hell

38

Ok, the stick works perfectly on xbox when I connect those 2 wires to the other point of the pcb, I gue’ss that’s what happened to the controller, the solder between those 2 points disrupted or something

39

Yeah, it works on xbox now and on PC I get “usb device not recognized”.
I gotta test it no a PS3 now and pray…

I can make it work on PC by holding LK+MP+HK while connecting usb cable (goes to xbox mode).

Dang, getting more and more impossible to 100% fix this thing

40

One more update:
The controller became quiet odd. It only works on xbox when I force xbox mode (hold LK+MP+HK and plug in usb). On PC it also only works that way (not a problem at all). I gonna go to a friend’s house tomorrow and test it on PS3.

What I know is: Madcatz PCB is working well alone on XBOX. CHIMP is working well alone on PS3/PC.
So I know that everyt PCB is properly working, so the problem is on the modding part for sure.