I wanted to start by saying hi to all… this is a great forum, lots of good informations.
About 4 years ago I fell into the trap of getting an X-arcade Dual Joystick.
I live in Australia, so $250 AUS dollars for what claimed to be an arcade authentic Joystick seemed great.
The Joystick was and I guess still is for a lot of old school games, but I have noticed that on my xbox and now on my PS3 there seems to be some lag… not a lot… like maybe half a second, but its enough to throw you off and makes it hard to react quick enough in games like Street fighter 2.
I have been reading throughout these forums and there seems to be a wealth of information here.
At the moment I am thinking of getting a HRAP3 and changing out the buttons for a sanwa, but to get to to Australia its going to cost over $200 easily.
I think thats the best way to go… otherwise I was thinking maybe I could mod my X-arcade.
I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions? It would be great to hear from some other Aussies that can reccomend some local soruces to parts and joysticks.
Reading back through a lot of the stuff on X-arcade sticks, those things are horrible for modding. Sorry, HRAP may end up being your best alternative short of custom building it yourself.
Yeah I think you might be right… I’ve wasted a small fortune on the thing with various adapters for different consoles… well I guess I did get some good use out of it, it plays a lot of mame game quite well… just not my favourites.
Everything in X-Arcade units is decent except the PCB. If you can hack a controller (or two if you want both sides to work) and connect it to the buttons and stick you should be fine.
I don’t think X-Arcade are terrible for modding, since they use american parts and should be fairly easy to mod with Happ parts. I thinks that’s the way you should go, buy Happ competition sticks and buttons, and mod that beast!
If you’ve got the extra cash, go ahead and replace the buttons/stick (though personally I’d use Japanese parts) but this alone won’t fix the lag problem. If your main concern is the lag, replace the PCB with a hacked controller.
The buttons and stick all mimic Happ, so you can just replace the stock buttons with Happ competitions (stick and buttons). You can get them from lizardlick.com (highly recommended)
If you don’t mind the stick and buttons, then you can just rewire them to a new PCB, which is also easy. You just have to wire the correct PCB, which, for your PS3, would be a sixaxis, or the cthulu board (which you can also get from lizardlick.com)
And of course, you can do both. This would make the stick more authentic and lagless. You would of course be keeping the box
Thanks Guys, You have provided some excellent idea’s.
As an update, I have emailed X-arcade and they have asked me to Beta test some new products and a new PS3 adapter, it seems they are aware of the lag issue…
But also, you have to think about the cost margin, because we’re talking about shipping Happs to Australia. Unless there’s a local dealer that sells them, you’re going to be looking at a decent chunk of change in shipping alone from lizard lick.
Unless OP has something against Sanwa/Seimitsu, why not just throw those in there? The only thing I can think about is the size of the case (that point is negligible), or he prefers the stiffness of American parts over the Japanese feel.
It’s not easy to “throw in” sanwas and seimitsus into an X-arcade panel. Significant modification is required for the buttons to fit and for the stick to mount in correctly.
On the other hand, a happ mod is as easy as just changing out the parts and re-connecting the pcb to the buttons.
how bad is it? I don’t know the dimensions of Happ vs. Japanese buttons, but wouldn’t it just be a case of widening the holes for the buttons and such?
Well to be honest guys, I’m not very good when it comes to electronics and wood work… infact I don’t even really have a soldering iron :S. - sure i could get one though.
I reckon the cost of a new pcb plus the buttons and stick will cost somewhere as close as the hrap3 from playasia ( $81.90 US). The thing thats going to hurt the most is postage costs… Its another $45 us for delivery. and the Aus$ has crashed from 99US cents to 64US cents
Not sure how reputable this dealer is, but a quick google search for Australian arcade part distributors brought this up. http://www.highway.net.au/ May save you on shipping and such.