As this is my first post, I’d like to quickly say a big hello to everyone. I’ve been lurking around the forums for a number of years but finally felt it was time to stop being such a creeper and join in the discussion. I’m currently working on a number of homemade arcade stick projects in my spare time and plan to write a few posts on my experiences with that in the future.
Note: this post is going to contain pictures. I’m not entirely sure the best way to show them, so I’m going to include them in spoiler tags. If this goes against the rules of the forum, I’m deeply sorry. I’ve not had a chance to read the rules yet and this is the first forum post I’ve ever written. This question has been on my mind all day and I just want to get it out while I can, and amend whatever if necessary.
I was around a friends house the other week and we got onto the topic of fighting games, as we often do. He’s always preferred stick, while I, having grown up with a limited budget and no means of purchasing anything online until recent years, was used to pad. I have always been drawn to arcade sticks, loving all things retro even though, being only 20, I never really got to experience Arcades as by the time I was old enough, the scene had essentially died out in Britain. Now all that’s left is penny arcades, slot machines and mini-bowling alleys (in my location, at least) :|. Knowing my love for these things, he decided to give me his broken Qanba Q1 as he’d recently got a newer stick and felt that I’d have more motivation to fix the thing than he did - which was certainly correct.
A quick question, would anyone be so kind as to tell me how to give spoilers a name? Not too sure how to work BBCode
Below is an image of the back plate, in case the specific model makes a huge difference in my question.
Spoiler
Having taken it apart I saw a mess of wires, many of which had been butchered in his attempts. Unsure as to what he did, I asked him. Apparently he bought a Seimetsu LS-32 stick without PCB, not knowing that he’d need to somehow connect it to the 5pin connector. He proceeded to take the 5pin connector apart and attempt to wire it to each prong on the stick. Apparently everything was going fine until he realised ground would not reach around, so he attempted to then cut other wires and merge them together with tin foil and electrical tape. Needless to say, this venture didn’t go too well. So he then bought a Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT and a 5pin female to female connector. Link to connector: arcadeworlduk.com/products/jst-xh-female-to-female-connector-cable.html
Here’s the old 5 pin connector that originally came with the stick. From what I can see he’s removed two wires (god knows what he’s done with them) and yeah, butchered the leads.
Spoiler
So on to the Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT…
Apparently the 5 pin connector didn’t work. Both the ground and signals differ on the motherboard and the pins on the joystick itself so when he plugged in the 5pin to both ends he only got one direction working (down). He tried to rotate it and found that the directions were all wrong. Right would jump, down would move him left, left would crouch and up would move right.
From this he deduced that the signals were wrong and proceeded to remove the head from the connector and planned to plug them into the prongs manually and see if he could fix that then throw some hot glue on to keep things in place:
Spoiler
When removing the wires from the head, one of the little connectors (isn’t the extent of my electronics lingo simply fabulous?) came off and was lost as you can see on the left most wire.
I checked the leads and apparently it’s 26awg and from what I can tell only has about 4 strands of metal going through it however only one was sticking through:
[details=Spoiler]Picture is pretty awful here, couldn’t get it into focus with my phone
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It’s at this stage he pretty much gave up. Luckily the buttons all work, it’s just the joystick that’s the issue here.
So I was unsure as to how to proceed until this morning when I decided to unscrew the PCB and have a quick look to see if the signals were clearly marked, which luckily they were.
Here’s an image of the back of the PCB:
Spoiler
I also found this image of which prong does what for the Sanwa joysticks (which I believe originated from FocusAttack, so I assume it’s pretty legit):
So basically I’m left in a bit of a weird position. I now know which wires go where and such, but I’m really not sure how to connect the wires to the prongs. Unfortunately I’ve no skill with soldering anything smaller than water pipes with a blowtorch (and don’t even own a soldering iron) so that’s not really an option.
I’ve been looking into other means of connecting the joystick to the PCB. The original idea was to place the wires into another 5 pin female connector but I can’t even figure out what the name of that is. To me, it looks and acts very similar to a Molex connector for a PC, but clearly it’s not that. I did a bit of digging and found the term JST (Japan Solderless Terminal) today, and I THINK that’s what I need. But I’ve no idea how to connect the wires directly to that. I understand that those little crimp things that are currently connected to the wire (the purchased female to female lead above) came out of that strip but I’m not sure how to proceed there.
I’ve been looking into other methods, and one I found while searching for beginner Arduino kits was a female lead that’s often used with breadboards. Unfortunately I’ve no idea what they’re called but I found a listing on eBay and have included an image below:
To me, this seems to be a good idea, but my main concern is that the plastic around the connector may be too big and I won’t be able to fit them. Below is an image of the PCB, I need to connect the wires to prongs on the centre left:
Spoiler
So basically, for anyone who doesn’t have time to read this wall of text (A TLDR of sorts):
What are some solderless solutions to connecting these two connectors:
Spoiler
using this lead:
Spoiler
As the signals differ from the prongs and the connector on the PCB, I’m going to need to manually rearrange them, so purchasing another 5pin to 5pin thing doesn’t seem like it’d help.
If you require any more info, feel free to ask.
Thanks for your time!