Quest for a Universal Fightstick - Advice?

Tech Talk
1

I’m fairly new to making fightsticks and need a little direction. I need a stick that will support my supergun, which has a DB15 connection, modern home consoles and then it would also be cool to support various retro consoles as well.

I’ve tried to do some research with options and came-up with the following, but some advice would be appreciated:

  • The ‘project box’ path to achieving this seems daunting and I would rather have everything in the stick itself…
  • The Brooks UFB + Retro Board seem like a decent path and there is even a special connector to connect them together, but it sounds like the retro board may be inferior to the MC Cthulhu?
  • No clue on how to go about the DB15 connection.
  • Not sure if it makes more sense to try to add some type of switch to flip between the three connections or if it’s possible to push a special key combination to select which board to use.
  • Any guides on how to wire this all up would be awesome.

Thanks!

2

MC Cthulhu is an older project which only has minimal support, no new updates as it’s original creator is no longer active. The Retro Board is actively supported and is getting frimware updates.

The Retro Board + The Brooks UFB has a soft switch, you press a button combination to flip between the two, it’s in the Retro Board’s documentation.

If you just doing the The Brooks UFB + Retro Board the wiring is easy, there is even a small kit that links to two together, both have 20 pin headers that can be connected to each other via Ribbon cable, they have a USB cable that bridges the two together. Plus both boards come with documentation on how to wire it all up.

There a up and downside to this, upside you can almost future proof your stick, making modules that swap out for others. The downside is you are limited to a number of buttons your chosen connector can support, for a DB 15 connector that is your classic 1 Joystick, 6 action buttons, start, select and voltage (typically +5 volts). Go with a DB 25 or bigger and you can support more. There also systems the Retro Board don’t support where the Project box can be built to house what ever PCB you need (like example the Sega Genesis). There guides on this to on the forums, you just have to use the search function, or you can use google search type in “site:shoryuken.com” before your search terms.
Example type "site:shoryuken.com Project box " to search for project boxes on SRK.

3

Thanks - very helpful. I did look through some of the project box threads, but most of the links to pics seem to be broke and links to many of the posted guides are dead.

It sounds like another option is to just have a DB15 connection and then a RJ45 connection with cables to each game system. Not sure of the pros/cons to this method, but its sounding like Brooks UFB + Retro Board + DB15 in the same joystick may be a stretch.

4

Not at all, you just have additional connections for every input, power and ground

5

I get how the Brook UFB + Brook Retro board go together, but not very clear on who to add the DB15 (is it connected to one or both of the Brook boards?)

6

Personally, I don’t like hooking up a DB15 to a stick that already has PCBs.
You’re better off wiring your stick with just the UFB+Retro combo as-is, and having an external UD-USB adapter for your Supergun.