hey toodles, I’m having a bit of trouble with my MC Cthulhu. It says that the voltage drop from vcc to ground is only about 2.3v, though the usb difference is 5 using an isolated cable. I have it set up through an RJ45 connection, and have tested continuity between the plug and the solder points on the cthulhu to make sure they are good. I’m also using a cat6 cable if that might affect anything. Please let me know if you have any theories as to what’s going on.
EDIT: Nevermind, I resoldered the connections and recrimped the other end of the cable and the board is working fine now.
After Almost Giving up, I decided to go through with the mod and here are the results.
Joystick Left, and Right works. Down works but only by pushing it up, and Up (pushing it down) doesn’t work). So, I will have to switch the two lines for up and down, and maybe strip the wires a bit more to see if they will all work.
Only Box works, Circle, Triangle, X, L1 and R1 doesn’t work on the main buttons. I’m guessing the problem lies in the amount of wire striped since I pulled it off from the original board and didn’t do anything to them.
The soldering of the underside of the old PCB (after messing up a zillion times) ended up working (at least I think). When I plugged it into the PC and pressed all the buttons, it registered.
Obviously the USB worked since it registered both on the PS3 and PC.
So now, I’ll try to redo the wires again and hope that it works.
If anyone has insight on what I did wrong then please feel free to add to this.
Edit: I got all to work. Now What to do about that Wiring Mess. Also, Where can you get some good plastic spacer standoffs to mount it. I checked Radioshack, couldn’t find it on my own, guys were busy so I left. I have a local hardware store but they are light on electronic parts.
I kinda had an idea and wanted to bounce it off to get opinions on it. Evo is coming up, and, well, there are some awesome folks gonna be there, but there are also going to be seriously skeezy fuckers there stealing everything that ain’t nailed down.
I had an idea of something I should be able to setup, that is totally optionally, and only for the MC Cthulhu, not the regular (since the firmware would have to be updated.). Basically, what amounts to a keylock, an exact combination of buttons and stick that has to be present when plugged in, else the board locks up; the console thinks it works, but every button and direction will constantly be pressed simultaneously, making it useless. The cool thing is that it would also do the same for any board dual’ed with it, so they can’t avoid it by just playing on an xbox360 instead. I’d have to make a program to run on the PC that allow the lock to be enabled and to set the combination, and of course the firmware would require the combination when plugged in order to disable the lock after the tournament.
It won’t help much, but knowing the stick is useless to the fuckers, maybe with a sticker warning about it may help with a little jab at whomever might steal one.
ok so i have had a cthulhu board dual mod alongside a madcatz retroarcade pcb with an imp for awhile now but today the cthulhu stopped working. i plugged it into the ps3 and it wudnt do anything so i looked at the wiring and everything checked out so i plugged it into my computer and when i try to use the cthulhu it tells me
"USB Device not recognized
One of the usb devices attched to this computer hs malfunctioned and windows does not recognize it."
does this mean its fried for good and i have to get another one or can it be saved.
by the way the xbox retro arcade pcb still works fine
hey toodles is 30 awg kynar is the best wire also for the cthulhu screw in terminals? i just want to know before i order it off ebay because radio shack didn’t have any. i was thinking of getting 24 or 22awg for the cthulhu and 30 awg for imp board is there really any diffrence between silver or copper inside?thats what’s on ebay. thanks
So what’s the next step of things to do if I can’t find anything touching? I mean, it’s suppose to be a short, but I honestly can’t find anything that would be shorting it
Sounds like a good idea, but would it depend only on the chip? In other words, could the thief just pop in a new $12 chip and be fine? Even if the board self-destructed, it could be replaced (easily) for $25, so I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble for you to implement this.
alright ill prob. buy both wire because i never soildered before and brought every thing i need but the wire so the less soildering the better. what do you feel is the best wire for the screw in terminals?
No that is not the problem… I have oodles of new buttons available and I tried that before I posted here. My buttons are Happ Competitions with cherry microswitches, I’ve tried several different butons from that terminal and I still get the same problem. For now I have just moved the button to a different location on the stick where I won’t use it much. It is an 8 button but I use it as a six button layout due to the problem button. I’ll tinker around with it a little more and let you know if I can say 100% that it is the board.
Based on your description, there are only two places on the board that could cause a problem with that button; where it is pulled up by the resistor array, and where it connects to the chip. If you’re looking at the board from the top with the USB jack on the bottom, then you need to look at the resistor array on the left, the one next to the direction points. There are ten pins on it; you need to check the one that is sixth from the top. Look at that pin from the bottom of the board and the top; make sure that that pin is soldered in place from the bottom, and make sure the pin is actually going to the solder and not bent out of the way from the top. From that solder point on the bottom, you’ll see a short green line connecting it to the chip; make sure the socket pin is there an soldered.
It would also be a good idea to use a multimeter to check the resistance from the 4K (L2) screw terminal to the VCC screw terminal. It should show as 10k ohms resistance.
Run through the troubleshooting steps linked to in the first post. Most likely a wire got knocked out, but you wont know specifics until you go through those steps.
some help with dual mod arcade stick.
i’ve done it with cthulhu in a madcatz TE and SE stick and worked fine, now i’m trying to dual mod a cthulhu and an official microsoft 360 pad.
for ps3 it works fine but in xbox 360 the dpad goes like crazy without touching the stick, anyone know where the short is?
i’ve used the alternative soldering point of the 360 pcb, not the one on the top with black stuff on it, could this be the problem?
i’ve followed the scematic ( picture ) fundando used with dpdt switch.
Golden Rules of dual PCB mods:
Rule #0- I dont support in the Cthulhu in dual mods outside of a fightstick.
Rule #1- All boards must be common ground
Rule #2- All boards must be powered at the same time.
