Ok, I went to Wal-Mart today and bought the same controller as in the pic and I see that it’s a lot more simple than my other PCB. Where did you solder the ground to?
I just scraped some of the green stuff off of the bottom part near the start and select buttons. See the pic for exact place. For the hot spots just use the little silver dots. They all lead back to the button spots and are great for soldering.
Alright! I got one done, 2nd player tomorrow. The only prob is that if I solder select and start buttons, and when I press start, it acts like if I pressed start & select, why? I looked and couldn’t find solder that could possibly link start and select. But when I solder only start to the PCB, it acts like a normal start button.
Where on start and select did you solder? A pic would be great. Did you go for the little silver spots? There might be a stray piece of solder somewhere messing things up.
Im not a fan of the way you have put the art together for it… looks great for button layout and all that but i think having the picture in the middle with a boarder around it looks silly.
if every ppl need help with nice art for a stick gather the images you like and I will pimp it out for you… I have been doing multimedia design for the past 3 years
I decided to let the select button down for the first player since I couldn’t find where the prob was so I tried again for the 2nd player and it worked at first but for some reason, after half an hour, the select became the down button!?! Guess I’ll have to live without both select buttons. Here is a pic of my stick and I’m pretty proud of it even if it doesn’t look that good but I don’t care.
trust me, your box looks wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better than mine. as i said earlier, because of my lack of carpentry skills per se, ive had ALOT of extra work to make it look cosmetically suitable. im just happy that i actually attempted it and came through. i know one thing, this stick has been a serious learning experience and i know that my next one with be 10 times better. good job though, im thinking of one day doing a 2 player one myself, problem is most of my friends barely play fighting games and half of them havent been to the arcade in years.
EDIT: just a quick question before i do my wiring in the morning. im using this barrier strip right here and do i just strip the wires at their ends and put them in there bare? do i have to twist the wires together then screw the terminals down? also, with the reflex hack, do i basically just daisy chain the ground to all the switches? what do you guys usually use to mount the pcb? thanks in advance.
Sorry you don’t like it, but I made it for myself. So if I’m the only person happy with the way it looks then that’s all that matters.
2BAD4U: Looks very nice. I like the design a lot. The joystick is too far away from the buttons for my own tastes but if it’s comfortable for you cool. I usually put the joystick 4 inches away from the buttons on center.
freeway4885: Just strip the ends, twist the wire (just to neaten it) slide it in and screw it down. Make sure it’s a tight fit and the wire won’t come out if you pull on it. It’s safer with a reflex to give each button it’s own ground. More wire but safer in the end and less problems. as for mounting your pcb you can do a few things. If the bottom is flush with the box just screw it down. If it needs a bit of leverage just use some small wooden blocks at the edges.
ok, maybe its just because its early and the morning and im half asleep, but how do i give each button its own ground? Also, what would happen if i wired it just using one ground for everything?
If you look at the reflex pcb there’s 2 wires for each button, the button wire or hot wire and the other being the ground. The ground wire goes to the ground or com part on the microswitch and the hot wire goes to the no (normally open) tab on the switch. It’s really simple just a bit more wiring.
I haven’t had any experience with the reflex but I heard some people had wierd effects using a common ground. It’s up to you. Try just leaving all the extra ground wires from the reflex pcb and if you do end up having to use a ground for each button the wire’s already there.
Dreamcast PCB Problem Help
I am currently working on my first arcade stick for the dreamcast…I am using the dreamcast gamepad pcb…But something happened that really stoped the project…when i was opening my controller to get the pcb I heard a snap. When I look on the pcb the bottom right corner was broken off. :sad:
The attached picture has a big red curcle around the piece of the pcb that broke off…
I dont know if I can save the pcb I have no idea what to now can someone please give me some help. I dont know weather it is alright to keep that pcb and use it or get another one.
I didnt want to go any futher because I am scared I am going to blow a controller port in my dreamcast.
Thank You
ok, i might just try and do it the way you said with each button having individual grounds. so basically, could i just take both the ground and hot wire, and put them through one terminal in the barrier strip?
How much of the PCB is broken off? Are any of the connections broken on it? If any of the conections are broken you can probably patch them together with some wire.
I made a circle around the part i broke off in the picture i posted…I broke off the bottom right hand corner…if i get my digital camera online i can make a picture of tthw broken part…
but the problem is i cant find the other peice
Each line(hot and ground) needs it’s own line otherwise it would be like the button’s being held down. So on the strip it would look like hot wire for X, ground wire for X, hot wire for Y, ground wire for Y, etc.
so i most definitely need another barrier strip. lets hope that my radio shack has more, when i bought mine it was the last one. im probably gonna need one more barrier strip to add to that. 10 buttons (face buttons plus start and back) and 4 directions. not as easy as i thought it was gonna be, but hey, at least im not soldering.
Yeah not soldering makes it 10x easier. You will need a total of 28 spots on the strips so you need 3 and can just cut off the extra inputs on the strip and save em for your next joystick. They usually get that stuff in pretty quick. You can try another electronics store near you. Just be careful of prices. I went to a local electronics parts store and they tried to rape me for $60 for a bag of quick disconnects. “Top quality!” They said. Right.
Thx for your opinions.
It is true that the joystick are a bit far from the buttons cause I didn’t know how far I should put them so I chose 10" and it’s alright. The only problem is that I don’t have much space to rest my wrist on the first player side because I broke the plexi while sandind it (i know… 
). Anyway, so that’s why I had to cut it a bit and sincerly, it made it look a lot better and I’m pretty happy about it.
well, right when im about to begin wiring my stick (doing the xbox reflex hack), i noticed that both ground and hot wires for the left direction were missing. just my luck. im pretty sure this means its time to break out the soldering iron right?