Radio Shack is stupid.
I asked for solid core 22 gauge wire. He goes to the back and yells the price, I say, ok, and I get it. Get home and it’s stranded… what an idiot.
Could I use stranded in a SpiffyShoes easy hack? Never delt with stranded before, I don’t know Radio Shacks policy on returns.
Definitely take it back. I’ve been going to Radio Shack for years. They have no problems with most returns. In your case though, it would probably be best if it was still in the package…
I personally try to avoid the people who work in places like Home Depot, Lowe’s, Radio Shack, et cetera like they have rampant, mutagenic small pox. Because whenever you ask them to point you to something, they ask what you need it for. Fucking drives me nuts. I never want their input. Ever.
Trust me, approach them for help only as a last resort. And if they should approach you when it is within your capability to find what you need, offering help, always decline with a simple, “No thanks.” So much time and aggravation saved. Ugh.
I agree! I only had to ask a salesman because they had it in the back, and not out in the store! At all costs I avoid any goober (thats right! GOOBER.) That works at a home improvment warehouse. I don’t know why “where is this?” sounds like “Please inform me on what to do and what to buy because your vast 2 weekend knowledge on the subject should be mighty helpful” to them. I try and avoid them at all costs.
I’ll return it tomorrow. Thanks.
hello agian…
I have another question when daisy chaining the grounds from switch to switch if you hvae 1 ground on your pcb and u are connecting from the grounds on the switchs of the buttons do u connect/daisy chain it with the gounds of the joystick switchs or does the joystick have its own ground on the pcb
PCB being used: Dreamcst Dreampad by Madcatz
Thank You
You can daisy chain the stick grounds and the button grounds together.
I’ve never had a problem with the employees at Home Depot and the like.
The dreampad for DC has multiple versions. One of them has a single ground for everything, the other has one ground for the directions, and each button has it’s own resistor between it and ground.
If you finish hacking the pad, and notice that you can’t press any buttons if one is held down, then you need to redo the ground properly.
Isn’t there a damn lot of space inside that thing? IT shouldn’t be too hard to add one yourself, if you don’t mind an extra cable.
Where can I buy quick disconnects to mod like a SF AC stick?
You can pick em up at at local car parts shop, or an electronics shop.
Or even the Home Depot.
Finished what I like to call “Stick from hell”, meaning, it was a complete pain in the ass to finish, my cuts where jacked, I had to buy the acrylic 2 times because of stupid mistakes, I let my girl whos supposed to be good at cabinet making glue it together, and spent a half hour cleaning up the glue that got everywhere. Still needs molding, and more paint in some areas. Even Kinkos botched the job and cut my image short, but was nice enough to leave pure white on the bottom so it was still the same length I wanted…right.
Anyone have some good “bottom that I can still open to get to horrible wiring I did” ideas?
anyone have any good molding ideas other then T-Molding? Just anything that looks better then just wood.
Dude, everone’s first stick is a nightmare. However, compared to most first sticks I’ve seen, you’re nightmare stick is pretty damned slick. You still made that shit look pretty good; a whole hell of a lot better than my first two or three sticks came out, actually.
But you already painted and wired it up. Shit, man, that means it’s done in my book. Routing for T-molding or doing something about the bottom means probably scratching the shit out of the box and possibly fucking up the wires unless you unhook everything and remove it first. Sorry, but I’m not sure what to suggest.
Yeah. thanks man, I guess it was a good effort, I’ll probably just mask off the wood and lay another coat of paint on it to make the edges look neater, no biggie.
I noticed that you used carriage bolts to hold down your acrylic down, I heard from somewhere on these boards that you had to hammer it down and that the base is a square. How did you do it?
As far as getting it thru the acrylic? I didn’t know much, so I just drilled a big enough hole so that it would barely get thru if I hammered it in, but big enough so that it wouldn’t break it. Then, when they almost fit, I smacked them in. Not the best way, I’m sure. But the head of the bolt covers over the uglyness. And they aren’t going anywhere, if worse comes to worse and they did just turn with the nut, I was going to use a wrench to hold the bottom of the nut and another wrench to tighten it.
Gah, sorry for the retarded answer, but I only had the bare minimum tools to complete the project.
So, I’ve had this custom stick that I made at first, then it broke, so my friend fixed it. Then it broke again, so I had someone else fix it. Now that I get it back, the functionality of pressing “down” on this stick seems to be shot. I mean, it works sometimes, but getting fireball/dp/half circle motions are really iffy because sometimes down just wont register, or the d/f, d/b directions. Since this is a newly hacked PCB and was tested and everything was fine, I’m guessing it’s the actually competition stick. I’ve been using it for ~ 10 months, is it normal for the sticks to only last that long?
edit: Maybe i just never noticed it, but is the square actuator on the bottom part of the stick supposed to swivel? Like I can turn it around (although not a lot)
Yes, the swiveling actuator is completely normal. Why not pop open the cherry switch and have a look at it? The stick itself is damned hard to break. I doubt it can be done through simple use, even if you completely beast on it regularly. However, the switches can go pretty quickly as a result of that.
Well, that would be my assumption, anyway.
What I use to do is this: drill the holes the size of the carriage bolt thread on the plexi, then just like tightening the c-bolts on wood (no need to countersink or anything) I would do the same and it would just create its own square or press into the plexi (depending on what type, sometimes it would crack or sometimes nothing) That worked for me for a while, but I hated getting cracked holes around the carriage bolts and when I got a vintage SFII control panel and took it apart for cleaning noticed how it was done on it and it is as follows:
The holes on the plexi/lexan or whatever is drilled larger than the size of the bolt/screw so that the square nub under the head of the c-bolt would fit snug and lightly tight around it when you tightened it. The holes drilled through the wood underneath is of course correctly drilled (duh!) After tightening that SOB, unscrew it, remove the c-bolt and look at the hole on the plexi/lexan. You’ll see that the hole will have the shape of a square (somewhat) in it. Its from the bottom of the head of the carriage bolt and that is what will keep the bolt from spinning freely around. The best part about it? No cracks!!
What exactly would I be looking for?