Hey, I test my solder points by giving each wire a tug before I finish my projects. I just like to use the glue as insurance. It is a pain if you have to resolder for whatever reason, but if you don’t, gluing the solder points is fine because the glue is an insulator and won’t interfere with your connections.
Using hot glue near the solder points is a good idea, though. It’s very easy to get carried away while playing a video game and you want some protection in case you start tugging at the controller cable.
Beartron: Your mileage may vary, but I like to split the intervowen copper pads with an X-acto knife before I solder wires to them. That way there’s more surface area for the wire to stick to the pad, and more margin for error.
I’ve been waiting for Toodles to chime in on this. If you get it sorted please take some pictures. If it’s easy enough I’ll do it myself and update my thread.
Are you 100% sure, with the resistor connected on the 360 trigger, that the 360 shows the trigger is NOT pressed?
If so, take a multimeter and check is the outside spot you attached the resistor to is connected to the ground used by the buttons and d-pad. (check resistance, low resistance means connected).
If so, you need to invert the triggers so that a ground activates the triggers. Look for a thread started by zombie cpt that talks about madcatz triggers in the title.
Get some wire cutters and snip those little metal prongs off of the analog stick where they stick out. They could be pressed by the panel once you put it on there. Are you able to see if they would be?
Well I was testing it all in windows and even connected a regular 360 pad to compare it to. The Triggers were completely neutral untill pressed(touched to ground).
I’ll have to bug a buddy of mine for his multimeter so that may be a day or two.
I read over Zombie cpt’s thread and honestly don’t know if that’s my problem…I was getting alittle desperate and was considering trying that though. It’s just his triggers wouldn’t work unless he did all that, mine DO work, it just happens to ground the PSX buttons they’re connected to.
Thanks for the reply Toodles, when this gets figured out I’m buying one of your boards and adding it in :tup:
I guess here is my confusion. You say the triggers have a 10k resistor installed, but are pulling the PSX triggers ‘like it has a ground on it’ which it shouldn’t be doing. So, the big question is, did you remove the potentiometers from the triggers and install a resistor between the middle pins? Describe in great detail what you did to the triggers, I can likely have an answer for you. Also, it seems pretty clear but I want to verify: The ‘ground’ that you are touching to activate the triggers; is that the same ground that activates the dpad and buttons?
Here is a Picture of the resistor attached.
The real crazy thing is that I removed the wire while having the PSX PCB plugged in which of course deactivates the button, but whenever I touch it to any of the 3 connections shown in the picture it activates the PSX button. All 3 of them appear to be a ground for the PSX button. I tried it with the Face buttons on the PSX as well as the PSX Shoulder buttons and it does the same. Those 3 areas are certainly ground somehow.
And just to show the 360 Triggers are working fine… Neutral LT Pressed RT Pressed
(Pressed = connected to ground)
Edit: Forgot to mention the ground I’m using is the daisy chain ground which is connected to pretty much everything.
Hope all this is understandable…let me know if any more pictures or explanation could help. Thanks!
Huh, that’s fucked up the way they report both triggers on one axis. That’s messed up. You REALLY want to make sure that you use the LB/RB for your main play buttons. It it were me, I’d stick with six play buttons and call it a day.
What I would suggest is you get two diodes. Any kind will work, so just grab some cheapies. Radio Shack has like a ten pack of N4148 diodes like 10 for 1.50-2.50, I forget. They’re cheap and readily available and one of the few electronic parts RS still carries. The details dont matter; ANY diode will work for this, I just wanted to give you a part number of one you are likely to find so you can buy with confidence.
Look at the diodes; theres a band on one end not present on the other end. On that diode, I think its a black band. At any rate, find that band; all diodes have them. Connect the wire for your 360 trigger to the diode on the leg that does NOT have the band. Connect the end of the diode that DOES have the band to the wire going to the button and the PSX pad. Repeat for the other 360 trigger and you should be done.
Thanks Toodles, I will go grab some tomorrow and give it a try.
Question though, with the resistor’s attached, the triggers do seem to work like any other button. I know it shows them on the same Axis but does that actually affect anything?
I’ll definitely heed your warning and use RB/LB, but I’m just asking for curiosity’s sake. All this EE stuff has perked my interest.
For the button pads, I found it was quite easy to scrap enough black junk off to solder directly to the pad. Take a nice thin tip (tinned), hold it perpendicularily in the middle of the copper, and push a little solder onto it. You should have a nice little blob of solder on the pad.
Then, with your tinned wire (no bigger than awg22, 24 would be better) push it into the solder blob as you very quickley heat both. Done!
For the D-pads, the tiny little bits of copper gave me issues. I traced them back to the little holes that go through the pcb and used a small flathead to scrape off the green junk. Unstranded a view wires from the bundle, poked them through and easily soldered them on without any problems.
Also, if I’m using this picture to solder in triggers, do I just need to solder in wires for LT1 and LT2, or do I also need to add a 10k resistor between LT1 and LT3? I desoldered the pot and tossed in some wires, and its all jumpy. Going off the pot it looks like I might need 10K between 1 and 3 as well as the 1-2 connection. Is this correct?
I have no idea whether it will or won’t cause any problems on the Xbox360. I think it would make things difficult on a PC, especially when BOTH are pressed and it goes back to middle.
Hi all, I wanna build 360 stick using an older version of 360 wired controller. i drawn a diagram of how i’m going to wired the controller. Can someone please look over to see whether the way i wanted to wire the controller works or not. Thanks in advance.
btw. the red line is common and green line is signal.
I’m here to report that the Diodes worked! Thanks Toodles!!!
So if you’re doing a dual mod with a MadCatz Retro Arcade 360 PCB and would like to keep the triggers, you’ll need a 10k resistor and a Diode for each Trigger.
Anyway, Here Is a Picture of the diode and resistor attached to the Left Trigger.
Thanks again Toodles.
Edit: Oh and I tested the triggers in windows. You are correct in that you cannot use both at once since it sets the axis to neutral. So using both as your main 6 buttons is a bad idea, but using only one of them should be fine as it’ll work with all other buttons. So it is possible to do the Japanese TE button layout and not run into problems.
X Y RB
A B RT
This warning is for Windows only. I haven’t tested it on the 360 console, but I have a strong feeling it’ll work on it with no problems.
Thanks for the picture. Looks easy enough so hopefully it does work on the 360.
Stupid question, but can each of those (resistor/diode) be picked up at the old Radio Shack? If so can you find them on the site and link me or find the part numbers? I’ll go pick some of those up and try it when I have the time. I’m an electronics novice at best. :wonder:
