The only buttons you can’t tie into the rest would be the two triggers, they’re a true ground instead of the common that all of the other buttons use. Yes, the red coloring shows they all share that connection and can be chained together, you’ll see on the older one where each button shares a common with at most 2 other buttons, which is a pain.
Congrats on getting it working, but you make me cry using the stock buttons and stick… Grab some Sanwa parts, a dremel, and go to work on it, it’s a night and day difference.
Thanks so much for providing these great resources! After spending some time reading through all this, I think I finally understand the concept of it all hehe.
I have a noobish padhacking question, but I’ll ask away since its been years since I took an electronics class, and this is my first time padhacking.
BTW I have searched a bunch, and I am still confused, which is why I am asking…
I’m looking at building my own arcade controller, so I ordered a Sanwa JLF stick, and have gutted a Mad Catz 47160 controller. The PCB is identical to this one:
My question is, since this PCB doesn’t seem to have common grounds, do I have to cut the PCB on the JLF? Or do I just need to solder a wire for each direction on the pad to the JLF harness, and the hook the ground wire of the harness up?
I’m really sorry if this is a noob question, but I’m just a bit confused. Could anyone please assist? Thanks! =)
Looks like the grounds are all common to me. It’s typically the early versions of the controllers that have multiple common grounds requiring a hack and slash of the JLF PCB.
Oh so does this mean I have it backwards/confused?
Basically I just need to make sure that the ground wire on the JLF, and the ground tang for each button, is connected to one of the two grounds on the PCB?
if you look at the pic, you can see that UP LE RI DO A B X Y BA ST GU RB and LB are all written in RED text, and the ground listed is a RED circle. that’sa mean it’sa common to those. use a cable from each blue point to your button/stick. and then on ONE of the red points, make a cable that goes to, for example, your A button, then from that point daisy chain to B, X, Y etc etc finally ending on your control pad ground, that should do the trick nicely.
Im going to order them either tonight or tomorrow. I just didnt want to have $40 in parts shipped to my house with a fried pad pcb and a bucket of tears.
My friend placed an order on the 17th. Tried to get him to see if he could modify his order to add mine in, but lizardlick is swamped and no email reply in regards to that. Still debating what kind of colors to use on the buttons and what not.
And for the back/xbox button ill add em onto the top side area. Dunno if I should put smaller like 24s in there, or just recycle the green agetecs and save 6 bucks since i wont be spamming back/guide.
So I need to run the ground lead that is near the button contacts, to each button, and then from the last button, solder that end to the ground lead that is near the up button?
Common ground on pcb -> a ->b ->x -> rest of your buttons -> ground wire on the joystick.
your stick should come with (or maybe you buy it seperate) a 5 pin cable adapater, each wire lines up to a direction + a fifth that is a ground cable, that ground cable is the last point on your daisy chain
might wanna wait for someone to confirm though, but im 99% sure thats right, since it means that every ground from every button and the joystick is all on a single cable that links to the pcb on a ground point.
so if you had the set up of
PCB -> A -> B
when you press B, its ground wire is still linked to the PCB, since it has a direct link through A. but this wont trigger A, since the button on A would need to be pressed to send its signal too.
Man i hope thats right and someone doesnt come own my ass right now
I am having a problem with the left analog sticks on a 3rd party 360 pad. After I gutted it, it registers that the analog is hitting “down left” all the time. Does anyone know how to fix this?
So basically, if the PCB has two ground connectors, I only need to use one. All the buttons, and the ground from the JLF stick adapter, just need to connect to one of the grounds. Right?
Anybody know if an xbox 360 pelican controller has the same common ground as the mad catz or gamestop controller? If someone can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it greatly. thanks
once my parts from lizardlick arrive, i was planning to replace the buttons and keep the stock agetec stick, i haven’t played with my dreamcast in years, is the stock stick really so bad?
It’s not the worst stick I’ve played on, and if yours is in good condition then you should be use it just fine, but a lot of these have seen a lot of abuse. The Sanwa sticks are that much better though, and a LOT more durable. I thought it was easier to mount a JLF in my Agetec than to widen the holes for the buttons, I’d go ahead and do it while you’re at it.
sort of, there is a ground for every button as you can see on the pcb, thats how the buttons work, but all of the grounds on the pad are linked together. so yeah
just solder 1 wire to 1 ground and daisy chain.
Which controllers cause you to have to cut the traces on the joystick PCB? I really don’t understand the whole common ground thing…
from slagcoin:
“Other joysticks have a built-in PCB and a wire harness. These wires just need to be linked to a single ground and each corresponding signal. However, this is a problem if some directions have unique grounds (commons). When the wrong common makes contact with a direction, it can engage other commands, or make the PCB generally malfunction. Besides avoiding multiple-common PCBs, there are various ways to deal with a joystick in this situation:”
So does the mad catz I pasted above, have common grounds or not? I don’t understand under which situation I’d have to cut the trace on the sanwa joystick…
If the controller you’ve decided to use has multiple common grounds, like an early model xbox wireless, you will need to wire separate common grounds for certain directions on the joystick.
The PCB of the JLF is not designed to accommodate this; you will have to sever the common ground on the JLF PCB and solder the separate grounds accordingly.
In this case, the grounds are all common and you would not need to fuck with the JLF PCB.
Grab some Sanwa parts, a dremel, and go to work on it, it’s a night and day difference.
