I picked up a Madcatz arcade stick, no problems there. I also picked up a Joytech Neo SE, and from all accounts, not only is that pad common ground, but amongst the easiest to hack.
Except that I pull out my trusty multimeter, set it to continuity/resistance, and I only get common ground across two buttons at a time - Y and B, X and A, Up and Right, Down and Left, Back and Start, etc. When shorting X’s ground to B, I don’t get the button to fire. :\
Crap, nevermind. It looks like I have to ground off of pin 5 (ie, not in the USB spec) and then I have .77Mohm resistance across ground, which is why my continuity tests were failing. What I don’t get is why I don’t get continuity from button to button on ground. I guess they have that .77Mohm resistor in between all of them, but in pairs. Y and B share a completely common ground, for example, but X and Y only have continuity in common back to the USB cable’s fifth conductor with .77Mohm of resistance. That just doesn’t seem right to me. Even stranger, I get 2.3Mohm of resistance to the guide button’s ground.
Does any of this matter?
PS3 Arcade stick
Hi guys. I’ve just discovered this excellent forum. I had previously built an aracde for my ps2 using a generic digital ps1 pad (the one without analog sticks).
I now want to create an aracade stick for my ps3. I have two options and I need some advice please:
Buy a converter to convert the ps1 fitting to usb. Will this work though as the pad has no analog sticks + its a generic pad? All the converters i have seen are for ps2 to ps3
I have a logitech chillstream pad. I have opened the pad up and cannot find a common ground. Each button/direction seems to have it’s own ground leading to some kind of resistor. Do I need to wire a seperate ground for each button or do I join the individual grounds on the pcb and the wire to my arcade buttons? Is it even possbile to hack this pad?
I know thats a lot of questions for my first post but I wil really appreciate any help or advice. Thank you
Gah, this whole thread needs to be scavenged for information and entered into a wiki. Driving me nuts.
Okay, so I have the Joytech Neo SE pad sitting here (generic 360 pad). So far as shared grounds with no resistance in between I have:
Up, RB (red wire, not black!)
Left, LB (red wire, not black!)
Y, B
X, A
Right, Back
RT, LT, USB
The odd buttons out are:
Down, Guide, and Start
From USB ground, RT, and LT, I can get continuity with .77Mohm of resistance. I guess what I’m trying to figure out is whether I can just hook a resistor up to some of these lines and be in good shape? I’m confused, because this pad is supposedly a “common ground” pad, yet there’s resistance. Not what I expected to find.
Here’s a re-post of pictures someone else took (same pad, so far as I can tell):
EDIT - okay, it’s a minor revision newer. My pad’s “matrix” on the front reads:
5 1 2
6 3 4 5
1 1 2 3
2 4 5 6
3 7 8 9
His reads:
6 1 2
7 3 4 5
1 1 2 3
2 4 5 6
3 7 8 9
So far as I can tell, the only change is that on the back on mine, J2 and J3 (hook ups for the rumble pistons) are above C9 and D3/C7 and D3, and there’s not a plastic connector they’re wired straight to the board, vs what you see above, J2 and J3 are populated with a connector and beneath C9 and D3/C7 and D2.
So those diodes on the back of the pad? That’s your big easy indicator that the pad is NOT common ground. You’re going to have to wire up two wires for each button/direction, wiring it up with a Cthulhu/UPCB is right out. (unless you want to put together some proto boards with chips on them.)
Were you volunteering? :wgrin:
Sure, why not. I need to get my web server functional again anyway. As good a motivator as any I guess.
Just for grins - what “chips” would make this thing common ground? I’m trying to do the 2-PCB 1-Stick thing on 3 sticks, and right now I have an HRAP PCB, this Joytech, and a MadCatz. Somehow I get the feeling that the HRAP isn’t common ground either. :\ I really should have done more research before ordering parts. My bad there…
The PSX and PS3 HRAPs are common ground. To make those work common ground style, I usually use 4066n analog switches and 7414 inverters. The inverters convert the voltage on the signal line from active low to the active high the 4066n’s use. The 4066’s have two output wires per gate; if the input is high, it connects them together, and leaves them unconnected if low. For N number of signals (directions & buttons), you’d need N/4 of the 4066n’s, and N/6 of the 7414’s, rounded up.
Dude, its a serious hassle. Hunt down some common ground MadCatz pads.
Just use a Madcatz arcade pcb and a Sony pcb for what you want do. This is one I did not that long ago. Works fine as far as I know.
http://picasaweb.google.com/wliu0912/MayflashMod1#5252350751178096306
The HRAP PCB I have is a 360, not a Sony.
And yes, you’re right - I know I should buy new pads. I just feel duped:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=64050.msg879989#msg879989
Wouldn’t have bought it otherwise. 
does anyone know any dope USB PC pads that are hackable and compatible with the PS3?
Check my post a page back or so.
I’m in the process of modifying a PS1 dualshock joypad. The plan is to take the PCB out and wire the buttons to a db25 connector hanging out where the cable used to be, so the pad can connect to existing project boxes for X360, PS2, Gamecube, etc… It’s mostly out of curiosity, but it would would also give me a universal PS2 joypad to go along with my universal sticks, so that pad players who stop by to play some SC4 (and soon the new Street Fighters) quit whining about crappy X360 pad controls.
I used what has been identified as a “Late PS1 Dualshock A” by Slagcoin. (http://slagcoin.com/joystick/pcb_diagrams/ps1_diagram5.jpg)
I removed the PCB and only kept the green ribbon face and the white strip that connected it to the PCB. I then soldered wires to the white strip and lead them out of the pad case to the db25 connector. So far so good.
But when testing connections with a multimeter, a cold shower. The damn thing gave the same results as testing a PS2 padhack - resistance! And a varying one, according to how hard I pressed the buttons (the stronger the pression, the lower the resistance). Since the analog buttons were introduced with the Playstation 2, I was sure that going with a PS1 pad would avoid trouble of this kind, thinking the “analog” only stood for the analog sticks. Little did I know the late PS1 pads had analog buttons as well. :shake:
Here’s where my knowledge ends - at roughly the same spot where I stopped attempting to hack a PS2 Dualshock a year ago. However, advancements have been made since and now that PS2 Dualshock is accepted as hackable trough the use of resistors, so I’m asking if my problem could be solved in a similar way, like maybe placing a resistor (or other element) somewhere to make the green ribbon face and buttons act as digital. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
I see you made use of the baby blue ball top with one of the new TMO models. NICE. 
If the pcb pictured is the one you have, check if that resistance you’re seeing happens when the ribbon is removed. If the resistance is still there, and I bet it will be, then don’t worry, just hack it as a normal like common ground digital pad. Any resistance between ground and those signal lines should be a very high value, multiple kilo-ohms if not more.
Thanks, but I’m afraid I wasnt clear enough. 
I didn’t really want to hack the pad PCB to get a regular padhack. Instead, what I need is just the shell of the pad and the buttons/d-pad to act as a controller, which I’ll connect to other PCBs in external project boxes. And the green ribbon face was to be the wiring that connects the buttons/d-pad to the project boxes (X360, etc).
I removed the PCB and this is what I’m left with:
http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/8209/ps1diagram5hackuk4.jpg
http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/ps1diagram5hackuk4.jpg/1/w795.png
So the ribbon is to stay in and substitute wiring, be plugged in the white strip and then torough wires to the project boxes. I haven’t connected the project box yet, but my main worry is that currently, when I use the multimeter on wires I attached to the white strip, connecting ground and a button, pressing it will only show varying degrees of resistance (from about 260 ohm when pushed lightly to about 60 ohm when pressed firmly), when I was expecting “no” resistance (=a beep from the multimeter), as a regular switch button would do when connected to both probes and pressed. Maybe the resistance is so low that when I connect a project box, it will work anyway? (altough it smells fishy to me)
Actually I never tried conductivity of joypad buttons. Maybe it’s the way all buttons work and my idea of using the ribbon as wires is just wrong from the start. But i still think it’s because of the pad being analog when I thought it wasn’t. So if that’s the case, what I’m really asking would be if there is a way turn it back to completely digital - no resistence.
I’m doing my research on building a custom stick, and I’m learning a ton; however, I’ve ran into a slight snag. Do you need to use resistors to neutralize the analog sticks on the PCB? Or, is that only necessary if you actually want to remove the analog stick part? Ex. the little cube on PS2 controllers.
I’ve checked this thread and done a search, but I’ve found nothing. Slagcoin’s website has been really helpful in how to do it, but I’m not sure if it is needed.
Sorry if this has been asked before.
Thanks for all the help.
Only use the resistors if you remove the pots. If you leave the pots, you dont have to anything and they will be fine.
