Hi I have a hori RAP ex for the xbox 360
There was a section of the cable (the part that came right out the back of the stick) that was faulty (only worked went bent a certain way) I read up on the forums about how to fix it. I tried to re-splice the cable and take the bad section out. Unfortunately my wire strippers kept on cutting a couple of strands of wire every time i tried to strip the cable. Let’s just say I made a little too many mistakes… I’m very near the part where the usb cable goes into a 5-pin harness connector that goes into the board.
I’m quite an amateur at this stuff and I have a few questions…
Is it okay to cut a couple of strands of wire when stripping?
Can I just buy a new USB cable (without the xbox breakaway cable)? and can install it onto the harness (the harness has 5 wires coming out of it but I only see 4 inside usb cables) and is this difficult to do?
Is there an easier fix? (as far as I know I cannot buy another usb cable that has the same harness)
Thank you in advance
Yes. As long as you have a few strands that are connected together, the connection will be fine.
Yes, you don’t need the breakaway, you can use any USB cable with a type A male end. I don’t know if you’ll be able to connect it into the harness. You don’t need the thick, black wire. That is shield ground, and completely unnecessary.
Not sure that there are many of the kind with the wire harnesses available. Could try Trading outlet, there are generally always parts of arcade sticks floating around there…
I would suggest, since you probably don’t have soldering experience, get a european style barrier strip, screw the red, green, white, and black (not thick black) wires into one side, then get a fresh USB cable, cut off one end, strip it, expose the wires, and then screw in the wires to the other side.
Yeah, the tiny wires in the usb cord are a pain. Some wire strippers don’t go small enough for them so you end up using the cutter part and it cuts too deep. When I had this problem I ended up using a pair of sharp scissors, place the wire between the blades, apply just a small amount of pressure and rotate the scissors around the wire until it cuts the rubber.
Yeah it’s such a pain… the rubber covering the wires in the hori stick aren’t exactly the normal cable rubber. For the green and white cable they are more plastic-y… making it really difficult to pull off :(…
I have a wire stripper that goes that small and I have been able to strip it so just only a few strands get cut… (thankfully, Nerrage said this isn’t much of an issue)
Thank you guys so much for your help!
I am so glad I spend the extra cash on those wire 2nd strippers I got, they go from 20 to 32, my old ones does 10 to 22.
Bigger the number the thinner the wire is. Before hand I used to use the edge of a knife or my teeth (not good for teeth).
Yeah, all of the strands inside the wire are carrying one signal, it won’t make a difference if you accidentally lose a few in stripping, it just makes it more difficult to splice wires together or solder.
