Padhacking

http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick.html

If you've never seen it before, The Slagcoin guide to making your own custom sticks is a very good guide to outline the basics of making your own 'real' arcade sticks for consoles, for potentially a lot less than the shelf bought if you have the ingredients to hand.

I think this is the fifth one I've made myself.

I picked up one of these original Xbox sticks from a pawn shop for £4


Quite frankly logic 3 make the worst arcade sticks. I remember back in the Atari ST days they made some awesome looking joysticks (The Manta-Ray springs to mind). These days the build quality is is so cheap, with those rubber pads for buttons you find in joypads. This one had 4 of those mounted vertically inside the actuator assembly for the directions as well.

So I gutted it, added some of the spare Sanwa OBSF30s from my Naomi 'chavving', a Seimitsu LS-56 and a wireless Xbox360 padhack







White button in the middle is the Guide button (A Seimitsu Skeleton Button), the button marked 'clear' resets/connects the wireless link

The case is still a piece of crap, and I may move the guts to a better one later, but it's a big improvement on before, and it's wireless! I was gonna add a USB connection and play and charge kit, but I'd have to buy 'em. Once you take off the force feedback motor the batteries last about 5 limes longer anyway.

I've learned a lot about padhacking through reading up on slagcoin's guide and some experimentation on my own

 

My latest project stick.

This one will have modular padhack connection boxes for Xbox 360/PC, PS2 and Dreamcast when finished.





At the moment it comprises of:

1 x Naomi 1P6B control panel and control box top shell
1 x Sanwa JLF with LB30 Bat-top
6 x Sanwa OBSF-30 snap-ins 1 x OBSF 24

 

I've already cut down the Naomi top box to remove the instruction space holder and the coin entry, so the next step is building a replacement bottom box from MDF



The cut-out hole is to allow for quick changing of the restrictor plate on the Sanwa JLF without having to take the box apart every time



Pictured are: An octagonal 8-way, a Square set to 4-way and a square set to 8-way

 

my first stick remount. This wasn't just a typical swap I had to make my own mount to get a japanese stick in a case setup for US sticks. Works great



Both these sticks have the basic wiring done through hacked up sega genesis pads. Kick buttons are straight wired into usb cables.



Here's what the inside looks like, sorry for the messy picture

 

What kind of genesis controller is that? 4 button or 6 button? or is it something else?

I would love to make something like this with the spare controllers laying around!

 

I made this a few years ago:

It has a neo-geo cd pad inside. works great on the neocd and my supergun.
The case is from a very small AT computer and the top is a layer of laser cut and etched plastic.

 

That is sex in a box.

BTW are you going to be finishing your Amiga Tower pages soon?

 

Very nice 8bitplus

Just finished the first stage of wiring on the top panel

 

Soon, perhaps. I keep finding other thing that catch my interest. Also I think the case I have used is far too large. I'v turned a small and well designed amiga into a monster. Another thing I find is that anything amiga releated eats away all my money at an alarming rate.

 

Wiring the next stage, I've added a DB-15 connector, so I can recycle some unused VGA cables for interconnects...







It's the end of the line for my SNES conversion though. It was more for fun this, I don't think I made such a terrific job of it. I'll be taking the Agetec PCB inside it for use in a connector box

 

Haha! I love the SNES as a box. What a great way to recycle some old plastic.

 

That SNES>DC>joystick looks great. I guess its just the right size to use on the table or on your knees.
I also love the idea of being able to replace the plastic ristrictor from above on your naomi kit.

I made my own circular ristrictors for my Noe-Geo and other joysticks. Having access to a laser cutter is great ;-)

 

regular 4 button. I did another one with a 6 button pad and it works fine as well

 

First control box made, for the Dreamcast...

 

Maybe I should have researched VGA cables a bit more, I admit my knowledge of them was less than rudimentary. I somehow imagined it was 15 straight wires, of course it's not. However no biggie, I'll just construct an interconnect, shouldn't cost me more than £5

The boxes can still be connected with a gender changer like so...



Funny how things never go to plan. The PS1/PS2 hack is in progress, need to pick up a slightly bigger project box though, the one I used on the DC hack is just a bit too small. I've wired the D-sub 15 and tinned the pad contacts and wire in preparation



Burning through that equipment wire from retro at a rate of knots

 

Where did you get the Dreamcast board from? It doesn't quite look like a standard controller's board.

 

The standard controller apparently suffers from input lag. It's an Agetec/Sega PCB from the Arcade stick, It came out of my earlier 360 padhack, on the left of this pic

 

Almost done, finished the PS2/PS1 box, built the box interconnect and added a die-cut vinyl decal of my favourite software house



Just need to add the rubber feet, and at some point I'll get around to painting the MDF base

 

a bit oversized but looking really good

 

Thanks!

It's the size that made attracted me to building it in the first place, plenty of room to rest your palms, and more importantly stability, nothing worse that a stick box tilting during a vigorous bit of waggling.

I can also rest it on the arms of my chair :thumbsup: