Arkanoid is a great game, but it can be infinitely frustrating without an analog controller like the one that came with it. Unfortunately, the controllers that come with the carts are now much scarcer than the carts themselves. The lowest I've seen the controller go for on eBay is around $45 and that's before shipping and handling! Besides that, I've heard that the sensitivity can be iffy on those old controllers despite the ability to adjust it via that screw that surprisingly few people know about. Anyhow, I'm convinced that we can do better. How complex can the innards of that sucker possibly be? There's probably an IC in there, maybe even one that's compatible with the 4021 chip (let's hope). I've read it uses the same two pins that the zapper used. The point is that I bet we could make a better vaus controller for around $5 or less in parts. And I'd like to. However, I don't have a vaus controller to open up and look at and test with a multimeter. Does anyone want to volunteer? :icon_bigg
Wow. I went to the right forum. Thanks. I bet I could hack up a cheapo 3rd party after market Chinese controller for the cord and the 4021 equivalent. Digikey has the ADC0804 for around $3~6. A little more expensive than I imagined, but still not bad. The rest of the parts are less than $0.05 each, so no problems there. And just to reassure myself that I'm not some braindead doofus, I googled extensively and could neither find the schematic you posted nor any other schematic for that controller. I probably would have never found that site since I neither speak nor search in Spanish.
Holy crap! Thank you!!! I just fixed mine. It's actually for centering not sensitivity. If I went too far to the right, my paddle would warp to the other side of the screen. I turned the screw 10 degrees to the left and now it's properly centered.
Well I did find it using Google (Images), but I already knew it was out there. You don't need an ADC0804, any parallel 8-bit ADC will do if you can find one cheaper. You also might want to look at the ADC0804 datasheet, it has an example application with adjust apparently like the real thing. You can also probably use a simpler RC power-on-reset circuit like this: http://www.freewebs.com/maheshwankhede/basic/reset.GIF with the capacitor and resistor switched.
When it comes to 4021 shift registers, is there any difference between them? Mouser has a bunch of them.
I know that Ben Heckendorn says mouser part# 595-CD4021BE works. However, mouser part number 511-4021 is about half the price, but looks like the same thing. Can anyone confirm it?
