Okay so I´ve been searching for snes arcade sticks for a couple of days and got some information that some of the sticks might only work with japanese sfc system or us ntsc systems but not with pal systems. Some people say they work and some people say they don´t work. I almost bought a JB king stick from a local auction (lost at the last minute and forgot to be there to bid competitively, this one went cheap! ) Anyways, the seller said that this particular stick would have been compatible with older revision pal snes machines but not with newer revision pal machines. Sounds quite weird to me. Questions: What is the deal with snes controller region checks? Do they actually exist? Does the revision of the console matter with regards to controller region checks? How is the region check performed? Is it using the CIC? Does SuperCIC mod also make a console region free with regards to controllers? Or are there maybe some differences in the joystick ports? Right now, I´m a bit on the fence about either getting an ascii fighter stick special or tototek adapters to make my x-arcade work with snes.
As I understand... Earlier pal consoles had a minor circuitry difference to accept only pal controllers. Future console revisions got rid of this, model 2 never had it due to no pal release. Though the check is quite weak. Both console and controller can be modified with soldering relatively ordinary parts. Nothing to do with joystick ports or CIC.
There are 4 diodes in the console that stop other pads working. Its trivial to bridge them and any pad will work and it requires 0 parts, just some solder.
http://wolfsoft.de/wordpress/?p=603 do a ctrl+f for "4 diodes" I'm pretty sure you could mod an NTSC controller by adding a resistor in somewhere and then it would be PAL compatible, but its much more widely documented on how to mod the console itself (and I believe that to be the more useful solution).
