I have sinned...

[DBOY]

I was fucking around yesterday when I decide to stop by Fuckoland (now apparantly GameStop) where I found a Sega Genesis arcade stick for $2.99.

$2.99?! What a buy! Too bad I don't own a Sega Genesis!

Then I remembered... I own a soldering iron...

I bought the stick and took it home to subject it to the horrors of my lab of broken console components and tools. And staring at the parts I had to work with -- something hit me. "Wouldn't it be cool to play Super Mario with a Sega controller?"

It was kind of like that idea to create the Frankenstien monster. It probably seemed like a good idea when you forget about the whole powerful roaming dead guy with an attitude thing.

So I set to work and tore apart it's clasing. Lubed up all the buttons and stick with some WD-40. Cleaned out all the plastic dust, and shaved some of the nice green flaky stuff off the top of the PCB. Then I traced the routes of the wire with my handy little multi-meter and found some nice big copper solder points Sega never used.

I found a SNES controller in pieces and hacked off the L & R buttons (not like those sub-PCB's were good for anything ahyway and set about soldering.

Three Hours later:

Whil this was ahappy moment as my multimeter said all the ocnnections were good, my clip unit then tipped over smashing onto the ground and breaking 3 wires. Guess I needed to solder better. :/

Eventually I got it all nice and tight. Pulle don the wires good and nothing broke. Then I set about finding a new spot to put this secondary PCB in the joystick's casing. Luckily there was ample space at the bottom but DAMN! Wouldn't you know it? Sega had little clips along their black cover. I broke two of them off with my fingers and HOLY BATCRAP!@# It fit.

I stuck the bottom on and admired my work -- reminding myself i need to re-label those buttons now.

Then I went over to my computer and plugged in. The joystick calibrated great and my computer didn't explode. That must mean it's ok to plug into my SNES (you can see where my priorities lie).

The moment of truth, I plugged it into my SNES and powered on -- hoping no smoke came out. The SNES didn't start. "OH GREAT! I SHORTED SOMETHING! MOTHERFUCKER!" is what I'd like to say. Actually, I was just a moron and forgot my power strip was switched off.

This time I powered on for real.

Voila! It worked. And I enjoyed a game of Gradius III with a gamepad that doesn't suck ass.

I think next I'm going to add a DPDT switch to swap buttons X and A for games like Super Mario All-Stars where the run button is placed in an awkward position.

I will now go hang my head in shame and pray the gods of video games do not curse me for having made Sega and Nintendo hardware work happily together.

(Edit: I just noticed that the message description on this topic is missing the key words "and the Germans")

 

[Tony Skyrunner]

WOW! YOU WIN!

 

[racketboy]

wow --- that makes me all teary-eyed...

You should try selling those

 

[IBarracudaI]

Nice!!!

Humm, maybe I'll get some of those...

 

[DBOY]

It's kind of like converting a DeLorean into a time machine. "If you're going to travel through time, why not do it in style?"

If you're going to make a SNES arcade stick, why not one that doesn't suck ass like all the Nintendo models?

 

[racketboy]

Back to the Futute!! --- my favorite!!

just had to say that

 

[DBOY]

Today I bring greater blasphemies. To go along with my shiny joystick, I wanted a gamepad. I'll leave out all the long pictures this time but tell you what the plan was.

I wanted to take one of those nice 6-button model-3 genesis gamepads (with the d-pad like a Saturn one) and use it on my PC and SNES as well. Problem is, it doesn't have inordinatly large casing like a joystick where I can just shove in a whole SNES pcb.

NO PROBLEM! The SNES gamepad has this neat little chip in it (if you're lucky it may be a standard chip instead of surface mount or *gack* a black acrylic blob). Base donw hat the chip says it's an RTS752 9321T. Maybe that's just some standard CMOS chip but I don't know. Anyway I wrote out the pinouts for it:

PIN01 - BTN X     PIN11 - DPD DOWN

PIN02 - BTN B     PIN12 - DPD LEFT

PIN03 - SNES7 (GND)  PIN13 - BTN SELECT

PIN04 - SNES4     PIN14 - BTN START

PIN05 - SNES3     PIN15 - NUL

PIN06 - SNES2     PIN16 - NUL

PIN07 - SNES1     PIN17 - BTN R

PIN08 - BTN L     PIN18 - BTN Y

PIN09 - DPD UP    PIN19 - NULL

PIN10 - DPD RIGHT   PIN20 - BTN A

That's SNES1-7 is the pins ont he actual SNES port. Assume the pin nearest the rounded side (not the flat one) is 7.

So a soldering we will go. I wired up everything, watched my wiring break off about eight times, but int he end it was all good. The trick was, puting this mess back into the gamepad. After all, I had a LOT of new wire and a pretty big extra chip to seat. After 5 hours or work, I concluded there was just no way in hell it was going ot happen with the chip inside the controller. So I decided ot put it outside.

I plugged it into my PC and went to the calibration menu while I wrapped the tape ot make sure nothing came loose. Success! it's now tightly coiled in some electircal tape and those wires aren't going anywhere. This is a VERY nice controller to be using for Kawaks gaming (KOF, SFZ, etc). I'd highly reccomend putting your own together. It's also a hell of a lot nicer for SNES fighters too!

 

[Alexvrb]

Originally posted by DBOY@Feb. 02 2003, 12:02 am

I wanted to take one of those nice 6-button model-3 genesis gamepads (with the d-pad like a Saturn one) and use it on my PC and SNES as well.

The best D-pad in the world of console controllers! Ahh, but to be REALLY 1337, you gotta make a Saturn -> PC adapter. Then sell it, you'll be rich (as long as it works with the 3D pads too)!

 

[mal]

As long as your PC meets the requirements you can make an adaptor and use DirectPad Pro to hook up a Saturn pad, standard or 3D.

 

[DBOY]

I have a Saturn adaptor. When my old model 2 broke I canibalized it for parts. Harvested 2 SH2 processors, the cart connector, the game ports, the video expansion port, and a few other chips.

The problem is using NTPad. It's EXTREMELY flaky. The newest version doesn't even work on my machine. I have to use an older version for my SNES stuff to work at all.

The main reaspon I was doing all this is because since I also have a SNES port, anything I put together for SNES will work on both my actual unit AND the PC.

 

[ExCyber]

Base donw hat the chip says it's an RTS752 9321T. Maybe that's just some standard CMOS chip but I don't know.

It's not AFAIK, but for what it does it might as well be. The (S)NES protocol only requires a standard parallel-loadable shift register; the system generates all the signals to make one effect the necessary parallel->serial conversion.

 

[DBOY]

Do you know any other chips that may be easier to acquire that would work the same for building a controller?

 

[ExCyber]

The Gamestation X page says that two CD4021 ICs cascaded together will work, and shows how they should be connected to do this. The 74HC165 should also work and might be easier to obtain.