radiohead

I bought 2 sets of the new paddles for use on my PC & Raspberry Pi running Stella and using the 2600-daptor. Both sets had developed jitter fairly quickly. I returned them both to Amazon and thoughly cleaned a set of OG paddles bought from a retro game store. The OG paddles have been jitter-free and have smooth motion for nearly 2 months now.

Very cool adaptation! I see you are coding everything from scratch on your own (awesome!), but is there any thought to tweak the sounds to be a bit closer to what Pac-Man sounds like - maybe from the original Ms. Pac-Man 2600 or the Pac-Man 4k homebrew? The chomping, the pellet swallowing, the ghost siren, the Pac-Man death are all iconic sounds, and they would certainly help place your game in that Pac-Man/Atari 2600 universe. But if there's any rights issues with sounds or coding, then your game as it is now is still fun. Great work!

I wasn't sure if I wanted to take a chance on the Hyperkin Ranger paddle, but I noticed recently that I hold the Atari paddle sideways in my left hand and spin up and down with my right (instead of holding it up and spinning left to right). So maybe the Ranger paddle could be a good reliable replacement for my twice-repaired OG paddles. Amazon may be the demise of civilization, but I almost never have a problem returning items including my faulty CX30+.

So tinkering with my used OG paddles over the weekend, taking apart the potentiometers and giving them a thorough cleaning, as well as inside the pinholes of the plug, I get no jitter using them on the 2600-daptor on Stella (PC and Retopie). I played them for nearly 6 hours in the last 3 days - longer than using either the 2 new CX-30+ Atari Paddles - and things are good at the moment. So the 2600-daptor & Stella seem to work as advertised. I just had problems with the new paddles. As unlikely as it seems, I think maybe it was a production batch issue because it was only a few days/hours with the 2 sets of new paddles, and then jitter crept in. I'd expect that with used 40-year-old paddles, but not new 3-week-old paddles. Again, I have no real hardware to check compatibility, so back to Amazon they go again. Big thanks to dualcam for all his assistance! I think I'll wait for REV 2 before I acquire any new Atari hardware.

So here we are a few weeks later and I have the EXACT same problem as before as I had with my a previous set of new CX30+... a shaky, jitter on one of the paddles. I would say the paddles have less than 2 hours of actual use. They are stored inside an storage box with a lid with my other game controllers, so no dust and they're not being knocked about or dropped. When plugging in with the 5 pins on top, the problem paddle is the right controller - which like the last pair of controllers, felt just slightly looser than the more stiff left controller. Maybe it's a production issue with the stock that Amazon sells? I sprayed Deoxit Contact Cleaner on the metal stem and worked it in since the potentiometer inside seems completely encased in plastic. Well, it made the jitter go away, but only temporarily. The jitter is back and the contact cleaner now has made the spin far more slippery. Anybody else experience jittery-ness in a new set of CX30+... bought from Amazon... on the east coast of the U.S.? Could it be Stella or the 2600-datop? I have no real Atari hardware to test it out on. I'm about ready to give up on all this. Ugh!

I have Retropie 4.8 and Stella 6.7. These are the latest releases as far as I know.

(Heavy tired sigh)... OK... I think I've got it. Everything is running in the same Stella 6.7 emulator on Retropie and I assume this will work on the PC. I swapped the 2600-daptor port to Right controller [Ctrl+1] and the USB joystick stays on the Left. But that would affect the paddles since they must be on the Left. So... I had to "Swap Ports" in each paddle rom game properties setting. After making the 2600-daptor port swtich to the right for the joystick and swapped ports back to make the paddles work on the left, I unplugged the keyboard and it looks like it's all holding steady. To make things even more complicated, I swapped the main paddle on some games to the other just so I can put even wear on the controllers (my last set was brand new and got jittery after 3 weeks). Thanks for everybody's help. I deleted the 2600-daptor from retroarch because while the joystick worked fine, the paddle made the Emulation Station menu carousel screwy. If Stella gets an update, hopefully all these settings will stay.

I do have a spare keyboard that I plug into the Retropie for configuration, but I don't keep it plugged in. I have the Retropie as a game console for me and my kids in the den, and I don't want the kids to start pressing keyboard buttons and messing things up.

I'll experiment more, but I don't see a game property affecting 2600-daptor behavior beyond the Crtl+1 left/right keyboard shortcut. Setting "Swap Ports" in Game Properties does just that; if both controllers are assigned to the Left port, they're both now on the Right. Setting "Swap Paddles" in Game Properties swaps the left and right paddles, but not the controller port. The overall issue looks like Stella is always defaulting the 2600-daptor as the Left controller port (I think the manual states that, and a second 2600-daptor would be set as Right), and for some reason, a generic USB controller also is assigned to Left controller port as well... but 2 generic USB controllers will split properly to Left & Right. Remapping both controllers didn't solve the problem. In Retropie, I configured the 2600-daptor connected to my original Atari 2600 joystick as a generic USB controller (Up, Down, Left, Right, and "B" button) and it works and is properly assigned as Input Port 2 within the retroarch cores. So my solution here is to default paddle games to Stella, and Joystick games to lr-stella. I'm no longer concerned about 2 player action on my PC. I suspect if/when I purchase another Hyperkin's Trooper USB joystick or even Atari's new USB joystick, this won't even be an issue anymore as Stella will automatically assign the USB sticks as Input Ports 1 & 2, while the 2600-daptor will only be used for paddles (Left controller port).

Indeed, swapping ports of the 2600-daptor (Ctrl +1) does fix the left joystick issue and now I can separate the 2 controllers with the 2600-daptor on the right. However I need to swap them back to make the paddles work as they need to be the left controller. On the PC this is easy, but not on the retropie as I don't have a keyboard attached. On the Retropie, I found a convoluted, yet workable solution: defaulting all the Atari joystick roms to lr-stella 2014 and defaulting the paddle roms to the stand alone Stella 6.7. lr-stella assigns the usb joystick and the PDL to separate inputs and it works for 1-2 player games. Stella 6.7 makes the paddles works.

Just received new paddles (it helps that there is an Amazon Fullfillment Center 30 minutes away) and there is absolutely no jitter using the 2600-daptor PDL. Rock solid like the other pair before the trouble began. Hopefully these will last longer than 3 weeks.

Forgive me if this has been addressed earlier, but I have the PDL adaptor for my paddles using Stella (6.7) on my PC and Retropie. I am also using a Hyperkin Trooper 2 USB joystick which defaults as the LEFT controller and also serves to provide Start/Select/ESC button control. When plugged in, the PDL adaptor also defaults to the LEFT controller - for games requiring paddles, it's not an issue and everything works great. But I recently purchased a used 9-pin 2600 Joystick to have it for Player 2 using the PDL adaptor, but it still registers as the LEFT controller along with the Hyperkin joystick USB. Remapping either controller as the RIGHT controller in Stella settings doesn't seem to work. When using 2 USB controllers in Stella (I also have an extra generic USB SNES-style gamepad), there's no conflict. Any ideas as to how to get the PDL adaptor & my USB Joystick to work together for 2 player action while keeping Paddle functionality when it's needed?

I appreciate your help. The issue is just the one paddle, regardless of the swap setting, port or input. I'm thinking it is a faulty potentiometer of that paddle due to wear - though it's only a few weeks old. I'm sure it'll get worse, so while I still can, I've returned it to Amazon today for an exchange and I'll see if another new set of paddles are any better.

Here's what I'm experiencing. Paddle/Player1 is smooth, Paddle/Player2 looks shaky. When moving fast its relatively ok, when moving slower, Paddle 2 is jittery/shaky. Using new Atari 4-1 Pack Paddles 3 weeks old using 2600-daptor PDL with Stella 6.7 (PC and Raspberry Pi.) Maybe I'm being picky, but I've already sunk $90 in the paddles ($30 for the 2600-daptor, $20 for used paddles which had terrible jitter even with cleaning, and these $40 4-1 Pack paddles). I would expect both new controllers would feel and operate the same. Paddles.mp4

I can make a quick video when I get home tonight if you like, but yes it's kind of like that, but only on one paddle. With quick, broad spinning of the dial from one side of the screen to the other, the paddle performs relatively fine. It's during slow, incremental turning, the paddle shakes - but again only on one paddle. I swapped the paddle settings in Stella so that I'm now playing the other less-used paddle and the shaky paddle (that I had been using) is now player 2. Neither seemed to shake when I first used them, but now 3 weeks later, I notice shakiness. I successfully updated the 2600PDL firmware (from 5/23 whether it needed it or not), changed out the USB B cable, and tried all the dip switch combos and found (on Maximum Range) that the shakiness has reduced a bit. But one paddle is clearly jittery/shakier than the other. If it were a PDL daptor issue, wouldn't both paddles be affected?