tripletopper

October 13, 2019

I guess since the rule id clear for physical gooids tgat tgr one who actuall has sonething is given priority. But if a person is "fishibg" this considered s "wantef" post.

The rule for labor is unclear. Woi has the "the actual good" and who is fishing? The service seeker, or the job seeker?

I just posted in both, hooe the rule for labor gets clarified. And know i get erased on place and posted in the other.

So...

hello.

In addition to buy sell and trade, would "help wanted" and "looking for individual work" be considered eligible for this category? If not, mods please chop off the rest and paste it in the correct category.

Otherwise...

I'm looking for someone to help build my joystick. I've been looking for a great joystick ever since Genesis went to six buttons, Mailny because ever since they did, no one made an ambidextrous joystick. Literally the last two system authorized ambidextrous sticks were the Beeshu Turbografx 16 Superstick, and the Beeshu Genesis Gizmo.

I tried shoryuken.com. But the most vocal people on there were very anti right-handed stick.

I understand the argument in Polo where a lefty and righty challenging for the ball on opposite teams have their horses literally running into each other and then all bets are off.

But let's look at the opposite case miniature golf: Ever since courses in the seventies and eighties switched from single handed putters to ambis, there is no wait at the clubhouse,. And you don't have to go back to the clubhouse to switch hands if a left-handed normal shot is easier than an acrobatic right-handed one or vice versa.

In a mini golf tournament I organized in the third year the rules were you can bring your own putter but I made it limit one club per person. someone showed up with a right-handed putter and had a very weird left-handed shot.

I gave a case where conforming people to a standard is for the better good, as well as conforming standards to different handed people.

As wacky as some people think the intellivision, ColecoVision, Arcadia 2001, Atari 5200, and Bally Astrocade controllers were, the good thing that was true of all of them as they were all naturally ambidextrous.

And the Atari 2600 had plenty of Lefty solutions,. Third-party Joysticks with buttons on both sides, pin swapping Lefty adapters, and even some games on the Atari 800 had software-based swapping where pressing L switches player one to left handed, and shift L for player 2. Repeating sets it back to right hand. And to make it a lefty, just rotate a standard 2600 controller 90 degrees clockwise.

first I'd like to say my previous guy did a good job work with ship in 2007 when Street Fighter 4 came out and should still work just as good that now accept modified to work with more systems in. He just made it to work on all Paradise Cthulhu pcbs, as well as finally understanding my full idea behind an ambidextrous stick.

If I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars for a custom ambidextrous stick, then gosh darn it I might as well spend a few more to make it work with all my systems from the Atari 2600 to the Xbox One and switch as well as future-proofing it assuming most fighting games don't go like Super Smash Brothers, requiring analog controls. the principles electronics and mechanics all work the same for every generation,. so why not save money and reuse parts when possible?

We kind of had a falling-out because of a misunderstanding, but it was purely business nothing personal,. Just a miscommunication between us.

No I am self-aware the fact that I have unusual criteria at least compared to SRK normals. Hopefully atariage joystick makers are more understanding.

Another problem I'm aware of is that I kind of know what I want in certain things and for the rest I leave to best practices according to the person I hire. the problem was me and my other guy had to negotiate for a month to understand if a you could figure it out and be if it was scientifically possible to do so.

Hopefully within a week you'll see my results of what we did after this point on my website sinistersticks.com. the name is a double entendre, both play off the Latin for left-handed, sinister, as well as evoking cheat sticks like wicked controllers and evil controllers.

But unlike Wicked Controllers and Evil Controllers, it's considered a legal layout for anything in the fighting game community, at least implicitly, and probably any video game tournament well you don't have to use stock controllers but must electronically be equal to stock controllers. The obvious gray area being the Atari 5200, kind of like Hitbox kind of forced organizers to come up with new sets of rules for fighting ganes about simultaneous opposite cardinal directions. But an activation decathlon and track and field socd scrubbers would be a handicap not an advantage.

October 13, 2019

I don't know if wanting to hire someone ti build something is s lrgal topic in this particular sybforim or not.

I'll await an answer for this:

ask"Is Wanted OK Here? (y/n)"

Listen for A$

If A$= "y" then print AD$ else ask "where is it okay?"

Listen gor A2$

Gotio arariage.con/A2$

Print AD$

September 27, 2019

Actually I'm looking to see if I can get adapt my joystick to use the booster gripped as design so that's two separate buttons are thrust and fire, with the original Atari fire button being free for a third button input.

Reading that a ColecoVision controller can work, and not being sure if 2600 Omega Race has a two player mode or not, maybe it's best to pass.

September 27, 2019

Here's an important question I have to ask about keypads. Are they supposed to be either:

A) 12 independent buttons that can be pressed in any combination and provide the exact results of that specific combination?

If that's the case you can play keyboard finger twister bomb where to deactivate a bomb you have to press one button at a time and add a button and a button without letting go until you get to six buttons then you have to move one of your fingers off one of the keys and put it on another but because it might not be in a convenient location you might have to do some finger shuffling. This type of game can exist with the current keypad then I know I have to pad hack any keypads where that is possible.

Otherwise I assume it's B) basically a keypad being a precursor to a touch screen kind of like the way the intellivision Amico interprets it. ( Side comments about pronunciation):

Spoiler

I thought it was "uh ME Ko" Like amigo, or amiibo, or Amiga, Or Coleco. Not "AH muh Ko ". Like the gas station Amoco orJaleco, like Jehricho. i originally thought Jaleco was prounounced like Coleco.

if every keypad is like a touchscreen where it only makes sense to press one at a time and you get errors pressing more than one at a time that in theory you could build an external keypad partial PCB by understanding the key code and not destroying a real controller.

Some key codes are easy like the intellivision why three different pins represent three different columns and forur different pins represent for different rows and none of the joystick or button functions can be activated for the keypad to work right. And each button lights up one Column pin and one row pin. and if two columns are lit up, then the other four pins represent a joystick direction.

I have seen pinouts for the 5200 and it looks like it uses a similar matrix system to the intellivision. With the start, reset and pause being the fourth column of the 4 x 4 matrix.

I've seen the Coleco combinations on the pinouts.ru website and it's a mess and and I thank edladdin for making it into an easy to wire 13 pin ribbon cable which I assume the 13th pin is for ground B.

Those are the three I care about most. The two that may or may not be done depending on how well it works are the jaguar and the Arcadia 2001. Until someone makes a separable Arcadia 2001 Joy port, kind of like how atariage user nurmix added an INTV2 port or an INTV flashback port and they made the controller on the INTV 1 removable and replaceable. Once a pin setup has been established for the Acadia 2001 then we could adapt it for my controller. But then again most of the American Acadia games are neutered versions of game licenses owned at home by Atari, Coleco or others, in the United States. Is it worth it.

What would be more interesting is a Jaguar adapter. According to a certain pin site I think it was pinouts.ru , I have no idea what it uses because it has a 5 by 5 matrix yeah it's all the other matrix base keypads show that only one button could be pressed the time. North south east west A B and C are all part of The matrix and I know I could at least press any two of them at once and that is enough to destroy the keypad matrix theory.

If that's the case, then the PCB or the Jaguar does more then just read a single pass per frame. So probably to be safe it is easier just to disect a real Jack pad and wire each 3.5 mm female to the actuators on the 12 keypad buttons as a pad hack.

That might be the reason why my idea finger twister bombs might work on Jaguar. If so someone should program it as part of Go to the Party Jag" kind of like those Mario Party ganes, and Sonic Shuffle,and Crash Bash, and Pac-Man Fever, etc., That would be kind of a cool retrobrew. Find other minigames that use the Jaguar fully.

By the way, the only character I recognize on Atari Karts is Bentley Bear. Are we going to add Hector the Centipede? (A metric system pun, get it?). Really any other Atari owned characters? Lamar the Yar, Qtie Qotile from Yars' Revenge? White Hat Willie and Black Hat Benjamin from Outlaw? I can't think of any distinctly Atari-owned characters that the people actually depicted in game

Finally is it true that Jack pro pad just maps the following sequence to the following corresponding buttons individually: 4 6 7 8 and 9 map to l r z y and x respectively. If that's the case then should I just buy a standard JagPad for the purposes of disection and just hardwire the pad normally except map the l r z y x to 4 6 7 8 9?

As fir the design, i can fit 14 buttins and 4 directiins on my stick. Does any game use more than that?

September 24, 2019

In fight sticks, the 3 rules of button placememt is similar to that of real estate's: location, location, location.

In 5200 Defender It'd be better to have the 0 button as a third button on the ring finger as opposed to moving either hand to reach the keypad.

Also in CV Mouse Trap, with a fight stick, you want your index on dog, and middle Ring, and pinky on red, yellow, and blue doors as opposed to having a thumb hunt and peck ( but eventually no visual hunting)

I know there are 2 ways to make a fight stick button or a keypad press work.

One is wiring a button to the pad hacked CV controller. The other is recreating the circuitry in the keypad.

For CV, there is the Edladdin.com CV fight stick pcb, which you need to play Super Action games.

For the INTV, i assume for the keypad, it's as simple as disecting an INTV keypad.

I hope this answer is $15 cheap, and not $70 with retro equpment... Can a basic JagPad be hacked and give you all 12 keys? Even 8-button controller games? I think it's (4,6,7,8,9) = (L,R,Z,Y,X).

Now the 2 hard questions:. 5200 controllers. I wpuld rather not hack a 5200 controller, because i have 3. At least 2 are getting the best electronics gold treatment.

1) is it worth gold modding the controller that will be disected fir the keypad?

2) i know working 5200 controllers are valuable, but broken controllers are a dime a dozen on ebay. For this, make sure the direction sitck is working, and gold mod the button and keys. Would this make ebay hunting easier?

3) is the keyboard citcuit similar to the ColecoVision and Intellivision where each key us attached two or more simultanious pins and rely on the fact only one key is pressed at once (and in INTV's case, also rely on a lack of direction and action buttons) to work? Or can multiple keys be pressed and not be mixed up, unlike INTV and CV?

The other issue is the Arcadia 2001. I guess i'll worry about it as someone makes an easy fight stick adapter for rhe 2001, like Nurmix made external INTV controls possible on INTV 1 and 3 using INTV 2 or Flashback controllers and fight sticks. ...

... And when there are any titles worth playing on the American version. (I heard elsewhere the Emerson machine, with almost as many names as there are national markets, and are more succesful, due to Atari and other American companies specifically buying just the US rights and ignoring the rest of the world until Emerson filled the gaps. And sue-happy Atari forced game-crippling changes in the American versions. Lucky us 😛 )

September 24, 2019

But am I right about there being no special circuit in the track n field controller. Just like how hit boxes exist in fighting games?

Except do not install an SOCD scrubber in between, or else you lose the point of the device.

By the way. Has anyone noticed errors when playing a track n field controller in a y adapter (and a standard controller [the Super Action controller causes runtime errors even with no TnF controller or Y] in the other end of the Y) in CV Activision Decathlon?

September 24, 2019

On 9/20/2019 at 1:06 PM, alex_79 said:

You could build a pass-through adapter that allows you to use a standard joystick with the same control scheme as "Asteroids" (Joystick UP=Thrust, Button=Fire).

Using an inverter chip:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150122191144/https://www94.pair.com/jsoper/2600_omega_adap.html

Or discrete components:
https://sites.google.com/site/halfbaker2/2600omegaraceadapter

If you're using a flashcart instead of the original cart, then just use this hack that works with standard joysticks (with optional support for driving controller)
https://atariage.com/hack_page.php?SystemID=2600&SoftwareHackID=83

I know i can do a 5 button asteriods console basef on discrete components. Or i can use joystick L/R and 3 buttons for thrust, fire, and shield/warp/flip. without and special adapter. I just have an easy rewirung sceme.

I'm talking about using my fight stick for 2600 Omega Race. ( I know ColecoVision's version had a 2 player battle arena. Does the 2600 version?)

My point is using real cartridge uses the 2 paddles as 2 extra buttons.

I have a joystick that starts out as an "uncoded" fight stick, ( the best way to build a multi console). I assume it's 0% in one extreme and 100% in the other. And anything in between is a dial position in the middle.

And the best way to turn an analog control into a digital one is to wire it straight with an on/off switch (a button) and taking the dial out of the equation.

To get the thrust and fire working on a real 2600 Omega Race cart on a 7800, just route the 2 paddle pins into a joystick directly? No special additional parts or non-standard wiring needed?

September 20, 2019

7 hours ago, Shawn said:

OK, my bad. I thought when you said it was 90 percent complete you where talking about a physical object's state of completion not just an idea for such a thing.

You're right about the idea being 90% done but the joystick itself is physically 50% done. It's tested to work with everything on the Cthulhu except for NES Saturn and SNES right now but I can test it when it gets home.

September 20, 2019

Plus if you have a modern fight stick that starts as discrete inputs and is easy to remove the Cthulhu the PS3 60 + the brook retro or the brook Universal and replace it you don't even need a PCB for the Atari 2600, just direct wiring in a DB 9 connector.

September 20, 2019

Is baking an 8 button fightstick compatible with 2600 Omega race a simple as wiring north south east west and main fire to their respective Atari ports, and wiring the extra two buttons to the two panel ports?

I guess it depends on if paddles use a single line and have variable voltage is in it. If yes and the Booster Grip send maximum voltage when pressed and 0 voltage with unpressed,. If the paddle defines the same end as 0 voltage,. it should be as simple as having a dimmer switch and just taking it out of the equation with the panel's being the dimmer switch and button directly being a binary on/off switch?

If it's something more complicated than that, could someone either tell me or point me to a page the better explains how to use discrete buttons, meaning not coded for any other video game system, into buttons' for the booster grip?

If it's as simple as direct wiring then it's no chore to do it. If not I have to decide is it worth doing for possibly one game? By the way does have a two player mode? The ColecoVision version did.

September 20, 2019

On 9/15/2019 at 12:51 AM, Danjovic said:

DIY track and field controller for Atari 2600. Simple and easy to build (link).

Should I assume the track and field controllers are as easy as wiring the left button to whatever pin on the 2600 is left the right button to whatever is right and the jump button to whatever is fire and the ground into whatever is ground and that should be enough to make a DIY track and field controller, correct?

also judging by your scale it looks like you have the buttons closer together than they are on the original Atari controller.

One game I would like to adapt it for is pac land America home consoles have three versions I think turbo grafx 16, PlayStation 1, and Xbox 360. If you have a discrete controller hook up to a PCB then in theory you could reroute the left right and jump buttons to whatever buttons you needed on the other consoles (Turbo grafx might need joystick up to equal jump) and the coder should decode them just like any other button.

By the way I noticed some strange things when using a genuine Atari track and field controller to play Activision decathlon on ColecoVision. When I try to Y it in, funny things happen. I understand there's two different types of Y adapters. One for sharing Atari controllers for ColecoVision, to use a keypad,. And the other is the coleco Gemini Y adapter. How does one tell the difference other than plugging it in and checking the results?

September 19, 2019

As I said before I only know part of the solution. I'm trying to direct the guy who knows how to do soldering and wiring and woodworking but doesn't know much about programming.

He basically builds fight sticks based on pre-existing plans.

Most things are pre built like a Cthulhu and a Brook Universal USB.

I learned a couple things from a guy who said he was going to build it and then added a feature I didn't want, and told me to either a)shut up and pay, or b) put my two cents in and lose a warranty on it. So i chose to c) walk out.

I'll ask if my guy knows how to do matrix wiring. I assume it's as simple as leading two wires out of an output to the two different pin inputs.

I know that most dumb electronics (meaning no electronics inside, meaning physical RCA Y adapters) can either be used one-in-two-out or two-in-one-out and it's the context of electricity flow which determines its function.

September 19, 2019

6 hours ago, mr_me said:

If by discrete controls, you mean a single pole switch like a regular arcade button; then you can wire them as intellivision keypad buttons with a couple of diodes each like the schematic for the side buttons.

my main concern is whether or not I have to sacrifice a PCB in order to activate the keyboard.

Sincr the Intellivission and 5200 have fairly easy concepts of what wires to wire those I could do directly without sacrificing and Intellivision or 5200 pad.

In both cases wire each button to the column pain and the row pin.

But the Jaguar uses a more complex system that's not as easy to wire as just a row pin and a column pin. In the case of the Jaguar it might just be easier to sacrifice a standard Jagpad and wire buttons directly to it than to try to figure out a system to save a Jagpad.

As for ColecoVision edladdin.com helps me save a joystick. plus I heard the keypad combination code is more complex for a ColecoVision than a 5200 or intellivision.

Finally the Emerson Arcadia 2001,. Is it even worth it?

September 18, 2019

I got s UFO 3DZero SNES->3DO adapter, and it has a daisy chain port to allow as many players ad the 3DO can allow (8? 10?)

I found one flaw with a 3DZero... A game called Pataaank.

If that's the only multiplayrr game that does work. No big deal when players 1 and 2 are alternating like in Pataaank.

But if a 2 or more players simultanious game doesn't, that'd be awful.

And red flagged games other than Pataaank?

September 18, 2019

Well the INTV. keypad looks eady. As dors the 5200 keypad matrix.

The Jaguar matrix looks so nuts, it's just easier ti vuy a eorking basuc JaPad for $15 on ebay, and manually wire each button. But my connection has only 18 independent inputs N, E, S, W, A, B, C, pause and optuons are 9 independent inputs. +12 of the keypad and you have 21 inouts in 15 pins.

If one just had discrete controls, can one easily build a proper multi pin matrixer like the 5200 or INTV? If that's the case, you can literall only press one control at once. No diagonals, no running jumps, no gas abd steering in Atari Karts. There's more than meets the eye, usung a natrix scheme to have any nunber from 1 to 21 if the 21 inputs be on at the same time. You need some kind of custom electronics to make 21 independent buttons out of 15 pins. Something omly a Jaguar engineer can ubderstand, and the cheapest wsy to use it is to cannibalize a JagPad.

Do I understand this right?

September 18, 2019

Well the website old.pinouts.ru has some help.

I see the 5200 pinouts. I assume that

a) only one keypad key can be pressed at a time and make sense.

b) just get each pin to light up one row and one column, with the syste butons being a fourth column of 3 buttons.

The bohoki adapter and the cannibalizing of a digital pc pad should take care of the rest.

And apparantly arcarc.xmission.com has has printed the joystick logic language of using a 21 key matrix. I cn understand the INTV and 5200 system well. But you newed more than an incomplete colleghe education to figure out the marixing of the 21 inuts and the 4 controllers on Team Tap. It looks easier just to pad hack a $15 jag pad annd. Unless someone can put this in a discrete-to-Jag pcb for cheaper than a jag pad and difference in cost of manual labor to hack a jag pad, pad hack it is.

At least I now my Finger Twister bomb mini-game MIGHT work.

September 18, 2019

By tje way

I notice when two (or none or all 3) of the button pins was on that frame is disc + button mode. But a single button pin refers to a column, and the first 4 pins refer to the row. In disc mode the first 4 were catdinals, and 8 and 9 were terriary modifiers.

That's a fairly easy natrix to decode.

The only other thonk i need is the 5200 keypad contorld, the Jaguar keyboard controls and (if someone wants to makes an external joystick attachment), an Arcadia 2001.

I don't need Colecovision brcause edladdin.com makes a keypad with a 13 position ribbon cable. Should i assume all buttons use one of the 2 grounds exclusively? Is it the B ground?

Is the CVSA PCB able tp accept a real SAC controller for keypad presses and roller wheel add on? And is the map of matrixing of Coleco keypad somewhere?

Is it safe to say efladdin's 12 digit keypad has single discrete inputs before it gets in the PCB, so i can 3.5 mm mod them to have extra buttons on an 8 button stick activate a key and it'd be right?

Also if edladdin.com uses 12 discrete buttons and one ground, that that should be a good unversal part to reuse for 5200, INTV, and Jag, ( and 2001)

Om yhe meantimr i'll try to google my owm answer.

September 18, 2019

First of all thanks for another reference.

when this page is done I was going to refer to shoryuken.com so hobbyist can make a true Omni joystick for everything from Atari to Xbox One. if you're going to have a multi console joystick anyway might as well and he's extra joysticks for few bucks more.

Second looking at the code. If two of the actions button pins are actuated then the code goes into joystick and action button mode since all buttons activate to button pins. To get a control to activate a keypad in addition to following the rules of not pressing a keypad button with either the disc or the action buttons I think I found an easy pattern that makes sense in a grid. It looks like the first four pins are the four separate rows themselves 1-3, 4-6, 7-9 and clear, 0 and enter,. And the three columns AR represented by the free action buttons but when one is pressed it refers to the keypad, plus two pins puts it in this plus button mode. Any changes dynamically every frame of input.

Also if a game allows you to press two buttons together they could be any two buttons doesn't matter which two and three buttons does nothing extra what if a game doesn't recognize the all-three-pin-push then we go into error, right?

Okay the hardest thing about the intellivision is limiting it to eight ways by using external logic chips. is it as simple as buying the chips and wiring them in a way that person who knows how to solder and could be shown how to solder it could do?

Aquestion about the other keyboard consoles namely ColecoVision, 5200 Jaguar and, if there a way to do externalize the Arcadia, the Arcadia. Are the other keyboard matrix codes as easy as in televisions one row in one column activates two switches which pins and individual button or is that more complex than that for the other sysyem's keys?

Also should I assume that if you Y adapter a real working controller and an extra action button defined as a single keypad press, that is long as you don't break the rules of the controller, it should work exactly the same either from the real keypad or the wired soldered buttons? Also would that be the only decent way to add speed roller on the ColecoVision super action just Y-combine it in and let the internal Super action controller convert it the way it's supposed to.

Someone told me the Jaguar keypad was not matrixed, matrixed meaning meaning 2+ pins equals one key. Someone else told me it was a timing sequence and all 12 keypad buttons are independently mapped to one pin for each key on the 15 pin port. Which of the two is true?

Based on what I read about the ColecoVision that has a sequential read like reading the Atari joystick part first subframe, the other three buttons and keypad next subframe, and a special speed roller sequence as the third subframe.

If it's matrix like the intellivision the good news is that it's easy to wire a discrete controller to make a button equal to keep press, but the bad news is you can't play my Finger Twister Game in theory in the default mode. To activate timing mode you probably need a new PCB or just hardwire a three-button Jaguar which on eBay costs15 bucks including shipping. if that's the case how easy is it to pad hack a three-button Jag controller?

One other issue is digital joysticks on the 5200, I assume I can cannibalize a PC controller that's a digital d-pad and pad hack that, and hook it into the bohoki adapter.

Also some video games don't work right on the 5200 if diagonals are pressed because of the lazy programming assumption that if one Cardinal is above 80% the other must be less than 60% which is true of the default controller but not with a fightstick or the digital joystick made by coin

September 16, 2019