Bratwurst

I haven't been following too closely since I got the pre-production cart, but aren't the final production Concerto cartridges using a different PCB? Please correct me if I'm wrong but I didn't think the pre-productions could be upgraded by adding RAM chips.

Advocating knockoffs is a crummy attitude. Aside from that, the bootlegs are not going to last as long because substandard components are used to shave pennies off the build cost. It's usually the voltage regulation that's first to go.

Bump! I stocked up with another round of materials for the 7800/2600 Atari joysticks.

A lot of the early to mid-80s arcade cabinets would feature a stick with symmetrical buttons on either side of the control panel for ambidextrous play. So anyone who favored their right hand to control would use their left to hit the buttons. The 2600 joystick expects you to use your right hand on the stick and the 5200's original controller is also ambidextrous... so the precedent is there for people to have their preference.

http://easkcom.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-tv-retrace-lines-occur.html Looks like vertical is overdriven. Probably need to replace caps related to the vertical circuit.

If you can send me one I could probably copy it with 3D printing. The springs you can source by measuring (with a caliper) the wire thickness, exterior diameter of the loop and the total uncompressed length. Can send the springs to me as well and I can take the measurements for you.

Yes, 'thin' style will also work on the 6-button controllers. (I've only fit them in the Starwander reproductions but there's no reason they shouldn't fit the original official 6-buttons also.)

There's plenty of the injection molded parts, had to order about a thousand pieces. The rest is 3D printed plastic and can be made on demand anytime, so I should be able to provide these for the foreseeable future. Red d-pads have sold the most with red thumbsticks, black d-pads and black thumbsticks in descending popularity. I would ship any quantity for $4.50 USD to the EU, in a custom cut and folded box. It seems to take about a month, or a month and a half for international packages to arrive from the USA.

I'm very satisfied to hear this as I deal with hand pain myself. It's noticeable if I've held particularly non-ergonomic controllers such as the NES for a length of time. We're not getting any younger and any method I can design something to move a little easier I generally tend to pursue it.

I will ship anywhere in the world. I'll send you a PM.

Bump, new things for sale, check 'em out!!

$55 plus shipping. The weight for one stick packed in a box is about 1.5 pounds which runs about $8 to $11 shipping depending on where you're at relative to the east coast.

I can still make them, left or right hand configuration. I think I have enough parts to make ten or twelve more sticks before I'd have to resupply. I took a look at mine to see about adjusting the throw. I'd make a 3D printed spacer to slip over the actuator of the joystick (it's the black top-hat looking piece of plastic secured to the underside of the stick shaft) but I don't think it could be more than 1mm thick and I'm not sure how durable it could be, I'll have to test that. In the meantime I believe you could wind electrical tape to thicken it, just a fine line between triggering the switch and giving it enough room to reset.

If the plastic is smooth and not textured it's a good candidate for Novus plastic polish. As I recall it's sold in grades of 1, 2 and 3. You generally want to go with #2 for cosmetic scratches and scuffing. #1 is more of a cleaner and I've never had to use #3. The convention of buffing out a scratch, at least in my experience, is to rub the cloth perpendicular to the scratch line in one direction, or back and forth. You're removing the surrounding plastic so the scratch 'disappears' but you're really just reducing the material down to the very bottom of the scratch. I have tried a number of things like baking soda, toothpaste etc. but nothing seems to work as well with plastic as Novus does.

I can now supply red d-pads! I've made a few visual aids to clarify the differences between the 3-button controllers. Some have a white plastic harness inside with a noticeably thicker OEM d-pad. I initially thought this was exclusive to controllers with a black keypad, but apparently there are some gray keypad controllers out there that also have this arrangement: The other style of 3-button controller lacks the white plastic harness and instead just has a red plastic pivot screwed into the upper PCB: For all 6-button controllers, you can use any 'Thin' style piece.

Not to say that there aren't IC counterfeits out there, there is certainly a lot going around throughout the Asian continent, but my experience across many different eprom programmer/readers, pro brands like Needhams and Batronix, is that the chip ID function is a crapshoot and not reliable. It's obvious when a chip is a pull from the wear/solder remnant on the pins, and there is an entire industry dedicated to electronic salvage in China.

I just took apart a stock 7800 console and measured the screws while I'm in there cleaning the cartridge port. Standard American size screw is #4-40 and 5/16" long from tip to top of screw head. This thread pitch and diameter is practically identical to M3, and 6mm long from tip to underside of screw head, or 8mm long from tip to top of screw head.

Bought some stuff recently and it was a smooth transaction, everything was packed very well.

Here you go:

It does sit higher than the OEM d-pad, but no more than a quarter of an inch above the face of the controller. I've probably mentioned it before in an earlier post but it's a similar arrangement to the d-pad of the Sega Saturn controller where it kind of hovers a bit. The height increase gives it better pivot and lever action because the contacts in the Jag controller are spaced really wide apart for some reason. I've learned that some 3-button gray keypad controllers have the same style of d-pad (the one where it's normally hard to make diagonals with, has a white plastic harness over the top PCB) as the black keypad ones so I'll be posting a comprehensive guide on what goes where when I have the time.

They occasionally restock. Just keep checking and it will be available again at some point.

Sorry for the double post, but I've sent out PMs to everyone who expressed an interest in getting some of these. The pieces for black-keypad controllers will be $9 as they take nearly twice as long to 3D print, but the pieces for the 6-button and 3-button gray-keypad controllers are still just $8. I still don't have red color d-pads available yet but I found another supplier and hopefully can offer them soon. For now it's just black d-pads, black thumbsticks and red thumbsticks, for either controller. I'm looking forward to getting user feedback.

I have come up with these, I believe I've figured out a viable solution for the black keypad controllers.

Padhacks most likely.

If you revise the board, consider adding holes to serve as anchor points for a potential enclosure. I'd happily design a 3D printable case for you.