boggis the cat

That internal collar is there to strengthen the paddle (its a boss). You may find that the paddle will crack through there if you took too much material away. Cheap pots will have a few drawbacks, the most important being they are not rated for much use. You may only get ten thousand rotations before it gets scratchy and starts to play up, while the name-brand ones are engineered better (one million cycle rating on the Bourns). Even if you dont intend paying for the Bourns, download the spec sheet, as you then know what to look for and wont get stuck trying to adapt a 15 mm shaft into a paddle designed for 25 mm. ?

The original paddles require a standard 25 mm shaft length, and use a standard threaded length. Cheap Chinese pots can use unpredictable threaded lengths, and are often just very short shafts (of the knurled type) or very long with a flat (where the flat may or may not be a standard size). The problem may have been where Atgames assumed they could get cheap pots to a particular specification, then found that they couldnt. That leaves them with either buying relatively expensive pots (not really an option for cheap consumer stuff) or waiting until some manufacturer is willing to run a special batch through. This timing has to coincide with your contractor(s) for the production, assembly, packing, and shipment of the rest of the paddles. Welcome to modern manufacturing.

Yes, I should have added that in my post. The wireless joystick will time-out and go to sleep, but just pressing any button will wake it and send the button press – there isn't any significant delay. The pot I used was a cheap one, and it seemed a bit twitchy at first but settled down. I would advise that you buy a good quality pot as the cheap ones are not designed to be used constantly. If you can find some old stock of suitable pots then that may be the cheap option. Look up the spec sheet on the Bourns pot I mentioned, and make sure that your one meets the requirements. (Ideally with a half-width flat, which the Bourns one doesn't have, otherwise you will have to do some work to make it fit the existing knobs.) I do want to look into whether the pot lines from the joystick ports can be modified and the signal amplified. If this is feasible, then you should be able to use unmodified paddles by modifying the Flashback 9.

You can also adapt a standard joystick to have the special buttons, as they are simply combinations of impossible directions. That opens up the use of any joystick you want, if you want to modify it or put an adapter in between with the extra button functionality. I think that the paddle change was an error, particularly when they had no modified paddles to sell upon release. They are still going to be available at some point, however, so if you dont want to modify existing paddles you can wait for the Atgames ones.

I think that the paddle issue is hardware. They require 100 times the current to flow at the ‘high’ end of the travel. (This may be due to a fast-polling input that doesn’t behave like the original RIOT chip that handles IO in the 2600.) Possibly you could put an amplifier in the paddle circuit, which is something that I want to look at.

Instructions on swapping out the potentiometer in a standard Atari paddle. You require a 10 kOhm linear single-turn pot for a replacement. I suggest this one: Bourns PDF241-S425F-103B0 Note that I expect the Bourns pot will need the flat deepened. This would require filing down or sanding / Dremelling to make fit. First step is to note which paddle is which. Put a piece of tape on the paddle you want to modify, unless you are going to modify both at once. Paddle with new potentiometer to be installed. This is not a decent pot, it is a cheap one to try while I wait on the delivery of the Bourns ones. Disassembly: take two screws out of back, then take rear cover off. Disassembly: remove knob from front - pulls straight off. Disassembly: remove nut from top of potentiometer, then remove internals. Replacement pot has some issues. Shaft is too long, flat is not deep enough (too much material on shaft), and threaded portion is too short. (Well, this is just a test using a quality Chinesium product...) After some Dremel adjustments to the pot. The small metal part is the insert from the paddle knob - I removed this for a better fit to this pot. (Also note that the paddle knob boss is split - this was already like it. If this makes the knob loose, then you can try glue plus tape to close it, or glue plus some suitably sized heatshrink.) Disconnected from old pot, and soldered to new. Note where the wires go on the original pot, and solder to the same spots. Testing fit. Needs some packing on the right to prevent the pot turning (can't lock this one down as no threads above the surface). You shouldn't require this step, if you use a decent pot. Packing in place. You shouldn't require this step, if you use a decent pot. Working out how much packing I need, due to this pot being loose. You shouldn't require this step, if you use a decent pot. Packing wodge size, on right, worked out. Now just close the paddle and put the screws in. Turns out I still suck at paddle games. Meh.

Part number for a suitable 10 kOhm potentiometer:Bourns PDF241-S425F-103B0 You could use any 10 kOhm, 24 mm pot with a 25 mm long shaft (flatted / D shaft type). The Bourns one is pricey, but is good quality and rated for one million cycles.

Atgames have said that the reason for having new (incompatible) paddles was to make those games more responsive. People had been complaining that the response was poor, so they tried to fix the issue. So in my view Atgames are trying to improve the product. I just think that they went with a poor solution, in this case. (But I don’t know the manufacturing requirements and the restrictions that have to be met to meet a price determined by their customers. Also remember that Atgames’ customers are the retailers, not us.)

I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned, but a setable 4/8 way restrictor for the joystick would be good. That would also require an easy way to access it, ideally.

I found that a 10 kOhm pot will work. You would have to be comfortable replacing the existing 1 MOhm pot, then it should work. Atgames could have simply used a few transistors to amplify the current from the original paddles. Perhaps they have realised that going this route was a mistake, and will fix it this way to work with standard 1 MOhm pot paddles with the Flashback 10?

I will try to do a guide for both the paddle pot replacement and adding the extra buttons. It should be quite simple, provided you can solder. (Or use some other electrical connection type, if that seems a bit scary. Wago connectors would work.)

I tested potentiometers of different values. The one that worked correctly was 10 kOhm. The Bourns part given above should be a good replacement if you want to modify a standard paddle to a Flashback 9 compatible one — you would remove the existing pot and put the Bourns one in its place. It is possible that some other factor is involved, but a 10 kOhm pot works and the standard method for the button also works unaltered (joystick left for left paddle, joystick right for right paddle). Atgames could have used a simple 100:1 gain transistor to amplify the output from a standard 1 MOhm paddle, so I really don’t understand the reasoning behind modified paddles. Four transistors would cost less than a cent in the volumes they would be using. (Perhaps it was a BOM issue: lack of reels on the pick and place machine or such.)