IT'S ALIVE II CV Mutant Gamepad!

[joeybastard]

I was inspired by Doubledown's beautiful NES CV gamepads to make one of my own but I wanted a Genny Pad and I wanted a number pad on it.

 

Behold the ugliest CV gamepad ever but it works great and was pretty easy to do. While it looks really awkward, it's actually just as comfortable as a regular Genny pad with a tiny bit of extra weight from the CV board and half of the body. Both fire buttons work and it was pretty easy to use some of the existing Genny circuit board for the directionals.

 

I think I'm going to name it the Sunuvabichi 1000

[ScottHuggins]

Joe,

 

Nice work, just a coupla Q's:

 

1. Does it feel nicer to use than the Super Action sticks? There's a thrift store close to my house that has a box full of NES and Genny controllers, might need to consider doing this.

 

2. Does it help with destroying Eviscerator 6000 Series Killbots?

[jetset]

I dont know whether or not to be impressed or cry at the utter brutality.

 

I want one.

[Blackjack]

Very nice Frankenpad you've created there. I'd like one myself.

[joeybastard]

Joe,

 

Nice work, just a coupla Q's:

 

1. Does it feel nicer to use than the Super Action sticks? There's a thrift store close to my house that has a box full of NES and Genny controllers, might need to consider doing this.

 

2. Does it help with destroying Eviscerator 6000 Series Killbots?

 

1. I'm a huge fan of the SACs myself and used them most of the time before I made this thing. I haven't played every CV game I have with it yet but it's definitely more comfortable than the SA sticks for some games. For example, Q*bert and Q*Bert's Qubes are MUCH better with this pad held at an angle. I was never happy with the SACS on those two. This is also better on games that need a little more precision directionals like Montezuma's Revenge and Miner 2049er although the SACS were pretty good on those anyway. I think it's personal comfort thing but I think I'll be using this on probably half of my CV games. The SACS are just better for some games, no doubt.

 

2. I have a feeling I'll prefer the SACS for that when I get my sweaty little palms on a cart but you never know.

 

Tomorrow (most likely), I'll post a some pics of the inside and give a quick description of what to do. I'm a complete spaz with this stuff but if I got it to work, I think anybody probably can. If you're good at this stuff(and I suspect you are), this is a piece of cake.

 

I have to look at the pile of Genny pads(I had to use a certain board revision) I have, I might make a few more of these so you might not have to do it yourself

Edited January 26, 2008 by joeybastard

[Vic George 2K3]

Looks like the ColecoVision hand controller joined the Mickey Mouse Club or something.

[+RangerG]

It looks like a phallic phone of some sort.

[ScottHuggins]

That's kinda what I saw in it. A phone. It rings and stuff while you play a game....

 

It looks like a phallic phone of some sort.

[jboypacman]

I wont mind having one of these if anything to have around to get a response out of people.

[doubledown]

I don't even have the words, but if it works for you enjoy. I've got 3 new ColecoVision controllers that I'm working on, but I never thought of this particular combination.

 

But you outta re-wire the Coleco PCB with the Genesis cable so you don't have to sit on top of your console to play.

[+remowilliams]

Well. That's certainly ummm, something...

 

[ScottHuggins]

Admit it, you feel the heat from this beautiful piece of work!

 

I don't even have the words, but if it works for you enjoy. I've got 3 new ColecoVision controllers that I'm working on, but I never thought of this particular combination.

 

But you outta re-wire the Coleco PCB with the Genesis cable so you don't have to sit on top of your console to play.

[joeybastard]

I don't even have the words, but if it works for you enjoy. I've got 3 new ColecoVision controllers that I'm working on, but I never thought of this particular combination.

 

But you outta re-wire the Coleco PCB with the Genesis cable so you don't have to sit on top of your console to play.

 

Oh it's butt ugly but really this was just a trial run to see if I could get everything to function. I'm completely amatuer at this, I don't know anything about electronics other what I've observed about how these things work. Getting this to work is a big deal to me and since I thought the result was pretty funny looking, I posted it. I think you'd be surprised at the feel though, for a kludged together thing, it's actually pretty comfortable. I need to trim some of the CV stick case down where it attaches to the Genny pad for a little bit more grip but that's really minimal. You're right about using a different cord too since the CV cords are too damn short.

 

Admit it, you feel the heat from this beautiful piece of work!

He shouldn't. Doubledown's controllers are really nice and I'm sure they are better than the mutant thing I came up with. I'm not trying to compete

[Inky]

OK Joey, I want one of those things

[joeybastard]

So here's what I did in case anybody else feels like trying it. I take no responsibility for anyone screwing up their Genny or CV controllers trying this. This is the just the wiring part, I'll leave it up to you to on how you want to route the wires, cut the cases, etc. I just drilled a whole in the bottom of the Genny pad to lead the wires up from the CV board. Hacked off the stick part of the CV stick and attached the two cases with screws.

 

The first thing I did was open up the Genny pad and remove the chip and little tan resistors. I just clipped them off with a pair of dykes. I used the soldering iron and a desolder bulb to clear the holes on the resisitors a bit since that was where I was hooking up my direction wires. Then before I attached anything I also made 3 slices into the board to break the contact that was originally there for the Genny buttons. At this point I had to drill a small hole on either side of the fire buttons(4 holes total) to give me a place to attach the wires for the fire buttons.

 

Take a look at the picture of the Genny pad with the front/back view:

 

1. The red dots are where I hooked the wires for the directionals and the blue dot is the ground I used for all 4 of them. It's easy to look at the pad and see where the original connection runs to these solder points so figuring out up/down/left/right is a piece of cake.

 

2. The yellow lines are where I cut the board to break the original Genny's contacts. I had to cut into the board to do it for which I used a little hobby roto-cut thing I have.

 

3. The red half circles near the yellow are where I attached the fire button wires. I had to drip some solder onto the contacts first, then solder the wires on. I didn't use the C button or the start button from the Genny pad.

 

OK now for the CV stick. I'm using Doubledown's picture of the board from another thread and just made some notes. I cut the old fire buttons off the board and just attached the wires where I put the colored dots in the picture. It's pretty cut and dry when you look at it.

 

The cool thing is, you don't need to use a Genny pad for this. Since a controller is really just a series of on/off switches, you can make whatever configuration you want. You just need to use a CV board and attach the wires where I put the colored dots in the picture. Then hook those wires to your corresponding switches. I used a Genny pad mostly because it's comfortable, simple and had the gold contacts I could get solder to stick to. Have fun, I'm making an arcade style stick with this method next

Edited January 28, 2008 by joeybastard

[Jess Ragan]

Admittedly, it's not the way I would have done things, but at least you've got both buttons working on that controller. I used a daisy chaining method that left me with only one active button on the controller. The design isn't nearly as imaginative as yours, either... it's just a 9-pin DIN sticking out of the face of the ColecoVision controller. I wish there were some way to feed input from the second button of the Genesis controller to the ColecoVision's stock pad without hardwiring, but the tech experts on this site have assured me that it's just not feasible.

 

By the way, if you're technophobic and want a good scare, open up your ColecoVision controller and look at the mess of resistors on the bottom of the circuit board. That's what it took to cram fifteen wires' worth of controller data into nine wires, folks!

[doubledown]

By the way, if you're technophobic and want a good scare, open up your ColecoVision controller and look at the mess of resistors on the bottom of the circuit board. That's what it took to cram fifteen wires' worth of controller data into nine wires, folks!

 

Technically they are diodes not resistors, and technically it'd be 19 wires worth of data (4 directions, 2 buttons, 12 keys, 1 common) and technically the standard ColecoVision controller only uses 7 wires. Still mind boggling never-the-less.

[joeybastard]

By the way, if you're technophobic and want a good scare, open up your ColecoVision controller and look at the mess of resistors on the bottom of the circuit board. That's what it took to cram fifteen wires' worth of controller data into nine wires, folks!

 

Technically they are diodes not resistors, and technically it'd be 19 wires worth of data (4 directions, 2 buttons, 12 keys, 1 common) and technically the standard ColecoVision controller only uses 7 wires. Still mind boggling never-the-less.

 

Yikes, that even sounds more daunting then I thought. That's why I just tapped into the CV board and used the stock number pad. I know I don't have the skill to figure out a way to rewire all of that stuff into a new design.

[joeybastard]

By the way, I don't how many people saw it but here's an excellent site with CV controller info made by Chromesphere here on AA:

 

Chromesphere

 

Admittedly I'm too dumb to understand much of this but since many of you guys are way more advanced in this stuff, this site will probably be invaluable.

[doubledown]

By the way, I don't how many people saw it but here's an excellent site with CV controller info made by Chromesphere here on AA:

 

Chromesphere

 

Admittedly I'm too dumb to understand much of this but since many of you guys are way more advanced in this stuff, this site will probably be invaluable.

 

I saw that the other day, but I wonder why he didn't add a keypad to that controller. Only a couple buttons for a few of the numbers, but not the entire keypad.

[joeybastard]

I'm guessing that since he used big arcade type buttons that he didn't want to clutter up the panel. If I remember right he just put 1-4 on there for single player options.

[chromesphere]

I'm guessing that since he used big arcade type buttons that he didn't want to clutter up the panel. If I remember right he just put 1-4 on there for single player options.

 

Hey guys,

The 4 buttons across the top of the controller represent buttons 1 to 4. The '4' buttons can be changed to '5' by simply swapping the leads inside the enclosure. I included the '5' button because i wanted to play mouse trap :-)

 

Your right Joey. I think 8 buttons on the front of the arcade panel would take up too much realestate, and to be honest, i dont use 6, 7 or 8 for any of the games i play. If you want to play a 2 player game you can hit those buttons on the 2nd player controller pad (for most games anyway).

 

CS

[Shawn]

That Genny CV controller looks like what I would think a R&D\concept\franken-proto Jag controller looked like. Neat little thing. I'd fill in the gap at the middle of the pad where the keyb is with some liquid plastic and it would look alot more cosmetically pleasing. Great that you got your idea to come to life there for sure.

Edited October 7, 2008 by Shawn Sr.