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another 7800 arcade stick help question


iggytheroach

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hey all,

new to the forum but have been creeping wtihout being a member for a while now.. a few months ago i bought a 7800 system without any cables or controllers, i had the video, ordering the power was easy enough, but given the general review of the proline controller, i decided to build my own controller from arcade parts. seems to have worked out okay for the most part, the 2600 and 2600 games recognize the controller right off. i used http://atariage.com/forums/topic/219466-diy-7800-arcade-stick-help/this post as a rough guide, including the pinout incorporated therein. the major difference is the base wire i'm using is chopped up cat5e, mostly because its what i had laying around the house.

 

now for the particulars, i have 620 ohm resistors in the ground wires for each of the two buttons, and diodes in the lines running to pins 5 and 9. without the diodes i get a weird auto fire feature mentioned elsewhere in the forums. the ground wire for each button has its own line running to pin 8. as far as i can tell everything is wired "correctly" based against info found elsewhere in the forums.

 

so thats good.... except using xevious as a test cart, i can use my joystick, but not the buttons.

 

like i said running it against seaquest using the 7800... everything works fine.

xevious or asteroids for the 7800... get me nothing.

 

interesting side note, joust, robotron, and galaga all seem to work fine from what i can tell

 

any ideas on what went wrong?

Edited by iggytheroach
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like i said running it against seaquest using the 7800... everything works fine.

xevious or asteroids for the 7800... get me nothing.

 

interesting side note, joust, robotron, and galaga all seem to work fine from what i can tell

 

any ideas on what went wrong?

 

It sounds like you are having issues with games that require or are configured for two independent buttons; however, one button games are working fine.

 

Flip the difficulty switches of your console and try Xevious again. It may now fire and drop bombs with one of the buttons only.

 

If the above proves true, then you may want to review that your buttons are not laid out/wired for the same function/dual one button support.

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no sir, flipping the difficulty switches makes no difference. you just press the buttons and... nothing.... i lchecked the pinout again for the 5th time tonight... the only thing i havent done is tie pin 7 (which is your 5v +) to anything. but this: http://old.pinouts.ru/Inputs/JoystickAtari7800_pinout.shtmlis the only place i see it mentioned at all. all the other pinouts ive seen list it as 5v+ but unused as well

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I realize it is mentioned in the thread link you posted earlier, just to confirm, does your layout follow what is listed here for the 7800; especially the "7800 control (buttons)" section?

 2600/7800 pinouts:
 _________________
 \ o5 o4 o3 o2 o1/
  \ o9 o8 o7 o6 /
   \___________/
 
 pin #  2600 control     7800 control
   1    WHT- Up          WHT- Up
   2    BLU- Down        BLU- Down
   3    GRN- Left        GRN- Left
   4    BRN- Right       BRN- Right
   5    unused           RED- Button (R)ight (-)
   6    ORG- Button      ORG- Both buttons (+)
   7    unused (+5v)     unused (+5v)
   8    BLK- Ground(-)   BLK- Ground(-)
   9    unused           YLW- Button (L)eft  (-)
 
 
 2600 control (button)
 
 pin 6 ORG(+) --------------()------------BLK(-) pin 8
                       Button
 
 7800 control (buttons)
 
                                        /----------YLW(-) pin 9
                             Button L  /
                       /---------()---| YLW splits
                      /                \----///-----\
 pin 6 ORG(+) -------| ORG splits           620 ohm  |---BLK(-) pin 8
                      \                /----///-----/
                       \---------()---|     620 ohm
                            Button R   \RED splits
                                        \----------RED(-) pin 5
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yessir.that diagram was my starting point like i said each of those grounds going to pin 8 with the resistors has their own line up to the pin... the daisy chain of ground from the joystick meets them there. and the diodes are on the line from each button to pins 5 and 9. ive played around with rotating those diodes (which puts the controller back into autofire) and removing them (same result). it did strike me as odd though that the diode method pops up not only in the post that i cited earlier, but also in the conversion guides for sega master system controllers, yet isn't metnioned in that diagram at all, even though the resistors are...

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pin 6 has their own line for each button. basically the lines for pin 6 have their own quick disconnect on each button, the ground and 5 share a quick disconnect, and the ground and 9 share a quick disconnect. in the original setup before i started troubleshooting it tonight, pin 6 and 5 shared one and pin 6 and 9 shared one. one run for each button. but the diodes were after the split seeing as how your split point was the pad for the quick disconnect itself. if that makes sense? if not i can supply a few photos. to help you guys visualize the mess ive made here lol

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IMG_20150725_093558_zpsyzfai10u.jpgIMG_20150725_093625_zpsttgjwurc.jpg

so heres the 2 pics showing parts of the wire setup, using the breakout board and quick detach mounts its relatively easy to disassemble :P but the first picture is one of the runs that would be to pin 9 with the diode, unprotected for now in case i have to tinker with it, and pin 8 with the resistor, showing basically both ends of the run. pic 2 is of one of the runs that would be going to pin 6 when it was hooked up. like i said with that, its in its own run so it doesn't interact with the diode at all.

Edited by iggytheroach
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I've modded quite a few controllers for the 7800 and to be honest I've never used a diode and it's worked just fine.

Make sure your 620 ohm resistors are soldered from your button to ground. Then double check both buttons are connected to the "Common" line. Remember the buttons don't get connected to the Ground that is attached to the directional pads

Double check the db9 wiring as well, so nothing has been soldered backwards, etc. this is easy to do, and I've done this several times!

Hope this might help

 

Good Luck :-)

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thanks. the diode thing is an odd one for sure. i ordered them as a just in case thing, glad i did because without the diode it goes into an auto fire function. put in hero and everything runs fine but the guy is always firing. like i said ill double check all the wiring from top to bottom, plus i have another breakout board just in case. i have 2 db9 cables and i get the same result with both, which is what lead me to believe the issue was inside the housing.

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trying to be diligent and try everything with this. so i tried your post jack, right down to just soldering up everything directly to the db9 cable, (no breakout in the mix) and still nothing. without diodes i get autofire on both the normally open and normally closed sides of this microswitch. and under normal circumstances i would be willing to say hey its just the microswitch let me swap it out, except theres the generalized thing of it working as it should with the diode in something that only requires one button (joust, 2600 games, etc.) so that proves out the button right? so then the question is what is different here than with your hack, which obviously worked for you, or even LBC's hack which seems to have worked for him.

 

something has to be different. but i have no idea what it is :/

 

tl;dr: autofire without diodes no matter what i try. no autofire with diodes, but no button presses on 2 button games. tried hardwiring directly, and tried both sides of micro switch. all to no new results.

 

sidenote: whats the possibility the need or not need for a diode traces back to the revision of your 7800? some seem to need them, some not, and we know they did some revision to the board when the expansion port was taken off of it.... i know mine doesn't have the expansion port. and i would guess would be a later production run of the system...

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I've modded quite a few controllers for the 7800 and to be honest I've never used a diode and it's worked just fine.

Make sure your 620 ohm resistors are soldered from your button to ground. Then double check both buttons are connected to the "Common" line. Remember the buttons don't get connected to the Ground that is attached to the directional pads

Double check the db9 wiring as well, so nothing has been soldered backwards, etc. this is easy to do, and I've done this several times!

Hope this might help

 

Good Luck :-)

Mine have no diodes in them either and they work great.

post-33189-0-78937700-1405638121.jpg

 

I soldered my wires directly to the dsub connector in the back. I use 9-pin extension cables to connect it up. No controllers were harmed. Mine uses 560 ohm resistors since my local Radio shack did not carry 620. The more common 680 should also work fine. Since I have no PCB inside the joystick, I actually soldered the two resistors directly to each other between both NO contacts on both fire switches. The center lead between the resistors is connected to ground. Common on both buttons is to pin 6 per design of the 7800 Proline. The NO pins are each soldered to one of the resistors and pin 5 and 9 of the D-sub connector.

 

Sorry for the shit drawing. I used a mouse in paint. Normally I draw schematics on graph paper and scan them but this is a quick doodle.

post-33189-0-52959000-1437928014_thumb.png

Edited by stardust4ever
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i just wish i knew where they were connected that you guys don't have them hooked. and honestly you all do some wonderful looking work, all the diy controllers look wonderful, when i finally get mine looking the way i want it too ill make sure to upload a few pics for you all to see... in the meantime heres the closest i got to a diagram that shows whats going on

shitdiagram_zpsa6cnvq5p.png

granted it looks like a half assed laser light show but... all the ground connections are running to the common pin on the microswitches, the one thing this diagram is meant to show and probably fails horribly at, is that whether it be the N O pin of each button or pins 6 or 8, it becomes a junction point for the lines. theres no in line splice, except for where the resistors are in on the grounds for the buttons. could common being ground rather than pin 6 be the source of a lot of the issue i'm having? ill poke at it and update when i can figure it out

Edited by iggytheroach
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fixed. hopefully this helps others, but here's where the issue was. my grounds were connected to common, not NO on each button, both of the runs from pin 6 go to common on L and R respectively, meanwhile pins 5,8, and 9 all go to the NO pin on your microswitch. which means i had some confusion in reading the finer details of the pinout/wiring diagram. so mostly user error on my end. however, since i was already switching my grounds off of common on the buttons, i made sure to do it on the joystick microswitches as well. but the 2 runs off pin 6 were the culprit. no diodes needed in the end product. which could mean that LBC, the weird auto engage behavior you were having was tied to the same issue i was having. maybe its worth a check out, as really it was xevious that was the cart that tipped me off that something wasn't working right. just a thought.

 

i'll post one more major post after i get the asthetics right on this joystick.

 

is there already a diy joystick gallery on the forums somewhere?

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fixed.

 

...

 

i'll post one more major post after i get the asthetics right on this joystick.

 

is there already a diy joystick gallery on the forums somewhere?

Glad you got it sorted. I would post pics here when you're done:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/223203-do-you-use-a-homebrew-joystick-post-your-pics/

 

You reminded me that I never took a pic of the internals of my 7800 joystick. My resistor bridge between the micro switches is kinda ghetto. Hopefully I don't ever have to replace them...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am sorry I missed the beginning of this thread, as I think I could have been helpful.

 

I can confirm that no diodes are necessary for a 7800 controller. For Edladdin controllers we use the exact same drawing Trebor references above. Here are some snaps that show ALL the wiring steps. In all cases the wires are color coded correctly for the above drawing. I've also added pin numbers for added clarity.

 

This particular harness was for a "Supreme" where there are four fire buttons - B1 and B2 are mirrored on the left and right of the joystick to allow easy switching hands, so you can see its super easy to add the second pair with this harness. I hope this helps!

 

Please feel free to PM me or post here with any questions! I am happy to help.

 

Edit: Various fooling around with the photos... I was not able to get them in any order, but they are labeled alphabetically.

post-40253-0-40040000-1439411816_thumb.jpg

post-40253-0-10213300-1439411817_thumb.jpg

post-40253-0-72095900-1439411817_thumb.jpg

post-40253-0-52412900-1439411818_thumb.jpg

post-40253-0-33752900-1439411819_thumb.jpg

post-40253-0-05965800-1439411820_thumb.jpg

post-40253-0-81735100-1439411820_thumb.jpg

post-40253-0-53368700-1439411821_thumb.jpg

Edited by edladdin
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