PC joystick adaptor headaches

[Jacob]

I have been trying to make one of these for awhile now (yes, I know they are available at the atari store, but if I had $50 to spare I would be into Xbox not atari) although the headaches I've had trying to figure it out might have been worth the $50!!.

I have it all wired up with 10uf capacitors - these are way too jumpy & ms. pac-man goes in one direction constantly (I played with the trimmers & I get varying degrees of sensitivity in the directions - I know the correct capacitors will probably solve this & will get them as soon as a viable alternative to radio shack arrives or they actually decide to stock their shelves. The main problem i'm having is with the keypad. I have a fully functional 5200 joystick but when it's connected through my adaptor NO keys work at all. All the pins are connected straight through but the key pad won't work at all. Those were the first set of wires I set up, then I tried to work the keypad before I wired the rest of the joystick wires so I could be sure I was on the right track - none of the keys worked. Shouldn't the keypad at least work with pins 1-8 wired or should the capacitors & remaining wires be wired for the y adaptor to work?? I thought it shouldn't matter - correct me if i'm wrong. Either way it didn't work so I continued to wire the rest of the adaptor anyway with the negative leads on both capacitors on the ground wire (pin 15 to 4) and the other end of one capacitor to the 11 to 6 wire and the end of the other to the 10 to 3 wire. It was all ready to go but the keypad still won't work.

I am so frustrated because this should be rather simple but I'm obviously missing something (probably right in front of my face). By the way double stick tape with aluminum foil on the contact dots - perfect response.

[Dantaipan]

I don't really have an answer but I have a suggestion. When I was making these adapters, I had a female plug (board style with the legs) and soldered the top row of pins directly into a male plug. This way, everything just passes directly through no wires to worry about or anything (for the keypad at least). Sorry I don't have any other suggestions other than triple check all of the connections to the diagram.

[Jacob]

Well I decided to try some different capacitors (.22 uf this time - these looked like green chicklets) I wired these in the same place where I had the previous capacitors. the same joystick now works perfectly & the numerical keys on my 5200 joystick now work, however, the start,pause & reset keys still don't work??????? Why would anything other than the 1-8 wires affect keypad function? The capacitors had no neg or pos marking but I made sure they were both facing the same way. Oh well ....almost there. Thanks Yodan for the suggestion. I did get the cord I used from a thrift shop - but I made sure all pins were wired & working before hacking it up for my adaptor.