cleaning joysticks

[Thaumaturge]

Greetings Gentlemen, my first post here, forgive me if this topic has been brought up before, but I couldn't seem to find it on the forums.

 

Regretably all three joysticks I own are broken, two work fine unless you want to use the forward direction, the other will not work if you want to go left, I suspect there is just dust in the controllers.

 

Is there a way i can clean these joysticks, like take them apart and apply some cleaning agent? Is there a certain method that other members have found to work?

 

Also, could I do the same with my 2600? I think it works alright, but undoubtedly years of use (and cupboard storage) probably have made it filthy.

 

 

I hope someone could entertain this newbies ignorance and answer these simple questions.

[paul]

not sure if this will help, but here is an article i scanned from an old commodore magazine about repairing atari joysticks.

 

http://members.cox.net/plas1/articles/joys...tickrepair1.jpg

http://members.cox.net/plas1/articles/joys...tickrepair2.jpg

 

paul

[Mindfield]

You can also check eBay for replacement contact caps. This auction (and many like it) will do the trick. $7.50 shipped and you'll be able to fix 20 sticks. :-)

[bjk7382]

If one of the directions don't work, you most likely have a broken wire inside of the middle of the cord. This is a common problem with joystick cables. They get bent too many times and the wires break in the middle where they can't be fixed.

 

You can test this easily with a multimeter with a continuity setting.

 

Take the joysticks apart first and see if all the dome swithces are in the correct place over the contacts. If they are, you most likely have bad wires on your joysticks that can't be fixed without buying new wires.