Found. Lock please

[Phantom]

For trade....anyone that knows me knows I have some nice 2600 games available for trade. If the Joys dont work properly, I dont want them. I have 5 that work like crap already. 1-2 would be great. If anyone knows how to fix them, I'll send u the 5 I have and We can work something out too for $ or trade. PM me. Thanks

Edited February 28, 2009 by Phantom

[A.J. Franzman]

If it's just the buttons not working, have you tried cleaning the contacts?

 

Start by prying off the bezel around the top 3 buttons with a small flat blade screwdriver, from the right side. Remove the bezel and the 3-button elastomeric pad. Then remove the screws from the case bottom, turn the case back upright, center the joystick and open the case while pulling upward on the joystick. Be careful not to break the two friction-fit pins near the bottom end of the case -- use a wide flat blade screwdriver without sharp edges to help pry the case open if needed. Make note of the positions of the potentiometer arms underneath where the joystick was. You can leave the printed plastic ribbon contact device in place in the case bottom, but of course you'll need to remove all of the elastomeric pads and the plastic side buttons.

 

Use a clean pencil eraser to polish all the interleaved metal track contact areas, then be sure to brush or blow out all of the rubber crumbs. Be careful with the 3-button contact "tail" and don't let it bend around while you clean it. Wipe any remaining invisible rubber residue off the contacts with a clean, soft, dry cloth. Make sure the black dots on the backs of all the elastomeric pads are clean. You can use a bit of masking tape or other adhesive tape to remove any clinging particles from them.

 

Put the side buttons and pads in place, line up the numeric pad in position on its contact area, make sure the potentiometer arms are back the way they were, straighten out the joystick sliders (the narrow "legs" go downward) and pull up on the stick while holding it centered. Now thread the 3-button ribbon contact tail through the top left slot while putting the case back together. When everything is together, lined up correctly, closed tight, the joystick fels like it's working right, and the case is screwed back together, then tuck the free end of the tail down, and snap the 3-button elastomeric pad and bezel back in place.

 

I could do all this for you, but unfortunately I don't have a 5200 system to test them on, so I would have no way of knowing whether the cleaning is good enough or if there is something else wrong.

 

 

EDIT: New info - see post #7 below.

Edited November 6, 2006 by A.J. Franzman

[rjchamp3]

Best electronics.com

[Mezrabad]

I got two ones with the system I bought about 18 months ago and the buttons on the side didn't work so well which made every game a little painful.

 

Solution? Go to Pep Boys and buy a rewindow defogger repair kit. The sell you a vile of a conductive paste about the consistency of nailpolish/nailpolish remover that is normally used to paint in conductor that has peeled away from a rear window defogger system.

 

I took apart my controllers (plenty info on how to do this is out there) and very carefully painted the carbon contacts so that they were a nice shiny copper (using that conductive paste), waited for it to dry, put the sticks back together and these babies were better than any 5200 joysticks I'd every used.

 

The exact instructions for how to do it are somewhere on the net. Google around for it. If I stumble upon it anytime soon I'll post the link here.

[accousticguitar]

I prefer a 5200 Wico aftermarket stick.

[Mezrabad]

For trade....anyone that knows me knows I have some nice 2600 games available for trade. If the Joys dont work properly, I dont want them. I have 5 that work like crap already. 1-2 would be great. If anyone knows how to fix them, I'll send u the 5 I have and We can work something out too for $ or trade. PM me. Thanks

 

PM Sent.

[A.J. Franzman]

After some additional experience with 5200 controller buttons not working right, I'm now amending my advice on cleaning the contacts. It's still a good idea, and if after a cleaning your controllers work fine for a long time, good for you.

 

However, if after cleaning the flex-circuit contacts they still don't work well, or they work OK for a little while then get crappy again in less than a year, I would go along with either the defogger repair paint treatment or the aluminum foil treatment as being good remedies. Here's a guide by -^Cro§Bow^- to cleaning and modifying your 5200 sticks: Atari 5200 Joystick Repair.

 

Substitute painting the carbon dots with defogger repair paint instead of applying little squares of aluminum tape if you prefer. Also, I did not find it necessary to scrub the dots on paper to clean them before applying aluminum tape; what I did was to press each dot against the sticky side of a piece of masking tape and pull it off a couple of times. That should be more than enough to get them clean enough for the foil to stick, without unduly wearing them away.

Edited November 6, 2006 by A.J. Franzman