My first custom stick & supergun pictures! Edit: Now 2 g

iatneH · Post by **iatneH** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 1:03 am

The supergun was done last week and is ugly :p

I've only finished the Player 1 side of my control panel today because I ran out of bolts and nuts to mount the Player 2 stick, and I am too dirt-freaking-poor for these few days to spend $4 more so I can finish it.

The control panel has switches inside to change the button mapping (counting clockwise from the bottom one) between D-A-B-C for my JAMMA & NeoGeo shooters, and A-B-C-D for NeoGeo fighters. I don't actually know what the layout of a NeoGeo stick looks like, but this is just a guess. The switches will probably be set to use the top 3 buttons as A, B, and C 99% of the time anyway.

The control panel uses some cheapie Chinese brand sticks and buttons that I got as a bundle off eBay, they don't feel too good, but at this point the panel only cost me around $60 CAD or so to build, and I think I'm only missing around $5 more worth of parts to complete it.

Pictures from most of the processes for both projects here!
Supergun
Sticks

I've been thinking of building sticks for longer than I have of getting into PCB's, I guess it's good though since if I built one last year, I wouldn't have known the wonders of ball-top sticks

mannerbot · Post by **mannerbot** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 2:36 am

ugh to the China clone sticks

Nice work, though.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 2:45 am

Great stuff, im doing something similar myself. But won't have anything to show for a couple of months.

iatneH · Post by **iatneH** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 7:27 am

Oh yeh, neorichieb1971 thanks for all the valuable information on Superguns in the other hardware thread too, it helped me a lot in making mine!

I just finished making an adaptor to use my sticks on Playstation (and then I can run it through adaptors for USB, Dreamcast, and GameCube). Lucky I had a spare Playstation controller and a male DB-15 knocking around my room. Some of you may be pleased to know that an official Sony product was mutilated in the construction of this device

Pretty simple although it must still have taken me over an hour and a half. The hardest part was finding somewhere to put the DB-15 connector (and then filing out the slot to fit it).

PS1 adaptor

I was a bit worried since I heard the button contacts on the official Sony controllers were made of some weird non-solderable material, and that after sanding away the green & black stuff that the solder points are tiny... They weren't too bad since I tinned both the traces and the wires before joining them..

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 8:02 am

I need a way to plug a CP into a playstation.

IE. Use a Neo geo joystick on a playstation.

Is that something you can do?

raiden · Post by **raiden** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 8:30 am

IE. Use a Neo geo joystick on a playstation.
Is that something you can do?

he´s done it already. It´s the PS1 adaptor.

I just finished making an adaptor to use my sticks on Playstation (and then I can run it through adaptors for USB, Dreamcast, and GameCube).

you´ll get better results by building separate adaptors for each of these systems. The more often a signal is converted, the less precise it becomes.

I think your setup looks very nice, especially for a first-time project. I wouldn´t have used a metal casing, because that increases the risk of shorts if a wire might ever come loose, but of course it´s sturdy and looks sleek.
You might have trouble connecting CPS2 boards, as their Jamma connector is surrounded by plastic that might collide with your Supergun case. You could get a Jamma fingerboard+harness as a solution if this problem ever occurs.

Oh, and congrats on splitting up the Supergun and the video converter. This is useful in so many ways, if you ever get an RGB monitor, you can just connect it directly, and right now you can use the converter on old consoles without component, but with RGB output, like the PC Engine for example.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 9:01 am

raiden wrote:
IE. Use a Neo geo joystick on a playstation.
Is that something you can do?
he´s done it already. It´s the PS1 adaptor.

I just finished making an adaptor to use my sticks on Playstation (and then I can run it through adaptors for USB, Dreamcast, and GameCube).
you´ll get better results by building separate adaptors for each of these systems. The more often a signal is converted, the less precise it becomes.

I think your setup looks very nice, especially for a first-time project. I wouldn´t have used a metal casing, because that increases the risk of shorts if a wire might ever come loose, but of course it´s sturdy and looks sleek.
You might have trouble connecting CPS2 boards, as their Jamma connector is surrounded by plastic that might collide with your Supergun case. You could get a Jamma fingerboard+harness as a solution if this problem ever occurs.

Oh, and congrats on splitting up the Supergun and the video converter. This is useful in so many ways, if you ever get an RGB monitor, you can just connect it directly, and right now you can use the converter on old consoles without component, but with RGB output, like the PC Engine for example.

I split mine too.. except I used an off the shelf one.

My gun has DIN 8 RGB exactly like the neo. In fact I built mine around the neo so alot of the wiring is replaced with a scart lead and the joysticks can be either Neo Geo or a CP.

iatneH · Post by **iatneH** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 10:59 pm

Thanks for the advice, raiden. I plan to eventually build an adaptor for the Dreamcast, although I'd feel horrible for hacking up a Sega controller like that... they're not as easy to come across here, whereas PS1 controllers are a dime a dozen (well, maybe more like $5 for 1).
I probably won't even build an adaptor for GameCube, since I'd only play Ikaruga on it (and I'd play the Dreamcast version anyway).

However, I'll keep in mind your advice about the CPS-2 thing. I do actually have a spare fully wired JAMMA harness kicking around, since I got it mail ordered along with my joysticks and pushbuttons but ended up just building one up from scratch.

Well, here's a progress update, the control panel is now complete :)
I guess it's a good thing that I didn't do both sides in the same day, since on the player 2 side I've added an extra ability to switch between normal and yoko control modes (i.e. play tate shooters on a non-rotated screen, with rotated controls)

I forgot to buy another PS1 controller and a male DB-15 though, so I won't be doing double plays for a while...

iatneH · Post by **iatneH** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 4:12 am

Another week, another supergun.

http://photobucket.com/albums/y120/iatn ... pergun_02/

This one only took me 2 days to make (although I started late last night, I probably could have done it all in one day). But boy it's even uglier than my first one. This time around I just wanted to make a compact one that I can leave at work to play during breaks and whatnot.

The power supply was free this time, so that saved money, and thanks to my er, excellent foresight, I only need one JROK to bring back and forth between home and work, the video convertor unit is pretty small.

I couldn't find any board-mounted ports with square (as opposed to staggered) pin arrangements though, so I had to make do with regular cable-end/plate-mount ports glued to the board. I'd be surprised if the glue manages to hold out for one or two days :\

D · Post by D » Mon Jul 04, 2005 3:40 pm

I once tried to solder playstation adapters for the pc, but it wouln't work.

Well anyway I have a tip that might be relevant. When making joysticks that work on the PS, one might consider pputting in the start select and ANALOG on/off buttons. I'm sure it might be beneficial for some games, like Raiden DX for instance where you have lots of screen options that are not save-able, etc. Well, just a thought happy constructing. I love all those projects, they are very beautiful to me.