Inside the Sigma 2200TB controller

[emenelopee]

I recently got my hands on the gorgeous Sigma 2200TB. There is precious little online about this stick and almost zero on the internals, so as with the Inside the Sigma 9000TB thread here at Shmups, I thought I'd document some of the stick for posterity. Choice selection here, full album at the end of this link LINK ON ITS WAY.

If anyone can date this thing that would be grand - late 80s/early 90s?


Gorgeous little thing.

Outside

Spoiler

White background - the case is more eggshell than it appears in images


Front, access screws


Left side


Right side


Rear - two access screws on bottom row, two PCB mount screws on top row


Rear - 13 pin DIN is the only connection


Undercarriage, removable plate for stick access

Details

Spoiler

Love the screws in their atomic orbits. Three screws, doesn't feel any less solid


Buttons are 24mm which I didn't expect. I haven't hooked it up to figure all the extra switches. Alpha-Beta swap is obvious, looks like only three have autofire (green)?, two are start/select, so what's the F or L or whatever that symbol is on upper blue? Buttons are clean and smooth, no need to replace.


Overall pretty small, 11.5in, 292mm


Balltop and cover off. Is this an older style Seimitsu?


Rear cover sticks out.


Rear cover off, stick pokes out the bottom


As does the restrictor plate


You'd need to cut the restrictor down to get the 1-way working. 4-way looks like it would fit. Square gate, looks like an older style.

Internals

Spoiler

Clean inside, you can see the primer at the centre where they didn't fully spray on the inside. Likely carbon/mild steel, not stainless.


Stick. Seimitsu LS-32? Can anyone confirm? Wires soldered straight to switches and board - no quick connects or sockets here.


Other side


PCB. V old school. Looks like wires are soldered directly to pads? Buttons are soldered straight onto the PCB, no pass-through like 9000TB for easy button swap


13-pin DIN, looks pretty standard, though I'm not too familiar with the pin pattern into the PCB.


Buttons, looks like Seimitsu PS-14-D


Buttons, looks like Seimitsu PS-14-D


Some switches

Summary

It's a lovely little board, very solid though sounds as hollow as it is. It's in great condition so I won't be modifying it at all - if it was in of a worse condition I would see about getting larger buttons, but in the near mint state it's in I don't think I'll even change the stick. Right now I'm rigging up a converter from the 13-pin DIN to DB15, thankfully there doesn't seem to be any encoding so should be a straight-through into your favourite supergun.

Hope these images come in handy for anyone reading - there is so little out there on this stick and this is the perfect example to document a little. lmk if there are any parts you want a closer look at. I'm not taking out the PCB except if strictly necessary but anything else I can do.

Useful links (I keep losing this info)

https://beepgamecenter.com/2016/06/13/c ... poneses-i/ - general info and history
http://bz504178zb.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-474.html - Butchered modification: guy couldn't connect up a cable so he broke out the connector and soldered a loom straight to the PCB.
https://w.atwiki.jp/sigma-denshi/pages/14.html - pinouts

[Spacemonkey]

Nice. I used to have the 3 button version a long time ago, I was able to make a PC Engine cable for it. IIRC It actually had the circuitry on the PCB in the joystick.
This one is probably different since it has more buttons.

[emenelopee]

I don't have the same luck here. Some luck from the custom cable but I'll have to stitch in some extra buttons to get coin and start along with 6 button. The graphics on the housing is super confusing.

[16shot]

Nice. I used to have the 3 button version a long time ago, I was able to make a PC Engine cable for it. IIRC It actually had the circuitry on the PCB in the joystick.
This one is probably different since it has more buttons.

Sorry for crashing this thread a little, we've had one of those 3 button Sigma S-9 Turbo ones for a long time. Having never managed to get our hands on any of the cables, i had recently planned to open it up in order to trace things around and build a cable for the PC Engine when i stumbled upon this reply from Spacemonkey.

Do you happen to remember how you wired that up on the joystick's end of the cable at all? The original cable looks like it's a straight connection so i'm assuming the stick itself contains the required 74HC157?

I'll try and have a look into this when there's a minute, though i'd be very thankful for any shortcut obviously