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Author Topic: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.  (Read 19280 times)

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Offline som99Topic starter

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Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« on: September 06, 2012, 09:06:42 PM »
Well as some of my Amiga joysticks are getting worn out (Mostly the button(s)) and also some games works good with a gamepad I bought a few brand new Megadrive/Genesis gamepads.

So like many(all) of you know jumping in platformers or accelerating racing games on the Amiga is often done by pressing the stick up, and using a D-Pad that just don't feel right so I wanted to fix that.

This is an EASY mod, nearly anyone will pull it off and if you can't you might know someone who can do it for you.

Im just writing this for the few out there that want to do this but don't know how to do it.

Here is the brand new "SUPER PAD" I got for 3$ of the Swedish ebay.



Open it up, and if you as me has a cat who loves to watch don't let it near any components  and don't touch it since she/he is a static bomb. (She knows she can watch as long as she do not touch anything and she knows I wont pet her).


When you have opened the controller locate the trace from the up button and the A button, there is two traces per button, keep in mind that one is ground and they all go tegether to the bigger trace, so don't touch that.

You simply use a knife and scrape of the protective coating from the UP trace, keep in mind to look at the top part of the case so the wire do not get in the way when closing the case.

Then Solder a wire from the UP trace to the chosen button, in my case A since B and C is used as button 1 and 2 on the Amiga.

I had exposed traces from the buttons so no need to scrape there, but some controllers might not.


Then just use a knife to cut the trace from the chosen button and remove a part to be sure.


Now if you feel you don't need to do more that is enough.

But I wanted to be able to switch the D-Pad up on and off since it's easy to touch jump by mistake when going left and right. But still keep the option to be able to use D-Pad up in games.

So you can do two things, cut the D-Pad up trace or cut and solder a switch, I did the latter.

First you need an on/off switch, any that will fit inside the controller will do.
I went for one of these.


Then I cut some on the PCB to be able to fit it where I wanted it. Be careful not to damage any traces while cutting in the PCB.

And it fits good :)


Then I made a cut in the plastic fitted the switch and glued it on place, then I cut the D-Pad up trace left of the button solder, then I soldered a wire left of the cut to the switch and a wire right(where the button solder is) of the cut to the switch and presto done.


And this is how it looks, 3 buttons usable and switch to turn D-Pad up off/on.


I will get a few other Genesis/Megadrive/master system gamepads of all types and shapes coming next week then I will take photos of when doing the same on them.

Edit: Orders checked, 1x Master system controller, 6x Genesis/megadrive controllers 1x original all others third party ones some cool designs. Also I just put down an order for 2x Arcade sticks I want to build for the Miggy for the games that must be played with joystick :)

Ill see what I can do with the worn out Amiga joysticks, the buttons are near dead but I hope to be able to fix them also :)
« Last Edit: September 06, 2012, 10:43:58 PM by som99 »
 

Offline runequester

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #1 on: September 06, 2012, 09:25:51 PM »
Very nice. Thanks for posting!
Nice kitty too
 

Offline amiman99

Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #2 on: September 06, 2012, 10:03:05 PM »
Very nice mod!
I actually rewired the PS1 controller and added an UP control as a separate button. So, same idea.
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Offline som99Topic starter

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #3 on: September 06, 2012, 10:40:38 PM »
Quote from: runequester;706865
Very nice. Thanks for posting!
Nice kitty too

Thank you, her name is Zelda ;)

Quote from: amiman99;706872
Very nice mod!
I actually rewired the PS1 controller and added an UP control as a separate button. So, same idea.

Thank you, I felt the switch was needed atleast on the megadrive/genesis controller since it was far to easy to press up by accident, Nice with a PSX controller, Might be something ill do in the future also :D

Just ordered two arcade stick ill rebuild for Amiga also :)
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2012, 10:44:01 PM »
Wouldn't it be better just to make a little in-line adapter to do this?  Then you wouldn't have to do the same mod for every new controller you bought.

I use a Sega Megadrive pad on my Amiga, one thing I mean to do one day is to make an adapter that allows me to program for all the buttons.  Some of the buttons are multiplexed.  The Amiga can output a control bit on one of the pins, but the Megadrive pads use a different one.  A little dongle that swaps two pins over should suffice.
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Offline som99Topic starter

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #5 on: September 06, 2012, 11:00:12 PM »
Quote from: Mrs Beanbag;706883
Wouldn't it be better just to make a little in-line adapter to do this?  Then you wouldn't have to do the same mod for every new controller you bought.

I use a Sega Megadrive pad on my Amiga, one thing I mean to do one day is to make an adapter that allows me to program for all the buttons.  Some of the buttons are multiplexed.  The Amiga can output a control bit on one of the pins, but the Megadrive pads use a different one.  A little dongle that swaps two pins over should suffice.


I like to have no adapters needed, just plug and play, also it's easier to put the jump button switch inside the controller and easy to flip the switch when playing.
It takes around 10mins each gamepad so an hours work and ive done all gamepads, so no problem.

Nice idea of all buttons, I bet many Amiga users would like that for CD32 games.
 

Offline runequester

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #6 on: September 07, 2012, 12:53:48 AM »
For the benefit of using a controller on both a genesis and an amiga, some sort of adapter widget would be cool :)

Question: Would it be possible, in theory, to hack together something that'd let extra buttons (say on a 6 button genesis controller) emulate key presses on the amiga keyboard? Or is that completely impossible?
 

Offline som99Topic starter

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #7 on: September 07, 2012, 04:28:24 AM »
Well I could not sleep and was bored, so I knew I had a broken PC 15-pin gamepad that had it's ICP fried so I decided to remove the broken ICP and just resolder for amiga pinout.

It looks like crap, but just done to get a bit tired ;) Well also it works so better then throwing it in the dumpster.

The on/off button toggles D-Pad up on/off and up is mapped to a button.
All buttons works, shoulder buttons represent button 2 on 2 button Amiga games.

A "bit" solder and cutting traces later.... Done :)


And here it is assembled, as said, it looks like crap but atleast works :)


@runequester - Mapping keyboard keys to gamepad is doable by software, im sure I had something like that ages ago when I wanted to play pinball on joystick, search the aminet :)
 

Offline Rebel-CD32

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #8 on: September 07, 2012, 06:12:45 AM »
I always wanted to perform mods like these on some pads I have. I bought a soldering iron to start doing it and the bloody thing melted and I gave up on learning to solder. It was probably a faulty soldering iron though so I'm going to give it another shot when I can afford to pick up a new one. I always wanted to map one of the buttons to double as Fire+Up at the same time, as well as the regular Up button, because some games like Golden Axe use Fire+Up for jump and I don't think that's been patched with WHDLoad.

Also remember you can modify a Mega Drive/Genesis pad to have full 8-button functionality, but the only game that makes use of all 8 buttons is ADoom. Flashback and Hired Guns both use a modified 3 or 6 button pad, making use of the Start and A buttons, but not the X, Y, Z and Mode buttons as ADoom does.
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Offline som99Topic starter

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #9 on: September 07, 2012, 12:02:48 PM »
Quote from: Rebel-CD32;706929
I always wanted to perform mods like these on some pads I have. I bought a soldering iron to start doing it and the bloody thing melted and I gave up on learning to solder. It was probably a faulty soldering iron though so I'm going to give it another shot when I can afford to pick up a new one. I always wanted to map one of the buttons to double as Fire+Up at the same time, as well as the regular Up button, because some games like Golden Axe use Fire+Up for jump and I don't think that's been patched with WHDLoad.

Also remember you can modify a Mega Drive/Genesis pad to have full 8-button functionality, but the only game that makes use of all 8 buttons is ADoom. Flashback and Hired Guns both use a modified 3 or 6 button pad, making use of the Start and A buttons, but not the X, Y, Z and Mode buttons as ADoom does.

Doing this kind of soldering requires no fancy iron, I think you should start soldering again, it's a good thing to know how to do and you will learn fast :) Use some old x86-PC motherboard to learn to solder small points later on, do mix of things on it, desolder, put wires from point to point etc.

Flux will be one of your best friends, second for me must be the thing with arms that hold cables (dunno what it's called in English), sponge and tinsucktion thingy.
When starting soldering iron/flux and any old wet sponge will do when learning :)

Hmm, not a bad idea, i will try button+up one a controller, since it's a six button controller why not try button+left/right/down also and all buttons are used, just for fun :)
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #10 on: September 07, 2012, 12:43:47 PM »
There is an "impossible" combination of joystick outputs that I'm surprised nobody ever made use of, namely up+down+left+right.  In fact any combination that involves two opposite directions together wouldn't usually be possible (7 in total).  Someone clever could have used this to give us a start/select button and maybe some others, without the need for extra pins or multiplexing.

Also one thing I have in mind now is an adapter for a playstation pad that connects to both the controller ports, so the analogue stick can be used as the mouse.
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Offline som99Topic starter

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #11 on: September 07, 2012, 12:57:35 PM »
Quote from: Mrs Beanbag;706944
There is an "impossible" combination of joystick outputs that I'm surprised nobody ever made use of, namely up+down+left+right.  In fact any combination that involves two opposite directions together wouldn't usually be possible (7 in total).  Someone clever could have used this to give us a start/select button and maybe some others, without the need for extra pins or multiplexing.

Also one thing I have in mind now is an adapter for a playstation pad that connects to both the controller ports, so the analogue stick can be used as the mouse.


The start button with mapping from a keyboard key using impossible key combinations is a good idea, might be something to play with later on :)

The use of analog stick for mouse is a brilliant idea, that I want to do now, ill see if I can find a PSX controller I want to destroy. Seems simple enough using the analog stick to pin 1-4 then shoulder buttons for pin 6,9 then the rest as a normal gamepad and you have mouse and gamepad all in one :)

Thanks for the great ideas!
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #12 on: September 07, 2012, 01:09:51 PM »
You can't just wire the analogue stick into the mouse port, a mouse actually sends digital serial data.  If you have the joystick plugged into Port 0 you can actually move the mouse pointer by wiggling the joystick around in a circular motion.  I found this useful sometimes!

I've no idea how a PSX analogue stick works, but the serial data stream that comes out is published somewhere (at least I found this documented for the PS1 controller).  Such an adapter would require some kind of PIC.
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Offline som99Topic starter

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Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #13 on: September 07, 2012, 03:07:11 PM »
Quote from: Mrs Beanbag;706947
You can't just wire the analogue stick into the mouse port, a mouse actually sends digital serial data.  If you have the joystick plugged into Port 0 you can actually move the mouse pointer by wiggling the joystick around in a circular motion.  I found this useful sometimes!

I've no idea how a PSX analogue stick works, but the serial data stream that comes out is published somewhere (at least I found this documented for the PS1 controller).  Such an adapter would require some kind of PIC.


I noticed my wrong after posting, I must take some time this weekend and check over the PSX controller and as you said PIC would be the most simple way to go, I do not have any spare PSX controller I want to part with yet, but I will take a look inside or use a Dreamcast controller, got loads of them.
 

Offline amiman99

Re: Simple Genesis/Megadrive gamepad button jump mod.
« Reply #14 on: September 07, 2012, 04:59:30 PM »
Quote from: som99;706969
I noticed my wrong after posting, I must take some time this weekend and check over the PSX controller and as you said PIC would be the most simple way to go, I do not have any spare PSX controller I want to part with yet, but I will take a look inside or use a Dreamcast controller, got loads of them.

If you want to use PSX joypad as a mouse just get the PSX-Amiga converter from kipper2k http://kipper2k.com/amigaforsale/
Works great, just press "Select", mouse mode, press "Select" again, Joystick mode.
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