Here's info given to me by Brian Lewis (mamedev & arcadeos author)


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Posted by Prophet of Retrogames on 13, 2000 at 4:51 PM:

In Reply to: Anyone try to hack Dreamcast Pads to an arcade stick? posted by aerialcombat on 13, 2000 at 7:10 AM:

Following is from Brian Lewis in an email on the subject of hacking DC pads to arcade controls, sadly I have yet to actualy sit down and do it. Someday... soon I hope. -Proph-
-------------------------------------------

btw: these are instructions for the offical DC controller -
the MadCatz stuff uses pots rather than hall effect sensors
for the analogue controls, and has no common ground between the
digital controls.
So - don't bother with 'em :)

--------
Hi again,
I've just been on holiday for a few days - doesn't happen too often :)

Okay,
basically you need

Solder,
Soldering Iron (obvious I know :))
A Multimeter (not essesental - but very useful)
Some thin gauge wire, preferrable at least 2 different coloured reels,
something with a core of around 1mm diameter will do you.

7 buttons per controller, 6 control, 1 start
1 or 2 8 way joysticks per controll.

It's up to you wether you choose leaf or mircoswitches for your buttons
and joysticks. I personally can't see that much difference between them
You could use 1 or 2 joysticks, either just 1 wired into the analogue
controller (as all games seem to work with this),
or 1 wired into the digital and 1 wired into theanalogue controller.

You should be able to get all the arcade controls from Happ.

As far as physically setting the thing out - I'm rubbish at carpentry,
so I'll leave that up to you.

The basic idea is this,
open up the DC controller, take everything off it including the 2
shoulder triggers and the analogue 'stick'

You should now be looking at a board of several black 'pads' where each
of the digital controls are.
These should look similar to this diagram

http://mameworld.retrogames.com/pc2jamma/images/control.gif

They're copper covered in carbon, and form a simple switch when a
button is pressed/joypad is moved.

you need to find the common or ground 'half' of all the pads,
just put one probe of a multimeter on one 'half' of a pad, set the
multimeter to diode or continuity test, then place the other probe on
a different 'pad'
The multimeter will beep once you've found a common pad, just go
round all the pads finding which one half of each pad is 'common'.

Once you've done that - you need to start soldering onto the DC pad,
Start with ground.

The basic idea here is to solder as little as possible onto the DC pad,
so we'll use a common ground for all the buttons and all the joysticks.
This just means a lot less wires !

You'll basically be connecting the grounds of all the
arcade buttons/joystick switches together.
If you're using micro switches, this will be the 'top' (usually shorter)
connection on the switch, if you're using leaf switches - you'll need to
look at the switch and see which is the 'common' leaf.
(both types of switches will bave 3 connections, common, 'press to make'
and 'press to break')
The common and 'press to make' connections are what you need.
(press to make just means the connection is made when the button is
pressed, microswitches have diagrams on them so it's farily clear which
terminal is which. Leaf switches are just as easy, as you can see which
leaf is which just by looking at it)

Back to the DC pad -
Pick any 'pad' and gently scrape the carbon off one of the 'fingers'
on the 'ground' or 'common' half of of the pad.
Keep going till you see the exposed copper trace underneath.

Now solder a piece of wire onto the exposed copper,
this is your ground wire.
Solder the other end onto the 'common' terminal of one of your switches,
then 'daisy chain' the rest of the switches off this - So all common
terminals are connected to the ground coming from the DC pad, but
you've so far only soldered one wire onto the DC pad.

Now, you just need to wire the controls in one a time.
For each control, scrape the carbon of the NON COMMON or NON GROUND half
of each pad and solder a wire between that and your 'press to make'
terminal on your switch.

I suggest you just do it 1 button at a time to start off with,
do Start first, then fire the DC up and see if the Arcade button's
working or not. If it is, do a couple more buttons and test - if it
isn't check the wiring.


Once you've got the digital controls working, move onto the 2 analogue
buttons.
These are very simple, though you need to be careful when soldering as
the pins/chips are very small.

The 2 Hall Effect Sensors are marked HED5 and HED6, for each button,
solder your 'non common/ground' wire onto the following pins
(marked with an X)

HED5
x0
[]
00

HED6
x0
[]
00

Again, test to see that they're working.



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