HSS-136 clone mod

[rugdoctor]

Was wondering whether anyone has modded one of these before:

http://www.goldenshop.com.hk/AI-trad/psx2hard/fstick.htm

planning to swap out the stock buttons for sanwas and also the stick...it seems like it needs a screw to secure either a sanwa or seimitsu....

http://www.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=206488

I have at my disposal a dreamcast agetec and a namco (yellow/grey) psx stick, would the joystick from them work in the hss clone?

[zos'la]

it should but u can just rip a ps1/ps2 controller and hack it instead.

[rugdoctor]

it has a custom ps2 pcb inside already, the buttons are soldered on so I plan to free them and chuck in sanwas instead. The tricky but is the stick. It has a similar setup like the namco stick, but the wires are soldered onto the pcb rather than the microswitches. I got it 2nd hand and the stick is stiff and will only activate the microswitch it pushed hard and one of the button is sticky...2 great reasons to mod it I suppose...

[zos'la]

u either change the whole stick or get sanwa stick and replace it.
If ur gona keep teh stick then u have to follow the wiring it currently has.

[[NIUE] BIRRY WONG]

What he means is, he doesnt like the current joystick, and he has 2 existing ones, so he wants to know if he can use one of those instead of a brand new sanwa joystick.

To answer the question. Yes. Though when you say "the wires are soldered onto the pcb rather than the microswitches" I assume you're talking about the PCB that is attached to the joystick itself, not the actual PS2 PCB. This is fine, but you need to figure out which wires are assigned to which respective microswitch, so that you know where to solder the wires on the NEW stick.

If the controller is working in its current state, try disconnecting the wires one at a time. The ground wire should be labelled SOMEWHERE hopefully, which makes that fairly simple. but as for the other ones. Disconnect one, turn the stick on, note which input youve lost and write that shit down. Repeat. Best to make sure youre not in any kind of menu before doing this. As that could get frustrating.

To be honest the most annoying part will probably be attempting to remove the buttons from the PS2 PCB. There is no easy way around that unfortunately. Besides ripping the fucker off, but thats a good way to break the PCB, so dont do that if thats the PCB you want to use.

[fluxcore]

solder sucker/solder wick is about the only way around that.

[rugdoctor]

solder sucker/solder wick is about the only way around that.

by that you mean to solder the sanwa buttons directly on the pcb like the original buttons right? Cause the pcb will be unsecure otherwise?

[[NIUE] BIRRY WONG]

Solder sucker/wick is basically an 'anti solder' that you use to de-solder things. Normally you could just reheat the solder and remove the wires etc, but because you have all the buttons soldered directly on to the pcb, then there is no way to do it safely without using sucker/wick.

[rugdoctor]

I have successful learnt how to use the solder wick and manage to desolder the button board, next going to try to mount the jlf onto the plate. Anyone used the metal epoxy to chemically weld bolts to plate before to mount the stick? Any tips??

[zos'la]

bolts, sprint and nut should be sufficient but if u really care then put minor light glue to hold it.

[rugdoctor]

The clone's plate does not have the right holes for the new sticks' holes and was trying to think up some other ideas to secure the new stick on the plate...dont have the tools to cut a custom metal plate.

[rugdoctor]

I am on the last leg of the mod, the thing that stumped me last night is the joystick...I took out the original ascii one and put in a jlf, however, when I wired up the harness to the pcb via a connector, the computer would only recognise left and down. I wired up the directions correctly, but noticed there is a "G" which I wired the black wire to (assuming its ground) but there is another point called "V" which the original stick was soldered to. I notice on closer inspection of the original sticks microswitch pcb that it has a deliberate cut on the board to terminate a path. The G and V point was soldered on the Down and Right microswitch.

So close, yet so far...please help!

[fluxcore]

This might imply the board isn't common ground? If there are two separate grounds for the directions, you might have to split them in the same way on your jlf pcb and then use the 'v' wire for the other grounds, as weird as this sounds (V should be +Vcc!)

Probably need to poke around with a multimeter to confirm.

[zos'la]

those PCB's probably don't have common ground...that is possibly why you only got 2 signals working as I've come across this before.
You got a JLF tp 8y? its the one with the stick, PCB with micros switches solder on which looks like this:



this is a common ground stick so what you will have to do is split the ground in half on the stick's PCB so it becomes two seperate grounds.

looking at the PCB of the stick from the top green side.

       2----------3    -----> cut the side of this corner to split the ground 1, 2 should link and 3, 4 should link.
       |  Green   |
   __| surface   |
  |__|________|
       1             4

that should fix your issue.

[fluxcore]

...

yeah sorry what andy said