Namco PSX stick to supergun

ok guys I am really sorry to post another topic about something that has been talked to death about but having recently acquired two namco psx sticks I am eager as a beaver to get them working with my supergun.

I have searched all over these forums and on the net with some extensive googling and pretty much only found fragments of information with no definitive guide. Is there anyone out there who can talk me through which pins on the PCB I need to solder to the DB15 connector?

Although the innards of the psx stick seem pretty basic, as a first time solderer (I have screwed up a few psx mods in the past though) I am confused as to how to connect the directional buttons since there are two wires connected to each microswitch and there is only one pin on the DB15 connector for each direction. I also can't seem to find where to solder the common ground pin to on the board.

I would be so appreciative if anyone could help me out! Here is a picture of the insides.

Sorry I forgot to add that I also want to keep PSX functionality! I have seen posts on these forums from people who have managed to do this so it must be possible.

There are 2 wires/points per button because one is the common ground and the other is the specific signal from that button. You should connect all of those common ground together to pin 1 of the DB15, and the other wires to the pin of the button you want it to be. In that pic, the 2 big solder spots under each of the 6 buttons in the pcb are those 2 points for each button. For the directions you can use the wires from it.

If you want to keep PSX compatibility you should just solder the DB15 to those points and wires without touching anything else. However it is quite likely that it won't work. Having the button mechanism in a pcb is usually a bitch, it's much better to have each button with his microswitch connected with wires at the pcb.

hey thanks for the information.

So you mean I have to solder a wire from each ground to the other ground and then from the last ground to pin 1? Daisy chain it around? Because I can't solder 6 wires to one point.

Also for the microswitches do I have to also daisy chain the ground wires together and do I solder wires to the microswitch itself or to the soldered points on the PBC where all of the wires are collected in one place?

Yes, you can do a "ground loop", that is to connect each ground to the next one for each button/direction and the last one to pin 1 of the DB15.
About the second question, you can do it either way. However I'm still not sure if it'll work, the IC encoder chip might cause some interference. Are the buttons (not the stick direction) actually microswitches? It's possible that the directions work but the buttons don't, it happened to me when I tried to mod a similar saturn stick that did not have microswitches in the buttons, only "rubber pads".

oh dear

Ok so I tried what you said but unfortunately nothing seems so register on the supergun either when I press a button or move the joystick... Did I do something wrong? Here is a picture:



Also it seems that all of the ground connections on the pcb are linked anyway (I used a multimeter to test from one ground to another)

Yeah, a regular stick has all grounds already connected, what I meant is that if you disconnected them from the pcb you needed to ground them again, like most people has done with the DC stick, as everything is connected with wires, and they can keep DC functionality. Anyway you can't do this with your stick as buttons are integrated in your pcb.

What you did looks OK (possibly connecting all grounds was not needed as you noticed), but as I said it was possible that it wouldn't work anyway, there's few more advice I can give you, maybe somebody with more knowledge can help you more. Just make sure you used the correct pin-out in your supergun, sometimes people read the Neo Geo pin-out reversed.

thanks for all your effort...the pinout is correct I don't understand why it won't register...

any way to get it working? I guess I don't mind if I have to lose psx functionality...

Umm, you aren't expecting it to work with only the work that was done in that picture, are you?

You're correct, there is no need to wire each of the ground together, because the traces on the pcb are already doing that for you. Pic any one at random, making sure it is indeed ground, solder a wire there, and there is your pin 1 for the db-15. For each direction and switch, solder a single wire to the non-ground point that connects tot he pcb, and run that to the appropriate pin on the db-15.

Will it work? Likely not, or if it does, it may register all directions/buttons at once. Each 'signal' line is tied to +5v in the neo or supergun, and when nothing is pressed, that electricity just sits there on the line, kind of like your garden hose, when you turn the faucet knob on, but the sprayer nozzle is closed. There is no where for the water to go, so the garden hose is very tense with the pressure. The neo feels this pressure and knows the button has not been pressed. When you press the button/direction, it gets connected to ground, so the electricty no has a place to go. Same thing with the garden hose; you open the spray nozzle end, and water comes out, and the hose isnt under so much pressure. The neo detects the lack of pressure, and knows the button has been pressed. If you can imagine 10 such garden hoses, and any water they let loose going to ground (haha I made a funny), then you got a good idea how the controller works.

The problem is that we can't be sure how the psx chip will react. When the buttons arent pressed, youre forcing electricity into the exact place where the electricity would come OUT of the psx chip (which works the exact same way). You're turning on the faucet and screwing your garden hose into your neighbor's faucet, after his water service has been shut off. Since your flooding his basement now, the water is going somewhere, so the hose isnt ultra pressured, so you think the spray nozzle is open. As far as the neo is concerned, the button is pressed. All of them. At the same time.

The Ghetto Way: If you ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY MUST do this with that namco pcb in place, then you have only one option; you need to power up the psx pcb when its plugged into the neo. DO NOT PLUG A CONTROLLER INTO TWO SYSTEMS AT ONCE. You will fry the namco, your neo, your ps2, lose your wife and gain genital warts. Do not do it. Instead, power the namco pcb with the power from the neo, pin 8. You can wire it directly to the power line of the namco (the red wire coming from the psx cable to the pcb), and cross your fingers that the psx pcb will run reliably on +5v, when it normally gets +3.3v. This is bad habit, and should only be done if you are to chicken to do the other methods, even at the possible risk of frying your namco pcb.

Slightly better method: Do some googling for a DC-DC voltage converter. The LM317T is available at most radio shacks. With the right resister and capacitor, you can run that +5v from the neo through the voltage converter, knocking it down to +3.3v, and using that to power the PSX chip.

Best method: Remove the namco pcb, get a good dualshock 1 (NOT dualshock 2) pcb, and wire up each signal line on it with diodes, ones for each signal line. You want the electricity to go out of the pcb for each signal, and the diodes will prevent it from coming back in. Add and extra wire to each button/direction and ground just like you've been doing for the DB-15 and itll work since the electricity wont have an escape route through the psx chip.


And if for any reason you break or do something bad to your namco, pm me. Ill buy one even if its broken. Those sticks are just too damn nice.

toodles said:

Umm, you aren't expecting it to work with only the work that was done in that picture, are you?

Click to expand...

Event #22 to make me pissed I can't edit my own damned posts.

Sorry, that first like may come across rather asshole-ish. My bad. I asked because the picture did not show any signal lines, only the grounds wired up, superfluously at that. I am assuming the signal lines were soldered after that pic was taken.

toodles said:

When you press the button/direction, it gets connected to ground, so the electricty no has a place to go.

Click to expand...

Event #23 FUCK this is rediculous.

This was a typo. It should be '...so the electricity now has a place to go...'

Just an additional post to test my new .sig.

Well, I assumed that as I initially suggested sephirot connected a wire from each button to the corresponding pin of the DB15 although I can't see them at the pic.

And yes, with the pcb connected there was little chance of it working due to all the stuff you explained. However it would be hard to disconnect the pcb. Overall, that stick is not particularly suited to be modded, specially by somebody who's never attempted something like this before. The DC stick is still the easiest one to deal with.

Amano Jacu said:

And yes, with the pcb connected there was little chance of it working due to all the stuff you explained. However it would be hard to disconnect the pcb. Overall, that stick is not particularly suited to be modded, specially by somebody who's never attempted something like this before. The DC stick is still the easiest one to deal with.

Click to expand...

Little chance of it working without either 1) powering the psx pcb or 2) using diodes

For trying to add neo support to the existing dc support in an agetec, you run into the exact same problems, but since the DC uses +5v, powering it is much easier.

Well, let me rephrase myself to "little chance of it working without doing any extra stuff" like the stuf you mentioned. Anyway my modded DC stick that mantains DC compatibilty still works without giving any power to the pcb when using it in my supergun, however there are certain arcade boards where it doesn't work. Particularly, if I remember well:

Works: MVS 1 slot (MV1A), CPS2, CPS1

Doesn't work: Naomi (with Capcom I/O), PGM

EDIT (yeah I can ): Sefirot, there's some info and pics in this thread doing similar mods to more suitable sticks:

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99229&page=1&pp=25

I havn't ever modded a namco stick, but both my Hori PS and SS (retaining playstation and saturn playability) work perfectly with all jamma/neo games i've ever used. All I did was connect 1 wire to the common ground on the hori board, and all the other wires directly to the button/switches, then to db-15 using aes pinout.

I was under the impression that getting these kinds of controls to work with a jamma style interface was easy, it was getting them to work properly with the original system that was hard. Like using this again in a playstation.

cheers,
-DT

lol great posts toodles. Thanks a lot for the information. Oh and I didn't take any offense about the picture I know I'm not a master electrician

oh and where is AES pinout? I can't seem to see anything like that on my board...

SephirothFF said:

oh and where is AES pinout? I can't seem to see anything like that on my board...

Click to expand...

wow OK, I was referring to the "AES 'pin-out'" which is a way to say a diagram for how to connect the wires to the DB-15 like they are for the AES.

There will not be a place on the board marked AES pinout.

http://www.gamesx.com/controldata/neocont.htm

cheers,
-DT

dogtoy said:

I was under the impression that getting these kinds of controls to work with a jamma style interface was easy, it was getting them to work properly with the original system that was hard. Like using this again in a playstation.

Click to expand...

I always had the opposite. If the db-15 wasnt plugged into anything, then the pcbs would never know anything about it being there.


Sephiroth, if the work in the above picture IS what you tried, then yank all the wires, and go ahead and give it a shot just like dogtoy described:

All I did was connect 1 wire to the common ground on the hori board, and all the other wires directly to the button/switches, then to db-15 using aes pinout.

If that is what you tried, then youll have to look at one of the options I gave above.

48 posts to go

errr yeah that is what I tried I desoldered all of the wires and now only have one going to ground (connected to pin one on the neo-geo) and one to button A for test purposes and it doesn't register anything.
I also tried the ghetto method but that didn't work either...

I guess I'll have to go pick up a cheap dualshock 1 pad tomorrow and try and wire it up.

Any other suggestions? Here is a pic of the board now:

Are you using this with a homegrown supergun? an aes? a multislot system?

If you are using with an aes or builtin control ports, these are too deep for a standard db-15 and will need to be shaved to fit. If you built the ports yourself, double check all your wires with a multimeter. I have very often finished something like a control port and then gone back later (when something didn't work) to find that I accidentaly mis-soldered about 8 wires.

cheers,
-DT

it's a supergun that I bought pre-built from a shop here called Arcade Heaven. I know the ports work because they gave me a megadrive controller and it works fine with that...

SephirothFF said:

oh and where is AES pinout? I can't seem to see anything like that on my board...

Click to expand...

http://www.gamesx.com/controldata/neocont.htm

I was under the assumption your supergun used the AES pin-out like this one, I'm not sure if I understand well your questions.

I guess I'll have to go pick up a cheap dualshock 1 pad tomorrow and try and wire it up.

Click to expand...

Modding an original sony dual shock is quite difficult, try to look for a cheapo third party one, and you'll have to solder the wires to suitable points in the board. And using PSX controllers in a supergun kinda sucks, arcade sticks are much more suited, like the one you have, shame it's difficult to mod too.

Another hint: try to do trials with a direction rather than the A button, although it possibly won't work anyway.

SephirothFF said:

it's a supergun that I bought pre-built from a shop here called Arcade Heaven. I know the ports work because they gave me a megadrive controller and it works fine with that...

Click to expand...

Make sure it uses the neo geo pin-out, and if it doesn't then I guess you know its pin-out in the controller port and are wiring the stuff accordingly, right?