Multi-consolising a HSS-0130 arcade stick

pva

Mega Shock!!
Joined
Aug 28, 2017
Posts
100
I recently chanced upon a mint Sega HSS-0130 at an agreeable price on eBay, and promptly proceeded to buy it as a Christmas present for myself. Having played a metric shit-ton of Saturn games over the holidays, I now find myself wanting to use the stick on other retro consoles besides the Saturn, including the Neo Geo and PS2.

Now, given the stick's minty state, I'd rather not butcher the case for the time being, so I began thinking about an outboard solution.

Based on some googling, it would seem that the Akishop PS360+ and Toodles' MC Cthulhu would be the go-to-solutions for multi-consolising an arcade stick, but sadly the former has been discontinued, and the latter is no longer in stock at PAS. Using the SEARCH. FUNCTION. I also found out about Lemony Vengeance's Saturn to DB-15 adapters, but I assume they have gone the way of the dodo since the FGWidget Converters are out of production, too.

Since I can't simply buy an off-the-shelf PCB or a ready-made adapter, it seems I need to come up with a DIY adapter.

The low tech approach would be to replace the Saturn cords with DB15 extensions, move the original cords and the Sega encoder PCB into a project box, and add some DB15 inputs to it. This would allow me to interface the controller with both the Saturn and the Neo Geo. (No PS2 support, obvs, but I'll take what I can get.) The PCB connectors look proprietary, though, so I don't know how reversible the mod would be in the end, as disconnecting them would involve cutting the leads by the looks of it.

A more involved approach would be to buy a few Saturn and DB-15 extension cords plus an Arduino board. Slap the board and the cords in a box, whip up some code (the logic doesn't seem all that complicated), and you're off to the races. (Still no PS2 support, but hey, beggars can't be choosers, right?)

Any suggestions or hard-earned wisdom as to how I should go about this (or secret stashes of coverter PCBs you could sell me)?
 

Morden

Somewhere in Europe.,
Joined
Jul 5, 2005
Posts
711
Any suggestions or hard-earned wisdom as to how I should go about this (or secret stashes of coverter PCBs you could sell me)?

Personally, I would go with all analogue output from the stick and move the original guts to a project box. This way, you could just make more converters inside of project boxes. This is how I do it, at least. I buy cheap, third party controllers, and use their guts as converters. DB-15 to a Chinese SNES or Megadrive controller, and you just plug the thing into your console.

I figured this was the best way of doing this type of thing, and you can make as many converters as you want. Get a Brook Universal Fighting Board, and you can put that in a project box and use your stick with PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360. For Saturn you can use guts from the stick, for anything else use cheap controllers.

This is obviously the "easy" way, without doing any engineering, PCB making, coding, Arduino programming, etc.
 

pva

Mega Shock!!
Joined
Aug 28, 2017
Posts
100
A quick update on how the project is going:

I also found out about Lemony Vengeance's Saturn to DB-15 adapters, but I assume they have gone the way of the dodo since the FGWidget Converters are out of production, too.

I ended up buying a pair of RGB's Saturn-to-JAMMA converters, so that's the Neo Geo side of things sorted.

The only downside is that the button layout isn't quite to my liking, since the A, B and C buttons are on one row and D on the other. The converter doesn't allow for remapping buttons, so I was thinking of making a DB-15-to-DB-15 adapter to connect to the converter, and rewiring the buttons there. It's not a very flexible solution, of course, but good enough for my purposes.

The PCB connectors look proprietary, though, so I don't know how reversible the mod would be in the end, as disconnecting them would involve cutting the leads by the looks of it.

Based on some googling the PCB connector seems to be a JST connector. However, there are several different series/subtypes. Does anyone have a clue as to what series it is, so I could look for a suitable part?
 

pva

Mega Shock!!
Joined
Aug 28, 2017
Posts
100
Here's a long-overdue, final update:

I ended up buying a pair of RGB's Saturn-to-JAMMA converters, so that's the Neo Geo side of things sorted.

Luckily, PAS had a restock of the MC Cthulhus earlier this year, and I managed to snag a pair of them, too.

I then slapped the Saturn-to-JAMMA converters and the MC Cthulhus in an old project box (from '92, no less!), and wired them together using flat DB-15 cables.

IMG_1639.JPG

The MC Cthulhu offers USB-B (for use with the PS3 and emulators on my Mac) and RJ-45 (PS2 using an appropriate converter cable) outputs.

There's also a pass-through DB-15 output from the Saturn-to-JAMMA converter for use with the Neo Geo and superguns.

IMG_1641.JPG

The only downside is that the button layout isn't quite to my liking, since the A, B and C buttons are on one row and D on the other. The converter doesn't allow for remapping buttons, so I was thinking of making a DB-15-to-DB-15 adapter to connect to the converter, and rewiring the buttons there. It's not a very flexible solution, of course, but good enough for my purposes.

Instead of cobbling together an adapter myself, I bought two JNX Shifts (they were/are on sale for a paltry $6 apiece!), and 3D-printed little supports for them.

Sure, it would've been a cleaner solution to place the adapters inside the box, but at this point I had already drilled the holes, and it would've been a waste of a perfectly good box if I had started over again with a roomier one.

On the plus side, this way I can fiddle with the mappings without having to open the box each time I want to do so.

IMG_1642.JPG
 
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