Omega Race Booster Grip alternative

[lowscore]

Is their another fully functioning alternative to a Colecovision controller for substituting the Omega Race booster grip

Edited January 24, 2007 by lowscore

[Foxsolo2000]

No idea

[Vic George 2K3]

You can try homebrewing your own Omega Race joystick controller.

[Lauren Tyler]

Apparently, if you use paddles you can sort of play, by twisting them to fire or thrust, and using the buttons to fire. But that just doesn't work.

 

(My kingdom for a Colecovision controller or a Booster-Grip Adaptor, as I've had Omega Race for years but never been able to truly enjoy it! And no, you can't use a Pro-Line josytick, sorry!)

[A.J. Franzman]

Is there a schematic of the Booster Grip online anywhere? I tried Google but didn't find it.

[alex_79]

Someone posted a schematic here on AA forums; I can't find it anymore but I've a copy on my HD:

 

 

The buttons connect the paddle lines (pin 5 - 9) to +5V (pin 7).

Edited January 25, 2007 by alex_79

[Eckhard Stolberg]

(My kingdom for a Colecovision controller or a Booster-Grip Adaptor, as I've had Omega Race for years but never been able to truly enjoy it! And no, you can't use a Pro-Line josytick, sorry!)

I'm not sure how reliably it would work, but I think you could convert a Proline joystick by simply removing the red and yellow wires from the board with the direction inputs. The wires are clipped to the board, so you could easily put them back, if the joystick doesn't work reliably with Omega Race.

 

If you unconnect the red and yellow wires from the resistors on the directions board, then the buttons on the Proline joystick only connect the paddle inputs to the joystick button input, which should also provide +5V. I think the second button on the Colecovision controller works this way too.

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

[Lord Helmet]

I think I'd rather rewire a 2600 stick to work with 'asteroids' like controls. Pressing up on the stick would be superior to a thrust button imho.

[Lauren Tyler]

To be able to work with Asteroids like controls? I wonder how you'd do that?

And for the Pro-Line bit, I've only got two working ones, so I don't want to do anything risky.

[Vic George 2K3]

The arcade Omega Race used a rotary control dial for steering the ship.

[lowscore]

The arcade Omega Race used a rotary control dial for steering the ship.

 

I did not know this. Do you suppose that the driving paddle with 360 degree action would be a good sub?

[jsoper]

To be able to work with Asteroids like controls? I wonder how you'd do that?

adapter

[Lord Helmet]

The arcade Omega Race used a rotary control dial for steering the ship.

 

I did not know this. Do you suppose that the driving paddle with 360 degree action would be a good sub?

 

It is is you play this version:

 

http://www.atariage.com/hack_page.html?Sys...ftwareHackID=83

 

 

To bad its a Ram+ cart. I'd love to have this version on a standalone cart

[Zonie]

I used an old Ski Pole Grip with a button from Rodeo Shark stuck in the top back "in the day." I Wired it to a phono plug and installed a phono jack on the base to make it removable.

 

Plenty of old ski poles at goodwill these days.

[2600Lives]

Get a Vic-20 and an Omega Race cart cheap. Lol. That's one of the best versions of the game, oddly enough. You just push up to thrust. I'm honestly amazed how good Vic games are when they're programmed well.

[BigO]

I wanted to play my Omega Race, but didn't have a controller so started looking around to see what I had that I could use to build a controller. "I see a PC Gravis controller...I see a box of Atari joysticks...I see a box of Atarilab boards with full 9 pin cables...

 

Digging through the box of controllers, I noticed the Gemstick had a fire button about the same size as the ones on the Gravis joystick. Turns out they were almost exactly the same diameter. As luck seemed to be on my side, the Gemstick handle turned out to be hollow and already had a hole for the wire from the stick mounted switches to exit the hollow shaft. (I had already hacked up an Atari joystick and had to drill the exit hole. It would have worked fine had I not spotted the button size similarity that made me switch to the Gemstick.)

 

A half hour or so of tedious hacking on the gray fire button and the yellow fire button and the two became one.

 

The Gravis stick handle has a metal tube inside which worked to provide a strong grafting method between it and the sawed off Gemstick handle. I needed a bit of a shim to fill the gap between the inside diameter of the Gemstick handle and the outside diameter of the metal tube. My neighborhood check cashing store had recently left a ballpoint pin that had the exact dimensions that I needed. (The metal tube happened to fit perfectly inside the sawed off Atari handle that I'd started with.)

 

Still need to replace the cable with a full 9 conductor one and wire it up, then epoxy (and pin if necessary) the stick graft. Just picked up some 9/16" thinwall brass tubing to add strength by sleeving the joint on the outside in addition to the metal tube inside.

 

As I mentioned, I started building this Frankenstick to be Omega Race compatible. I breadboarded a circuit to verify that my plan would work. That let me see just how fun Omega Race is. I'm leaning toward finishing it up as a 7800 controller, maybe with a 2600 mode...

 

 

 

[Lauren Tyler]

To be able to work with Asteroids like controls? I wonder how you'd do that?

adapter

 

It's worth a try I suppose.

[BigO]

To be able to work with Asteroids like controls? I wonder how you'd do that?

adapter

 

It's worth a try I suppose.

 

That adapter looks like the perfect thing. The same basic design occured to me, so it must be good.

 

For space and possibly cost considerations, the inverter could be implemented with a single 3904 (or other general purpose NPN) transistor and a couple of resistors.

Here's an example of such an inverter circuit: http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/trancirc.htm#inverter

Edited July 1, 2007 by BigO

[Cybergoth]

It should be a trivial hack to make Omega Race work with a Genesis Pad.

[BigO]

It should be a trivial hack to make Omega Race work with a Genesis Pad.

 

Are you referring to hacking the game sofware or the Genesis controller? At first, I assumed you meant the controller, now I'm not sure. I'd be interested in the controller hack.

 

For people who have the Omega Race cart, it seems the controller hack would be more practical, though it's still a pain to have to keep a special controller around...

[BigO]

To be able to work with Asteroids like controls? I wonder how you'd do that?

adapter

 

I just finished building an adapter for the standard joystick that reroutes the "up" joystick output to "thrust" and reroutes the fire button through an inverter to pin 5 so the game recognizes it as "fire" instead of thrust. I used a version of the 1 transistor inverter circuit that I linked to above. I used 100k and 10k resistors instead of 10k and 1k. I also added another 100k resistor to pull up the fire button output to +5v. Otherwise it floats and the inverter circuit still puts out a logic 1 (5 volts). With the input to the circuit pulled high, it outputs a logic 0 until the fire button is pressed.

 

2 9pin connectors, 1 transistor, 3 resistors and about a 5/8" square of perforated prototyping board. Works like a champ.

 

These days the inverter chip could probably be acquired as cheaply as the discrete components that I happened to have laying around. I did have an inverter, but why waste all those gates when you only need one...

 

If you have an Omega Race cartridge but no Booster Grip and have basic electronic assembly skills, give the adapter a try.

 

 

 

Cramped little circuit:

 

After quick and dirty potting with some too-thick hardware store epoxy --- the finished product:

Edited July 2, 2007 by BigO

[Cybergoth]

It should be a trivial hack to make Omega Race work with a Genesis Pad.

Are you referring to hacking the game sofware or the Genesis controller?

 

Software of course

[BigO]

I got a chance to play some Omega Race finally. I won't say it's the best game I own, but on Rack 3 it was getting pretty fast paced.

 

The Asteroids style control works great. As someone else said earlier, it was completely unnecessary to use the Booster Grip on this game.

[Lord Helmet]

To be able to work with Asteroids like controls? I wonder how you'd do that?

adapter

 

I just finished building an adapter for the standard joystick that reroutes the "up" joystick output to "thrust" and reroutes the fire button through an inverter to pin 5 so the game recognizes it as "fire" instead of thrust. I used a version of the 1 transistor inverter circuit that I linked to above. I used 100k and 10k resistors instead of 10k and 1k. I also added another 100k resistor to pull up the fire button output to +5v. Otherwise it floats and the inverter circuit still puts out a logic 1 (5 volts). With the input to the circuit pulled high, it outputs a logic 0 until the fire button is pressed.

 

2 9pin connectors, 1 transistor, 3 resistors and about a 5/8" square of perforated prototyping board. Works like a champ.

 

These days the inverter chip could probably be acquired as cheaply as the discrete components that I happened to have laying around. I did have an inverter, but why waste all those gates when you only need one...

 

If you have an Omega Race cartridge but no Booster Grip and have basic electronic assembly skills, give the adapter a try.

 

 

 

Cramped little circuit:

 

After quick and dirty potting with some too-thick hardware store epoxy --- the finished product:

 

Nice!

 

I need to make one of those

 

This is a nice solution. I'm not sure how a software solution would work. The game is Ram+ so a hack does no good if you want to put it on a cart.

[Cybergoth]

I'm not sure how a software solution would work. The game is Ram+ so a hack does no good if you want to put it on a cart.

 

Depends on the cartridge.