New Controller Standard for 2600

[Legend]

can the joystick and paddle be combined? Kinda like the ms. pac man plug $ play where the joystick was turned to control pole position, but used as a regular joystick for the other games.

[BigO]

can the joystick and paddle be combined? Kinda like the ms. pac man plug $ play where the joystick was turned to control pole position, but used as a regular joystick for the other games.

It sure could, if you want to and have the ability to build it that way.

 

I have a mostly dead one of those Ms. Pac-Man units sitting on my bench. I was wondering what I could do with it. I haven't looked to see how they implemented the steering control (e.g. potentiometer, multiple digital contacts, etc.).

[Zonie]

a DB-9 plug, a DB-15 plug

Please use correct terminology! (DE-9 and DA-15)

 

Wikipedia: D-subminiature

 

</pedant>

 

20 years in electronics and we have always called them DB-whatever... Everyone knows what he means.

 

I have never seen that wikipedia version of the definition of these. Strange...

 

Everyone knows what he means . . . unless he uses the proper DE-9 and DA-15 terminology.

 

LOL

[BigO]

can the joystick and paddle be combined? Kinda like the ms. pac man plug $ play where the joystick was turned to control pole position, but used as a regular joystick for the other games.

Sure it can, if you want to build it that way.

 

BTW - I just checked out a mostly dead Ms. Pac-Man plug-n-play and the steering is implemented with a 10K ohm pot so it won't directly work with an Atari as a paddle controller.

[Zonie]

can the joystick and paddle be combined? Kinda like the ms. pac man plug $ play where the joystick was turned to control pole position, but used as a regular joystick for the other games.

Sure it can, if you want to build it that way.

 

BTW - I just checked out a mostly dead Ms. Pac-Man plug-n-play and the steering is implemented with a 10K ohm pot so it won't directly work with an Atari as a paddle controller.

 

What's in a paddle, 220K IIRC?

 

 

 

Is it a standard size pot that we can swap? If so, all we need is another switch and presto, Paddle.

 

We could also gang a pot and the encoder on the same shaft, but that would take some mechanical work that may be beyond the abilities of some folks. I like the paddle as it is anyway, so I think adding the paddle is not worth it...

 

...Unless it becomes a throttle for a Lunar Lander hack or some new driving/flying game yet to be 'brewed" up.

[BigO]

can the joystick and paddle be combined? Kinda like the ms. pac man plug $ play where the joystick was turned to control pole position, but used as a regular joystick for the other games.

Sure it can, if you want to build it that way.

 

BTW - I just checked out a mostly dead Ms. Pac-Man plug-n-play and the steering is implemented with a 10K ohm pot so it won't directly work with an Atari as a paddle controller.

 

What's in a paddle, 220K IIRC?

 

 

 

Is it a standard size pot that we can swap? If so, all we need is another switch and presto, Paddle.

 

We could also gang a pot and the encoder on the same shaft, but that would take some mechanical work that may be beyond the abilities of some folks. I like the paddle as it is anyway, so I think adding the paddle is not worth it...

 

...Unless it becomes a throttle for a Lunar Lander hack or some new driving/flying game yet to be 'brewed" up.

 

1 Meg in a paddle controller. I haven't found anything of relatively recent vintage that uses such large pots, unless you count my balance board that uses a 7 meg pot to get a lot of delta with a small amount of rotation.

 

I can't even see the pot buried in the Ms. Pac-Man mechanism. It may be some sort of standard pot but not the "traditional" size, like what's in the paddle controller for example.

 

I do think that an analog throttle would be nice to have. Stunt Cycle is the only 2600 game I can remember playing that uses the potentiometer as a throttle. It works there because there's no steering required. Generally, I think a throttle control wants to be self-returning (to idle). Though, I suppose it would be fine for the throttle to hold it's position if you're making a tractor game.

[A.J. Franzman]

I do think that an analog throttle would be nice to have. Stunt Cycle is the only 2600 game I can remember playing that uses the potentiometer as a throttle. It works there because there's no steering required. Generally, I think a throttle control wants to be self-returning (to idle). Though, I suppose it would be fine for the throttle to hold it's position if you're making a tractor game.

Flight simulator, boat simulator, etc.; probably lots of other vehicles have hand-operated throttles that stay where you leave them.

[supercat]

1 Meg in a paddle controller. I haven't found anything of relatively recent vintage that uses such large pots, unless you count my balance board that uses a 7 meg pot to get a lot of delta with a small amount of rotation.

 

How many games use a resistance anything close to a meg? I think most games use a smaller resistance, thus using a smaller portion of the pot's rotational range.

[BigO]

1 Meg in a paddle controller. I haven't found anything of relatively recent vintage that uses such large pots, unless you count my balance board that uses a 7 meg pot to get a lot of delta with a small amount of rotation.

 

How many games use a resistance anything close to a meg? I think most games use a smaller resistance, thus using a smaller portion of the pot's rotational range.

 

Yeah, I don't believe any games use near the entire range. However, they do seem to use different portions and percentages of the range. I messed with a few games to figure out the range while developing a custom controller. I wound up having to create a variable gain, variable centering solution to deal with the differences, but my controller doesn't allow for the end "slop" that a normal paddle does. I don't have any exact numbers to contribute as I'm not sure where those notes are, but I didn't see them using the extreme ends of the travel.

 

I wouldn't expect any games to use only 10K total delta as that would be only 10% of the 1 meg available or around 33 degrees of rotation. 90 degrees would be just over a quarter-turn (~28%). That puts us in the 280k ohm delta range. A half turn would be over 500k range. Off hand, I'd guess that a half turn is probably at the upper end of what's used in the classic games.

Edited July 28, 2008 by BigO

[+grafixbmp]

Started another topic about a similar thought for using a new controler standard. One guy mentioned this one so I figured I would relay to ya. It evolved very quickly into adapting actual NES controlers to the atari with a small adapter cord. The adapter may be nothing more than just conecting wires properly into a new standard connection. The inteerface is primarily done in software alone so a small custom subroutine is all that would be required along with the adapter and an NES controler. Check it out.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/149883-2600-controller-idea/

[supercat]

1 Meg in a paddle controller. I haven't found anything of relatively recent vintage that uses such large pots, unless you count my balance board that uses a 7 meg pot to get a lot of delta with a small amount of rotation.

 

When the Atari 2600 came out, a real analog-to-digital converter would have been horrendously expensive, so Atari used resistor-capacitor timing circuits to measure the paddle positions. For such measurements, the wiper resistance will be part of the measured value. Thus, using a large resistor means that the wiper resistance (which can vary, leading to jitter) forms a much smaller percentage of the total than it would if one were using a lower resistance.

 

Nowadays, ADC's are cheap but often require a moderately-low-impedance input for optimal results. Connecting a 1 meg potentiometer to a cheap ADC would yield results that would vary with temperature and have other annoying problems. A 10K pot will work better. Since the circuit measures the ratio of the resistances on either side of the wiper, rather than the combined resistance of one side and the wiper, wiper resistance is a relative non-factor.