Jaguar Joysticks

[Atari Smeghead]

I think the $100 mark would be a realistic price to try and keep it under.

 

AX

Yeah, I don't think $100 would be unreasonable, especially if it were both a spinner and joystick.

 

I'd buy one!

 

Cheers,

Smeg

[+pboland]

Other than the flight stick has anyone ever made a Jaguar specific joystick, complete with number pad? Links, photos, info appreciated!

 

AX

I made one. I sold it for about $25.00 on ebay to a member of this forum (I don't remember who). A year or two later, he was able to sell it on ebay for $137.00. Here's a pic:

Hey buddy,

That is the Phil Boland stick i was talking about , you sold it to Jay long ago. If the new owner ever sells it,im first in line! Its an AWESOME controller,have you ever considered making more?

Well, now people know what the "p" in "pboland" stands for. Unfortunately, I had to sell all of my Jaguar stuff (long story, actually ended up selling most of my video game collection, and I had a huge one). I have considered making more, but tracking down the parts and lack of money and the fact I can't really test one since I don't have a system has pretty much answered that question. I can tell you that the controller was made with a standard Jag controller. If you were to open it up, you would see a nest of wires running from the Jag controller PCB to the buttons. The arcade stick and red buttons are from a Playstation Blaze controller. Looked like this one but different color scheme:

The keypad is form All Electronics, part# CAT# KP-12. I believe I had to modify the traces on the little PCB. The black box is a standard enclosure from Radio Shack (I don't remember the part #). The other two small buttons are form Radio Shack as well. Catalog #: 275-1547. I hope that helps for anyone wanting to try to build one themselves.

 

Other than the flight stick has anyone ever made a Jaguar specific joystick, complete with number pad? Links, photos, info appreciated!

 

AX

I made one. I sold it for about $25.00 on ebay to a member of this forum (I don't remember who). A year or two later, he was able to sell it on ebay for $137.00.

 

 

Man, that sucks for you. Great controller, did the number pad buttons get in the way of the fire buttons?

 

AX

 

Yes, it does suck, but what can you do. At the time I sold it, Jag stuff didn't sell as well as it does now. I was just a couple years to soon I guess. You asked if the keypad got in the way when playing. It didn't for me because I never rest the palm of my hand when I use arcade controls. For someone who does, it might be a problem.

Edited March 13, 2009 by pboland

[mimo]

. I can tell you that the controller was made with a standard Jag controller. If you were to open it up, you would see a nest of wires running from the Jag controller PCB to the buttons. The arcade stick and red buttons are from a Playstation Blaze controller. Looked like this one but different color scheme:

The keypad is form All Electronics, part# CAT# KP-12. I believe I had to modify the traces on the little PCB. The black box is a standard enclosure from Radio Shack (I don't remember the part #). The other two small buttons are form Radio Shack as well. Catalog #: 275-1547. I hope that helps for anyone wanting to try to build one themselves.

So did you just hardwire to the joypad contacts on the Jagpad?

[+pboland]

. I can tell you that the controller was made with a standard Jag controller. If you were to open it up, you would see a nest of wires running from the Jag controller PCB to the buttons. The arcade stick and red buttons are from a Playstation Blaze controller. Looked like this one but different color scheme:

The keypad is form All Electronics, part# CAT# KP-12. I believe I had to modify the traces on the little PCB. The black box is a standard enclosure from Radio Shack (I don't remember the part #). The other two small buttons are form Radio Shack as well. Catalog #: 275-1547. I hope that helps for anyone wanting to try to build one themselves.

So did you just hardwire to the joypad contacts on the Jagpad?

Yep. That's why I was so surprised to see it sell so high. If a person can use a drill, jig saw, and a soldering iron anyone can make one. It really isn't all that hard. A little time consuming, but not hard.

[mimo]

. I can tell you that the controller was made with a standard Jag controller. If you were to open it up, you would see a nest of wires running from the Jag controller PCB to the buttons. The arcade stick and red buttons are from a Playstation Blaze controller. Looked like this one but different color scheme:

The keypad is form All Electronics, part# CAT# KP-12. I believe I had to modify the traces on the little PCB. The black box is a standard enclosure from Radio Shack (I don't remember the part #). The other two small buttons are form Radio Shack as well. Catalog #: 275-1547. I hope that helps for anyone wanting to try to build one themselves.

So did you just hardwire to the joypad contacts on the Jagpad?

Yep. That's why I was so surprised to see it sell so high. If a person can use a drill, jig saw, and a soldering iron anyone can make one. It really isn't all that hard. A little time consuming, but not hard.

I have been toying with the idea for a while, but for some reason thought it was more difficult than a simple hack (no idea why!)

Off to the shed to get out that old game cube fight stick, drill, dremmel etc etc

[Tom-Lynx]

Are there any games that actually make use of the Jaguar Pro Controller (the one with the 6 buttons / XYZ buttons)?

[viMaster]

Are there any games that actually make use of the Jaguar Pro Controller (the one with the 6 buttons / XYZ buttons)?

Absolutely... I just can't remember which ones...

 

 

Oh, I know Primal Rage does.

[nonner242]

I'm thinking something like the one in this picture

 

The face would be somewhere in the 8 x 10 range. If I could get a case that would be cost effective, since 5200, and Coleco all use number pads, I think I would produce the shells and wire them to order for the buyers choice of console.

 

I don't even have the die cutter yet (waiting on the mail) and I'm all excited about the possibilities.

 

I don't know what people conssider cost effective, but if you are looking at killing an original controller, plus arcade parts, spinner, dye, ink, t-molding, etc, I think the $100 mark would be a realistic price to try and keep it under.

 

AX

 

Im in it if it lloks this cool!

[Tempest2k]

Are there any games that actually make use of the Jaguar Pro Controller (the one with the 6 buttons / XYZ buttons)?

Absolutely... I just can't remember which ones...

 

 

Oh, I know Primal Rage does.

 

Yes, Primal Rage.

 

Also: Fight fo Life, Atari Karts. I think Battlemorph too.

[doctorclu]

 

You know when making a controller you have to think, "What am I going to use first?" You use the joystick and fire buttons right? So if I made a Jaguar controller, the numberpad would be towards the TOP of the controller and the joystick and fire buttons would be in front of it.

 

Not only that, I would make the number keys 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... along the top (like a computer keyboard) rather than the phone pad design. That way I could make a smaller Jaguar controller.

 

 

Are there any games that actually make use of the Jaguar Pro Controller (the one with the 6 buttons / XYZ buttons)?

Absolutely... I just can't remember which ones...

 

Oh, I know Primal Rage does.

 

Also: Fight fo Life, Atari Karts. I think Battlemorph too.

 

And definately Missile Command 3D. That controller really helps in that game when you are switching gunner positions. And you know, with all my Jaguar collection, the pro stick is the one thing I don't have. :/ But no rush.

 

Have regular Jaguar controllers, rotary and Super MAS prostick. Honestly, I found over time that the gaming styles and how the games play on the Jaguar, a D pad is best where as the games on the Atari 800, the joystick is best.

 

A platformer like Bubsy, Rayman, Zool where you practically hold down the D pad to the right to walk/run would be crappy with joystick.

 

Now a game like Raiden, Native or Trevor McFur a joystick would be more like it. And shooters like that are what the Atari 800 was good for. I've always thought it would be good to convert a standard Atari 2600/800 stick for the Jaguar, but for the reason above I haven't done it yet.

Edited April 26, 2009 by doctorclu

[the.golden.ax]

I'm working up a couple prototypes. I tried talking to the guy with chaosreigns about cobranding and including his spinner, but like so many he did not reply. I'll have to obtain one and see if I can duplicate the function, or scrap that aspect. It would have been a simple matter to sell me the spinners for $50 each, slap his name on... he gets the same profit as selling a controller.. but nooo..

 

AX

[nonner242]

I'm working up a couple prototypes. I tried talking to the guy with chaosreigns about cobranding and including his spinner, but like so many he did not reply. I'll have to obtain one and see if I can duplicate the function, or scrap that aspect. It would have been a simple matter to sell me the spinners for $50 each, slap his name on... he gets the same profit as selling a controller.. but nooo..

 

AX

 

Or you can just scrap the spinner part of it. Save time and cash. Its only one game, my favorite game but if it cuts the cost down say $35-$50 it might just be worth it. I would much rather have 6 buttons and a nice keypad setup.

[the.golden.ax]

If possible it will just be an option. Joystick with a spinner, or without. I could always go with 2600 driving controller parts. I have plenty, and there are enough places that show you how to use those. That wouldn't add much to the price.

 

AX

[mimo]

If possible it will just be an option. Joystick with a spinner, or without. I could always go with 2600 driving controller parts. I have plenty, and there are enough places that show you how to use those. That wouldn't add much to the price.

 

AX

It wouldn't add much to the game play either!

Gorf did give me a part number for a suitable encoder (optical) but I managed to loose it!

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Hey there guys and gals.

 

I'm going to be padhacking a Jaguar controller into an arcade stick in the not too distant future and I think I have a pretty good idea of how to wire up the arcade buttons (just solder a wire from each side of the button contact points on the PCB to the two terminals on the arcade buttons) but what's puzzling me is where to solder the Sanwa JLF joystick harness's black ground wire to on the controller PCB.

 

So I'm wondering if anyone here might be able to post a picture diagram of where to solder the joystick's ground wire to and let me know if there are any other details I should know such as if any resistors will be needed or if the wiring process is going to be more complex than I'm imagining it will be. It seems like it should be as simple as just soldering wires from each side of the button contact points on the PCB to the terminals on the arcade buttons, but this will be my first padhacking project and I'm not exactly an electrical engineer so it's entirely possible that there might be something I'm missing.

Edited February 27, 2017 by Jin

[Zerosquare]

One side of the direction contacts is common to the four contacts. You can find it by using a multimeter or just by following the tracks on the PCB. Connect your joystick's ground to that signal (from any of the four buttons), then connect the joystick's left/right/up/down pins to the other side of the matching contacts.

 

The controller schematic may be useful: https://www.atariage.com/Jaguar/faq/

(look under "What's the wiring schematic for the Jaguar controller?")

 

For other buttons, just connect them in parallel with the contacts.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Zerosquare

[Skippy B. Coyote]

One side of the direction contacts is common to the four contacts. You can find it by using a multimeter or just by following the tracks on the PCB. Connect your joystick's ground to that signal (from any of the four buttons), then connect the joystick's left/right/up/down pins to the other side of the matching contacts.

 

The controller schematic may be useful: https://www.atariage.com/Jaguar/faq/

(look under "What's the wiring schematic for the Jaguar controller?")

 

For other buttons, just connect them in parallel with the contacts.

Thanks for the help! Unfortunately I don't know how to read a circuit diagram (again, my electrical knowledge is pretty limited) but from what I gather the Jaguar controller uses a common ground across all the buttons and d-pad so I should be able to daisy chain the ground wires from button to button with the last one grounded to the PCB rather than grounding each button to the PCB individually. Then the joystick can be grounded to anywhere along the PCB's ground line, right? The only challenge will be examining the controller PCB to figure out which side of the contacts is the ground and which is the signal, since wiring it up backwards would be bad.

 

Does that sound right or are there some parts of the Jagaur controller like the number pad that are not common ground?

Edited February 28, 2017 by Jin

[Andromeda Stardust]

Thanks for the help! Unfortunately I don't know how to read a circuit diagram (again, my electrical knowledge is pretty limited) but from what I gather the Jaguar controller uses a common ground across all the buttons and d-pad so I should be able to daisy chain the ground wires from button to button with the last one grounded to the PCB rather than grounding each button to the PCB individually. Then the joystick can be grounded to anywhere along the PCB's ground line, right? The only challenge will be examining the controller PCB to figure out which side of the contacts is the ground and which is the signal, since wiring it up backwards would be bad.

 

Does that sound right or are there some parts of the Jagaur controller like the number pad that are not common ground?

Keypads are not common ground usually.

 

Most numeric pads use a X,Y matrix of some sort. For instance a 3x4 pad would have 3 vertical wires and 4 horizontal wires, totaling 7 connections for 12 buttons. The wires connect to buttons in the matrix and each button connects a horizontal and vertical wire. The console or interfacing device strobes one set of wires and reads the other set. When a signal is detected, the location of a button can be identified. These work well as discrete inputs but run a muck when multiple buttons are pressed, resulting in null or invalid inputs.

 

Keyboards take this to the extreme with up to 100 inputs on the matrix, typically interfaced with a controller that serializes the input data. Most keyboards have limitations on the number of buttons that can be pressed simultaneously as a result of the matrices. This makes keyboards poor substitutes for proper game controllers when multiple buttons are pressed.

 

Colecovision used a slightly different approach, using two discrete ground planes (one for Dpad and left button, one for keypad and right button) and diodes interfaced with the 3x4 keypad matrix to code 4-bit inputs based on key presses. 4-bit data from the keypad got multiplexed with 4-bit data from the joystick by using separate grounds. Ditto for the right and left fire buttons sharing a common input.

[juansolo]

I have to admit, if I can secure a sensibly sized box, I'm sorely tempted to make one. The joystick/spinner and buttons are all easy to implement. Lifting and shifting the whole number pad so you can use inlays would be an interesting challenge.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Keypads are not common ground usually.

 

*snipped*

 

Yeesh, looks like I'll just have to play it safe and solder a wire from each side of the keypad contacts to the terminals on the 24mm Seimitsu buttons that I'll be using for the keypad buttons then rather than daisy chain the ground from button to button. It'll be a little more work but fortunately the Seimitsu buttons don't care about polarity so it doesn't matter which terminal gets hooked up to the ground and which one goes to the signal, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other for them, so that makes life easier for me since I won't have to try and figure out which side of the button contacts on the PCB is the ground and which is the signal.

 

 

I have to admit, if I can secure a sensibly sized box, I'm sorely tempted to make one. The joystick/spinner and buttons are all easy to implement. Lifting and shifting the whole number pad so you can use inlays would be an interesting challenge.

I had contemplated trying to find a way to cut the number pad section of the controller out and secure it to the arcade stick housing so overlays could be used, but I think with her disabilities those little keypad buttons would be too difficult for my wife to press so I decided to just replace the keypad entirely with 24mm Seimitsu buttons in a layout like so using a 14" wide Hammond enclosure (forgive the very rough mockup, it's just a quick and dirty visual example):

 

 

 

The neat thing about the Seimitsu buttons is that they're translucent so you can insert your own artwork into them, which in this case will just be numbers for the keypad. I'll also be going with larger 30mm Seimitsu buttons for the main buttons so I can insert A, B, and C lettering inside them as well.

[Machine]

Not sure if this is what you need, but it may help someone......

Someone made this diagram up in another thread. I can not remember who's it is, so my apologies to the creator.

 

Edited February 28, 2017 by Machine

[Andromeda Stardust]

Yeesh, looks like I'll just have to play it safe and solder a wire from each side of the keypad contacts to the terminals on the 24mm Seimitsu buttons that I'll be using for the keypad buttons then rather than daisy chain the ground from button to button. It'll be a little more work but fortunately the Seimitsu buttons don't care about polarity so it doesn't matter which terminal gets hooked up to the ground and which one goes to the signal, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other for them, so that makes life easier for me since I won't have to try and figure out which side of the button contacts on the PCB is the ground and which is the signal.

 

 

 

I had contemplated trying to find a way to cut the number pad section of the controller out and secure it to the arcade stick housing so overlays could be used, but I think with her disabilities those little keypad buttons would be too difficult for my wife to press so I decided to just replace the keypad entirely with 24mm Seimitsu buttons in a layout like so using a 14" wide Hammond enclosure (forgive the very rough mockup, it's just a quick and dirty visual example):

 

 

 

The neat thing about the Seimitsu buttons is that they're translucent so you can insert your own artwork into them, which in this case will just be numbers for the keypad. I'll also be going with larger 30mm Seimitsu buttons for the main buttons so I can insert A, B, and C lettering inside them as well.

Glad to see you building joysticks. Yeah keypad interfaces would be a PITA to design from scratch so sacrificing a Jag pad may be worth it to you. Use thin guage wire so you don't rip the traces off the PCB, if soldering directly to the board. Hot glue on the pads after the wire is secured with solder helps.

 

Simitsu buttons tend to be a bit pricey so the 24mm matrix could be done using cheap 16mm buttons from Adafruit or somewhere about ~$1 a piece. You don't need great rapid fire buttons on the keypad, just a simple pushbutton that registers reliably when pressed will do.

[skip]

It's interesting that this thread popped up again. I was reading on the weekend for 'research purposes'...

Back in the mid 90s (20 years ago! Wow!) I made my own Jaguar arcade stick by hacking a controller. I didn't have any instructions as such, other than the freely available rotary stuff. I used a 2600 driving controller which is fine ergonomically but the resolution of the rotary encoder sucks. The two switches on the left/right of the pause and option buttons are for enabling the rotary (easy) and for auto-fire on button B. I tried to create my own circuit diagrams for auto-fire but never implemented it unfortunately...and my electronics-fu is very weak now, so I'd need to find a working circuit design to copy if I were to ever get it working.

The soldering of the wires is very logical and easy (pad and button points) and I *highly* and *strongly* recommend implementing the pro-controller layout by soldering to the number pad. It's easy and well worth the time and effort to do so (much easier than acquiring a pro-controller or hacking one, even though I have at least two of them floating around ).

Here's a photo. It's falling apart, and my wiring used the thinnest and weakest wires (what was I thinking!?) but it still works! I do plan on putting it into a proper box at some stage in the future and fixing my wiring / soldering, plus I'll see if I can retro-fit a decent rotary encoder and finally implement auto-fire *fingers crossed*.

I *could* get these professionally built with brand new parts. I have a possible professional manufacturing partner (because I simply don't have the time to do it myself). There are four main problems though (in addition to a few smaller issues):
- Time is lacking
- I'm not sure if the manufacturing partner is on-board just yet (I shouldn't give that away, but in the context of being fully open, why not)
- A Jaguar pad would have to be sacrificed for each one (maybe, see below)
- The price would be at least $200 a piece (AU or USD, it's still pricey), it could cost more, and shipping from AU to the rest of the world for a 4kg professionally made piece is not insubstantial.

There is a possibility that it could be made without sacrificing a Jag pad and simply plugging it in, but the science of doing that hurts my brain. I do have 'people' that could make this a possibility and have done similar in the past (with modern consoles and their controllers), but the time invested in working it out could be more than it's worth. I know people have done it, so it's definitely an option that in the long run could be easier.

Oops, I wasn't going to talk about this again unless it happened. But there you have it...