Reconditioning old original TI PHP-1100 joysticks

[+jedimatt42]

I've got some old joysticks that are in pretty nice condition. The contacts seem clean.. However the foam padding that seems to be crucial to the switch mechanisms doesn't have any spring left. It quickly becomes compressed and doesn't spring back. Consequently, well your lasers overheat in parsec, and direction is real sloppy.

 

Has anyone reconditioned these before? any tips?

 

I know everyone sort of runs for the hills looking for alternatives... But I was the crazy kid who attached one of these to my NES, added extra buttons, cause I just couldn't stand the use of that NES dpad... Now that I've got some TI hardware running again, I'd like to see the old joysticks working.

[Omega-TI]

You could measure the required thickness and diameter, find a suitable piece of material then cut out a usable replica with a Dremel tool.

[+jedimatt42]

True enough... maybe I can try various foam materials from the hardware store... There are two pieces in there, the round bit for the stick, and a little rectangle under the fire button. It's funny, cause right now, it acts like memory foam, but of course it isn't supposed to

[+save2600]

If you do a search here, someone was ambitious enough to totally replace the conventional design (which lends itself to cramping) with tiny surface mount switches or microswitches....