Atari 5200 Competition Pro Joystick Y-adapter Wiring Diagram

[Joey_R]

Guy & gals,

 

After 30-years of storage, I've resurrected my 5200 gaming system. Around 1987, the puppy I owned saw fit to chew up the y-adapter plug from this joystick; rendering it useless. At last I've gone ahead and traced out the wiring which allowed me to fabricate a new y-adapter. This is probably a unique cause for a Comp. Pro failure, but in the event you have a similar problem, I've attached a PDF wiring diagram that may come in handy.

Joystick Y-Adapter Schematic.pdf

[+DamonicFury]

Guy & gals,

 

After 30-years of storage, I've resurrected my 5200 gaming system. Around 1987, the puppy I owned saw fit to chew up the y-adapter plug from this joystick; rendering it useless. At last I've gone ahead and traced out the wiring which allowed me to fabricate a new y-adapter. This is probably a unique cause for a Comp. Pro failure, but in the event you have a similar problem, I've attached a PDF wiring diagram that may come in handy.

 

Thanks for sharing! I'm sure someone will need this someday.

[edladdin]

Guy & gals,

 

After 30-years of storage, I've resurrected my 5200 gaming system. Around 1987, the puppy I owned saw fit to chew up the y-adapter plug from this joystick; rendering it useless. At last I've gone ahead and traced out the wiring which allowed me to fabricate a new y-adapter. This is probably a unique cause for a Comp. Pro failure, but in the event you have a similar problem, I've attached a PDF wiring diagram that may come in handy.

 

Thank you!

[tripletopper]

 

Thank you!

 

Edladdin, you only got half the answer. The other half is the circuitry in the joystick itself. If anyone's got that, you can make some money. With very limited electrical knowledge, I assume that there is an x-axis pin, and a y-axis pin, and they are continuous analog pins that accept a voltage. I assume you need the cardinal directions to dial out a voltage/resistance, or some other fact that makes analog controls work, one direction is minimum, one was maximum, and neutral defaults to the setting on the actual 5200 stick, so a working 5200 controller would be the center adjuster/calibrator. The design requires a working 5200 controller to work.

 

Best-electronics-ca.com is interested in a digital solution for the Atari 5200. They said it would takes tens of thousands of dollars of research to come up with a digitally actuated analog electronically stick. Fight stick adapters can use digital sticks to actuate analog controls in a digital manner on PS1/N64/Saturn and higher sticks. I believe the circuit board in a Coin Controls Competition Pro Joystick is now in Public Domain if it were patented. If someone can find that circuit diagram, that would be cool.

 

I believe some fight stick makers can wire the actuators to a pot individually at the extreme left value and extreme right value( and up and down), if you have a sacrifice 5200 joystick for them to wire. The only question is how there Atari 5200 deals with diagonals. Is the NE representation NE 100% north and 100% East or if it's 70.7% N and 70.7% east on games that are obviously digital games. Would a 5200 work in 100% N 100% E on games that are obviously digital (which is most 5200 games) If so, that would make wiring simpler, instead of doing (square root of 3) / 2 which requires separate diagonal wiring spots.

 

I understand that kind of wiring would give a "diagonal speed boost" giving you a velocity of the square root of 2 or 141% in analog games, and the game might work wrong if it showed a radius for 141% on games that are programmed in radius/angle mode, not X/Y mode and if anyone competes on a 5200 during an any game/any console/any era tournament, certain games would be illegal with a Competition Pro, but then again, chances are you need more precision control, so the disadvantage is probably greater than any advantage gained, and that would regulate itself.

[bohoki]

i do not have a competition pro to analyze but i can extrapolate the way they did it if one would want to use it

 

without the 5200 controller one could make a little dongle with a couple 240k resistors and a push button for start (or 500k potentiometers),(or set of atari paddles)

 

they used 8 wires so they may have used the NC contacts of a microswitch for right and down to add in another 240kohm to make the console see 500k and for left and up they just short the directions to pin 9

 

 

so if there is a circuit board in the competition pro it only has 2 resistors on it

 

the diagram looks complicated but you can mentally erase pins 1-8 cause that is just the keypad then you can mentally erase pins 13,14,15 cause that is the fire buttons 9 10 11 are the +5 ,x and y directions

Edited January 4, 2018 by bohoki