THECXSTICK ultimate fix

[tyke]

For anyone with a dodgy stick, here is the fix you’ve been looking for. I’ve spent the best part of 3 days looking at this trialing many solutions for a simple and effective fix. It came down to a simple pressure point in the center of the joystick shaft. By placing a rubber pad in the center of the main PCB I found it offsets the pressure and twist of the shaft ensuring an even directional movement every time. No more dodgy left and right movements and you don’t need a light touch either  

 

For reference I used a sticky backed rubber grommet used to cover the screws on the top shell of a 3DS.  Tighten your screws up normally on the pcb and the bottom casing. 
 

Have fun and report how you get on 🤩 

 

Edited April 2 by tyke

[CartoonDan]

I tried this a few times and the stick seems to work better. The stick is pretty stiff but I can play Brice Lee and get to the end now with no random ducking.

 

The first time I tried this mod the case did not fit together perfectly, there was a space on the front side of the joystick. It seemed to cause random attacking in Bruce Lee when I tried jumping diagonally. I readjusted the case and screwed the four bottom screws in tightly. Then the random attacking went away and the diagonals work well too. The stick is stiff but I can live with that as long as it does what I want.

[Spanner]

Is it acting like a spring, I remember some joysticks uses springs in the middle of them to keep the stick straight and stop it from pushing agent the PCB so it had more movement in the stick.

My Quick Shot Python 1 uses one.

Edited April 2 by Spanner

[chad5200]

Wow!

 

This 100% fixed my joystick!  And now all my screws are back to being nice and tight!

 

The screw loosening technique never worked for me... but this method works great.

 

I cut a small square of 1/4' thick sponge tape.

 

Thank you!!!

 

 

 

[Pac-Man Senior]

I tried it with four or five stacked felt pads and it seems like it fixes the problem. It makes the joystick a little bit more stiff in comparison to the experimental screw fix. But it's more reliable and the joystick is bolted well. I played a few minutes Lee and a full round Jumpman (Beginner). No problem at all. Thanks a lot!

[JetmanUK]

13 hours ago, tyke said:

For anyone with a dodgy stick, here is the fix you’ve been looking for. I’ve spent the best part of 3 days looking at this trialing many solutions for a simple and effective fix. It came down to a simple pressure point in the center of the joystick shaft. By placing a rubber pad in the center of the main PCB I found it offsets the pressure and twist of the shaft ensuring an even directional movement every time. No more dodgy left and right movements and you don’t need a light touch either  

 

For reference I used a sticky backed rubber grommet used to cover the screws on the top shell of a 3DS.  Tighten your screws up normally on the pcb and the bottom casing. 
 

Have fun and report how you get on 🤩 

 

I will try this later, I just need to find something suitable around the house. 👍🏻.  What I really like about this is that if it's a 100% fix it is an easy addition to make at the time of manufacture, I would love this issue to go away in future stock. Much more practical than loose screws, although mine being loose has made it 90% reliable. Can't wait to try this later! Thanks for sharing! ✌🏻🤟🏻

Edited April 3 by JetmanUK

[JetmanUK]

14 hours ago, tyke said:

For anyone with a dodgy stick, here is the fix you’ve been looking for. I’ve spent the best part of 3 days looking at this trialing many solutions for a simple and effective fix. It came down to a simple pressure point in the center of the joystick shaft. By placing a rubber pad in the center of the main PCB I found it offsets the pressure and twist of the shaft ensuring an even directional movement every time. No more dodgy left and right movements and you don’t need a light touch either  

 

For reference I used a sticky backed rubber grommet used to cover the screws on the top shell of a 3DS.  Tighten your screws up normally on the pcb and the bottom casing. 
 

Have fun and report how you get on 🤩 

 

Can you advise what the height of the little nubbin is? I think I may need to buy some sticky pads for this purpose.

Thanks.

[tyke]

15 minutes ago, JetmanUK said:

Can you advise what the height of the little nubbin is? I think I may need to buy some sticky pads for this purpose.

Thanks.

If you want to use the same ones I used you can order them from here. Different colours available lol

 

Height wise they are 3mm.

 

 

[JetmanUK]

2 minutes ago, tyke said:

If you want to use the same ones I used you can order them from here. Different colours available lol

 

Height wise they are 3mm.

 

 

Thanks, buying them now!

This should offer some resilience, and I will have some spares here if I need to swap it out down the line. Great.

[pjedavison]

The ingenuity of the Atari enthusiast community never fails to impress me. Great job, folks, glad we've got a reliable fix for those who have had problems.

[JetmanUK]

So, whillst I await the rubber DS stickers to arrive I finally found something at home very similar and decided to give it a try.

I can confirm that I now have ZERO accidental down commands! Yay!

 

However....

I also now find the diagonals, particularly the right up one to be quite difficult to hit, so for me it's not a perfect fix (yet), but a great improvement. The overall stiffness of the stick is increased by a large amount too, so if you struggle with a stiffer one (oo-er) then this fix may not be ideal for you.

 

Right now, I think this is a nice improvement and I wouldn't be surprised if this is the fix that the manufacturer will go with on their next production run, with the perfect size and type of material I am sure it could be excellent.

 

 

EDIT: I thought my stick with the loosened screws was 90% good, I'd say it's now 95%. Hoping that the new sticky pad will make it better, I want perfection!

The CX40+ IS perfect, even the old CX40 is still perfect, we should not get any incorrect commands or tricky to hit ones either.

Edited April 3 by JetmanUK

[+remowilliams]

Cue contest for 'random things I found around the house to install in THECXSTICK'   😄

[Fred_M]

Just my personal opinion: I think it is not correct to assume that any homebrew modification to the joystick will be the "ultimate fix". I never called loosening the screws of the PCB a "fix", I stated deliberately that it makes the stick better but not 100%. I am afraid that using these rubber stickers will also not be a permanent fix.

 

We have seen many opinions here about the cxstick. Many people have problems, but there are also a lot of people who are stating that they don't have any problems with the cxstick. I guess quality control is not great and (yes, my personal opinion) that rubber d-pad like circle used in the cxjoystick is not the way to build a reliable and long lasting joystick. There will be a lot of wear and I think also the rubbers sticker proposed in this topic will not be a long lasting solution.

 

The joystick of the C64 mini also had a lot of problems and a lot of people even litterally broke the C64 joystick.

 

RGL should have made a better joystick. The 400 mini is priced at 120 euros (130 dollars!)  in Europe, I think for that price we should have gotten a better quality joystick.

 

Personally I think the only permanent solution to the problems of the cxstick is using another (better quality) USB controller.

[+jeremiahjt]

I believe this is where Gen X Grown-Up got the idea for their latest video.

 

 

[+swlovinist]

Is there a link to the gorilla grit adhesive pads used in this video?   Definitely an issue I am having with the controller.   

[+jeremiahjt]

49 minutes ago, swlovinist said:

Is there a link to the gorilla grit adhesive pads used in this video?   Definitely an issue I am having with the controller.   

@jonreddick Your fellow YouTuber wants to try your adhesive pads.

[jonreddick]

1 hour ago, swlovinist said:

Is there a link to the gorilla grit adhesive pads used in this video?   Definitely an issue I am having with the controller.   

Hey, John. I'm not sure the policy of AtariAge & shopping links, but I did just add a store link to the very ones I used in the video in that video's description. Thanks for asking!

[jonreddick]

1 hour ago, jeremiahjt said:

I believe this is where Gen X Grown-Up got the idea for their latest video.

 

 

Interestingly, I was writing this video over the past couple days and just this morning, a viewer mailed me a link to this thread, which resulted in me expanding and including this homebrew solution. Awesome!

[Fred_M]

1 hour ago, jonreddick said:

Interestingly, I was writing this video over the past couple days and just this morning, a viewer mailed me a link to this thread, which resulted in me expanding and including this homebrew solution. Awesome!

 

Personally I think you should tell your viewers that making this change is at their own risk. We don't know yet if this "fix" will create other problems in the future. With such a height adjustment more pressure is given to the stick and the PCB themselves and will probably void warranty.

Edited April 3 by Fred_M

[Irgendwer]

3 hours ago, Fred_M said:

RGL should have made a better joystick. The 400 mini is priced at 120 euros (130 dollars!)  in Europe, I think for that price we should have gotten a better quality joystick.

I'm still tempted to buy a mini, but the price tag just doesn't match.

(You can get a mobile phone with HDMI out for that price, use Colleen and have (beside battery, screen, WLAN, Bluetooth) lots of additional possibilities.)

I wouldn't mind if they would just remove the stick and drop the price significantly.

There are many options for well designed and reliable USB controllers...

 

 

[+MrFish]

6 minutes ago, Irgendwer said:

I'm still tempted to buy a mini, but the price tag just doesn't match.

Just wait, the price will drop; and while waiting, they'll have a chance to fix some of the issues and add some of the missing options in firmware.

 

 

[Fred_M]

32 minutes ago, Irgendwer said:

I'm still tempted to buy a mini, but the price tag just doesn't match.

(You can get a mobile phone with HDMI out for that price, use Colleen and have (beside battery, screen, WLAN, Bluetooth) lots of additional possibilities.)

I wouldn't mind if they would just remove the stick and drop the price significantly.

There are many options for well designed and reliable USB controllers...

 

 

I bought the 400 mini because of its nice appearance 😉 but it will never replace my real Atari 8-bit computers.

 

I did not buy the 2600+, I will wait for a pricedrop and will then decide if I really want it.

[jonreddick]

2 hours ago, Fred_M said:

 

Personally I think you should tell your viewers that making this change is at their own risk. We don't know yet if this "fix" will create other problems in the future. With such a height adjustment more pressure is given to the stick and the PCB themselves and will probably void warranty.

As with any consumer electronic, the very act of opening the case is likely to void your warranty. Here in the 2020s, I think that's farily common knowledge, but I added a note in the video description for anyone who just woke up from cryo-sleep. 😉

[Pac-Man Senior]

10 hours ago, Irgendwer said:

There are many options for well designed and reliable USB controllers...

Yes and no. Yes, there are uncountable usb controller options out there. But joysticks? No. My hands want a joystick for most of the old games. My THE64mini joystick broke after less than a year. This joystick was not very precise and had a short life. THE64maxi joystick is too clicky/noisy in my ears. The new Speedlink Competition Pro hasn't enough extra buttons and is clicky/noisy too. I checked some reviews concerning the hyperkin joysticks and they weren't complimentary. That's it. In this context THECX40 was like Obi Wan - the last hope. Now I hope that manufacturers are reading atariage threads and improve their quality management.

[Pac-Man Senior]

@jonreddick Hey Jon, I regularly watch your interesting videos but this time I had an immense demand to send you my joystick if there weren't thousands of miles between us. I'm an Atari gaming veteran with more than 40 years of experience with the old CX40. I know how to push a joystick softly and I know how to game the hell out of it. In four decades I never had a joystick in my hands that nearly stops taking a specific control command after a while of playing. For example I played a chilled round of Burger Time on my THE64mini with THECX40. Nearly two levels no problem and suddenly the cook cannot take the ladder down any more. Not the soft way, not the hard way. In windows 11 settings for the controller I saw it was impossible to get "down" for more than a 1/10th of a second. The result of "down" was always "down/right". The first sessions with this joystick I thought I could adapt to it, I could learn to push the way the joystick likes it. But it was an illusion. I got one of the badly produced CX40 and you were obviously one of the lucky buyers. That seems to be the whole story of this consumer quality lottery. The good news I take out of your video: There are well produced THECX40 out there. I'm honestly glad to hear. Now I just have to find one.