+Cafeman Posted August 20, 2001 Share Posted August 20, 2001 Welcome aboard, ElvisDJ. Interesting suggestions there ... I'll keep them in mind once my sticks start to act up again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElvisDJ Posted August 21, 2001 Author Share Posted August 21, 2001 Hello All, Well, after lurking on this board and on AtariAge for many a moon, I finally decided to register on the message board so I could post. Of course, the question then became, "what should I post about?" Lo and behold, I found a post about 5200 controllers, and thought I'd share my solution for fixing them as my first contribution to this group. I'd love to say I made this solution up, but I didn't. I, like everyone who uses 5200 controllers, had a number of half-functioning and non-functioning sticks. I think I had about 15 or so in total, and only 1 worked fully (all buttons). The rest were either completely dead, or had some buttons (usually fire) broken. Well, one day, on my one good controller, the bottom right fire button stopped working. I opened it up for the heck of it, to see if I could clean it with the old pencil eraser trick, and what did I find inside? The remaining 3 fire buttons (the working ones) all had a small circular piece of tin foil glued to them. The non working one didn't. Well, to make a long story short, I cut some tin foil, glued it to the underside of the orange fire button (not to the contact itself), put it back together and, wonder of wonders, it worked perfectly! In fact, the newly repaired button was so responsive that I opened the controller up again and replaced all the other foil, too, including the start, pause, and select buttons and all the keypad buttons. Once i had done this to the first controller, I set about testing it on all the others. I set up "Rescue on Fractalus", which uses most of the 5200 controller buttons for gameplay, and tested them all out - the result? After modifying all my controllers, I now had 13, count 'em, 13 perfectly working controllers. 2 still didn't work, but it was an actual stick issue, not any keypad or fire buttons. This was three years ago, and all of my sticks are still working well - now if I could only come up with a solution for the lack of centering... Well, thanks for listening to my ramblings. I'm sure I'll post more if I feel I have something worthy to say! Bryan P.S. - A big hello to Albert from AtariAge, in front of whom I was standing in the line to purchase "Secret Agent" at CGE this year. Albert, you might remember my girlfriend's volunteering to purchase a cart for someone you knew...of course you didn't know me then, but here I am now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Posted August 21, 2001 Share Posted August 21, 2001 ElvisDJ, You had mentioed you did not glue the tin foil to the contact itself. Is this the contact on the actual underside of the orange button or the contact on the circut board of the controller? You mentioed you glued it to the underside of the orange button. Just wondering exactly where. Also what glue did you use? I also have 15 controllers. I got 14 of them to work, but as you know, they will break down over time. I would like to repair all of them this way. Thanks This is good stuff! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElvisDJ Posted August 21, 2001 Author Share Posted August 21, 2001 John, I glued the foil to the underside of the orange rubber piece. There is a little tiny circle in the center of the back of each orange piece. Glue the foil there so that the side without glue will be facing the contact strip when you replace the orange piece. I used crazy glue for some and also small pieces of Scoth tape. Like I said, every one of them worked instantly. Hope it works for you! Bryan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted August 21, 2001 Share Posted August 21, 2001 Hi Elvis and welcome aboard! I have quite a few broken 5200 controllers that I've yet to set about repairing. I'll have to give your suggestion a try, thanks for sharing it! When I do I'll have to take some pictures of the process and write it up in glorious detail so people can easily see what they need to do (although it sounds pretty simple from your description). quoteP.S. - A big hello to Albert from AtariAge, in front of whom I was standing in the line to purchase "Secret Agent" at CGE this year. Albert, you might remember my girlfriend's volunteering to purchase a cart for someone you knew...of course you didn't know me then, but here I am now! Yes, I do remember you and your girlfriend, glad you were able to find your way here! But now I'm busted for trying to buy multiple copies of carts at CGE (they were for Alex, who couldn't attend! Really!) ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElvisDJ Posted August 22, 2001 Author Share Posted August 22, 2001 Nah, you're not really busted...my girlfriend actually bought the cart for herself, but saw you were needy, so sold it to you (at no profit of course!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elvis8Atari Posted August 23, 2001 Share Posted August 23, 2001 Thanks for the 5200 controller/tin foil tips. Welcome to the board and nice name. =-) Now that I think of it and Elvis Atari game would be cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d8thstar Posted August 27, 2001 Share Posted August 27, 2001 I wonder... i did a repair like that about 5 years ago on a system i ended up selling... needless to say, my other 5200's work just fine with this trick... another one i tried is a silver metallic model paint. needs to be paint that is metallic so that it will close the circuit... ever since i've done these two cheap home repairs, all my sticks work great. and i also have some ideas floatin around in this noggin for self centering sticks... maybe we can compare notes d8thstar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubersaurus Posted August 31, 2001 Share Posted August 31, 2001 Now if only a fix for channel f controllers could be made. Lousy wiring... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted August 31, 2001 Share Posted August 31, 2001 quote: Originally posted by d8thstar: and i also have some ideas floatin around in this noggin for self centering sticks... maybe we can compare notes d8thstar I have an idea about that myself, that I came up with while converting one of my controllers into a paddle. It involves using springs in a way similiar to the older 2600 and 5200 and 8-bit cartridges. If you've ever taken one of those carts apart, then you've had a bear of a time getting that spring back into place when reassembling the cart. Well I'd like to impliment similiar side-sliding springs like that some how onto the two plastic plates that are used to make the two paddle pots in the 5200 controller work as a joystick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d8thstar Posted September 4, 2001 Share Posted September 4, 2001 hey gunstar.... lets take this offline via email. i'd be happy to collaborate on the ideas i have. i have a nice digital camera so maybe we can work on this together. also, if you'd be so kind to send me your URL, i'd like to convert an extra controller i have into a paddle... tony d8thstar@home.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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