ga5ket's Blog

Posted on May 27th 2009 at 04:05:16 PM by (ga5ket)
Posted under Dragon 32

DISCLAIMER: I've already published this on my personal blog, but I thought it might find an interested audience here.

Some time ago I had the notion of hacking a PS1 joypad and a Dragon 32 joystick into some sort of hybrid that might work for an emulator. I love playing games on the Dragon, but it's a bit of a bind loading tapes all the time and I'm not sure how long the hardware will last if I keep using it.

This is the results of that idea.

(And when I can figure out the difference between Blogger's html and RFGen's I'll get rid of the space below this paragraph)















Removed the circuit boards from the PSX pad, a Woolworths branded knock off. Using a Dremmel I cut out the section of the pad that holds the right nubbin.
Removed the potentiometer from the Dragon joystick, and unsoldered the connections to the fire button. This button will directly activate the PSX pad circuit board. No damage to the controller, so I can always return the controller to it's pre-modded state. These things may not have a soul, but I do.
I tidied up the nubbin casing, and glued it into the Dragon joystick case. This will give me a secure mounting point for the actual analog control later. Sawed the nubbin circuit board in two, one to fit inside0 the Dragon joystick, the other to be hidden away in a project box.
I've got tons of old pc cables lying around, so I cut up an old RS232 cable, and salvaged a com port from my parts bin. I soldered the cable to the joystick end, and the com port to the main PSX circuit board. After testing all the connections for continuity I plugged it all together, retested and found that I'd swapped the connections between the plug and the socket, so I had to redo the socket end. Once I'd done that and retested it everything looked ok, so it was time for a test on the emulator.
Bugger me, it all worked! Ok, so it wasn't rocket science, but this is my first project in about 20 years, and I did expect some major problems along the way. I've still to add a proper joystick to the controller instead of the nubbin, but this is how it looks so far


I've managed to get my boards into a project box now, and wire up the analogue on/off switch. This was all built from parts I had lying around, and whilst the box is a bit on the big side it does mean that I can add another board and sockets and have 2 joysticks. Or add an interface for something else.




Not much else done, but I've cleaned up the box and added some authentic early 80's style labels





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Comments
 
Impressive! Well done!
 
holy shit nice work!!
 
Great work....I myself would be lost by step 2.

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