Newbie - needs help with where to begin.

[Hellfromabove]

Well let me start off by saying hello to all of you out there, it is an honor to be part of your forums. Well anyway, I have been researching on making arcade sticks for consoles and PC by keyboard hack or USB port for a while now and still dont know where to begin. I mean I wanted one so bad that I bought an arcade stick from massystems.com that worked on PS2/DC. I have been trying to make my own but have gotten major errors in the process. For example, I got a controller for DC like last December and tried to just find grounds and stuff by putting the wire in different places, stupid and big mistake I fried my DC. So my question is how do you know where to solder on to a game pad and how do you do keyboard hacks, how do you know where the ground is and where the circuit to the button on the board is. I have been wanting to make a 2 player arcade stick with the classic fighting game format layout with 4 buttons going across the top and 4 on the bottom instead of the traditional 3. Also wanted a start and select/coin button on each side. I have buttons and joysticks and wood now all I need is to know how to wire the pads. Also I dont want to hack something like a PS2 pad and get converters. One more thing, I have a Gravis Pro Pad and would appreciate some skematics on where the grounds are located and where to solder for the buttons. Thanx.

-See Ya!!!

[SNAAAKE]

very easy

If you are doin dreamcast then i highly recomend you use Madcatz dream pad and if for mame then nothing beats
I-PAC.
http://www.darkravenwind.com/cdvision/arcade.htm
this page has tons of info and
www.ultimarc.com
this is where you get I-PAC.

[eightbit]

Well you've found the message board here but have you read any of the other content on this site?
http://www.arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm
Start with the step by step newbie guidejavascript:loadLinks('arcade_newbie_contents.html','Contents','arcade_newbie.html','MainFrame')
then come back with more specific questions. People here love to answer questions but it helps if your a little more specific.

Welcome to this hobby, be carefull its addicting.  

[liche]

Building a control panel for either a MAME cabinet or your PC is VERY SIMPLE.

1.  Plan your control panel

2.  Order your buttons and joystick.  www.happcontrols.com is excellent for
     arcade style buttons and joysticks.

3.  Order a keyboard encoder.  Check out hagstrom electronics for a good keyboard encoder.  No need to hack anything.  Just wire the switches (buttons / joysticks) right into the encoder and the encoder wires inline with the keyboard.

4.  Thats it.  Nothing else to do.  Very simple.

[Hellfromabove]

Thanx for all the replies guys, it helps. Thanx.

-See Ya!!!

[rampy]

just another thought if you do more hacking (although I strongly recommend the ipac or other keyboard encoder) is to buy at least  a cheap multimeter to check continuity/etc  instead of randomly touching wires (to prevent accidently a frying other components in the future)

just a thought...

good luck with the construction!

rampy

[Dave_K.]

More info for console pad hacking on this site (with example pages for Dreamcast and Playstation):

http://www.arcadecontrols.com/arcade_consoles.shtml