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Suzo Inductive Joystick Switchable 4/8 way mod
Level42:
Finaly found some time to try out a VERY old idea:
The Suzo Inductive Joystick has a potmeter that you can adjust to get 4 way or 8 way settings. Why they ever used a potmeter for that, I don't know really.
However, as soon as I bought one, I realised it should be possible to make this switchable, which would of course be perfect for a Mame cab.
The solution is so very simple, you can hardly call it a mod....but here goes:
First: if you try this on your Inductive, it's your risk (as always), no guarantee it works, you may damage your joystick, your cab or even your wife.....that is, if you're really uncareful :D
You need:
1) Suzo Inductive Joystick (DUH!) Get them while they last at www.tntamusements.com !
2) solder and soldering iron
3) some wire
4) a switch open/close (not a momentary switch of course)
Steps:
1) adjust the potmeter so that it works perfect in 4 way only. Turn anti-clockwise to move to the 4 way position, clockwise to the 8-way position. I found that 1/4 from the 4-way position works good for me.
To try this out, start a game like 1942 or Burning Rubber, and check you can NOT make diagonals. Run Pac Man, or DK to check if it plays OK in 4 way.
2) open up your joystick by pushing in the sides of the cover. Remove the PCB by lifting it carefully near the connector first, then on the other side. See picture 1, this is the 4/8 way potmeter. (NOTE: THE SETTING OF THE POTMETER IS WRONG, IT SHOULD BE AROUND 1/4 FROM THE LEFTMOST POSITION !)
Turn over the PCB
3) Find the soldering islands of the potmeter, they are in a triangle shape. You can see that two connections are already shorted by a track on the PCB.
4) Now solder the two wires on the positions as shown on pic 3. Please note that my PCB/soldering looks pretty messy, this is because I had been experimenting with two potmeters first. If the solderings of the islands will not melt(flow), try adding a tiny bit of new solder, this will make the old solderings melt (flow) much easier.
5) On the other ends of the wire you solder the switch. It doesn't really matter what position, you will find out what is what soon enough.
NOTE: There's no switch in my pictures because......I didn't have a switch around (at least I couldn't find one).....so I closed/opened the wires as needed ;)
6) Fire up 1942 or Burning Rubber. Try diagonals. If they work, the switch is in 8 position (that is shorting the potmeter). If not, it's in 4 way position (open).
Of course, if you have a 2x double pole switch, you can do fancy stuff like LED indication of 4 or 8 way position. Or you can switch two sticks at once.
It would be even better to replace the switch by a relay, and some software that knows if a game is 4 (or less) or 8 way, so that it can put out some signal to do the selection automaticaly. Who is willing to program this ?
For now, you'll need a switch. Of course, you should put this switch in a concenient place on (or below) your CP.
Please let me know your results !
Where should I put this on the WIKI ?
Next step: The Q-bert Inductive hack !
ChadTower:
It would probably be better to find the two optimal resistance levels for each of 4/8 way operation, replace the pot entirely with a pair of appropriate resistors, and switch between the two of those. That way you're not just shorting the pot to accomplish this.
It actually probably wouldn't be all that hard to have a build of MAME that sends out a serial signal based on the 4/8 way value of a given game and have a small controller that relays to 4 or 8 way accordingly.
Level42:
That's exactly what I did BEFORE finding this solution. I piggy backed two pots, apart from the one pin giving the resitance value. I wired those up to something that would have a siwtch to select either pot. But then I found that the pot value for 8 way was about 2 Ohms. That's VERY close to shorting it. So I figured the two pot version was completely overkill.
I will do some more test runs, but it works fine so far.
I think Powermame may be the key to the software switching solution. Powermame already is able to select automaticaly the correct modes for a 49 way stick, so a "simple" 4/8 way switch should be easy. I already made a thread to ask about this in the Powermame section.
ChadTower:
You wouldn't need two pots, just two appropriate resistors. A pot is just a variable resistor.
Level42:
Yeah, I'm an electronics service engineer, I know what a pot is :D.
Since this was a first try, I figured I would do the two pot hack because this way you would still be able to adjust both the 4 or 8 way settings. Once you find the "ideal" values, you can of course replace the pots with a fixed value resistor. However, finding the right values could be a bit hard, the pot is 100 Ohms max. You'd need to get E-value resistor as close to the pot value as possible. You might even need to combine resistors to get the right value.
But again, all this is not neccesary IMHO. "Shorting out" the potmeter is nothing else then when you turn the pot all the way to the 8 way side. There's nothing dangerous or wrong about it.