joypad wiring problem

[mo1e]

hey all heres im having alittle trouble with a gamecube joypad that i want to use as a control panel, heres a pic of the button connections for each button on the joypad which part of each button needs to have the silver revealed and have the wire soldered to it? if i remember on the dreamcast it was the left hand side theres a top bottom left and right to these ones

[severdhed]

not to be rude, but how about a pic that shows us something useful?  That one is so blurry and out of focus it is hard to see what is going on.


also, just out of curiosity, what made you go with a gamecube for your arcade cabinet?  I know they are dirt cheap now, (used for $60 at EB and gamestop)but are there really that many arcade games available for them?  (besides soul calibur 2)

[mo1e]

no im just making an arcade stick for my gamecube so i can play fighting games with it

[severdhed]

im sure someone would be glad to help you, but we need a better pic....if i didnt know better i'd say that came from the same guy who took those pics of the loch ness monster.

[NightGod]

From what I can see there, which admittedly isn't alot, there are two silver traces. What most likely happens is the bottom of the plastic button has a conductor on it and when you push them down, it connects the two. If that's the case, you need to figure out which one is ground (should be able to use a multimeter and find out which of the two has connectivity to the same trace on another button) and then wire all those to the ground of the arcade buttons and the other trade to the NO pin on the buttons.

Then again, a clearer pic might totally prove me wrong.

[NickG]

If you want good solder connections on a game pad then solder your N/O contact wires to BOTH sides of the button contact.  Then cut the traces off of the pcb that are on the ground sides of the buttons.  You can tell which side is ground because it is common with the other buttons.  Then you only have to solder a ground "daisy-chain" to one point on the pcb...