Joystick freakout

[coliveira]

Hello

I hope this is the correct place for this.  While playing Tapper on my nephews' mame cabinet the joystick freaked out and started going 'right' all the time.  Also, the buttons aren't really working correctly.  Is it possible that this is a problem with the joystick?  I haven't completely gone into it too much, but it looks like the joysticks and buttons are getting power still.  Also, it looks like the jpac lights are appropriately lit and are okay.

I guess I'm hoping for a direction in which to begin what happened and why?

Thanks for reading.
Chris

[VanillaGorilla]

What kind of joystick? it could be a bad microswitch, if its in a constantly closed state, it could be interfering with other button presses...

[coliveira]

VanillaGorilla

Thanks for the reply.  I do recall from prior issues that I was having that it's a Happ Perfect 360 joystick.  Per an earlier post "The Perfect 360 joystick is an optical joystick, which means that the position of the handle is read by optical switches, instead of conventional leaf switches or microswitches. This gives near-silent operation, as the handle & actuator never touch anything."

Sounds like it may not be a microswitch.  Could it possibly be a bad optical switch?

Thanks
Chris

[VanillaGorilla]

sadly I have nothing to offer as I have never worked on a p360 joy. Lots of others around here have though, they were very popular 5-7 years ago. Maybe do some searching on troubleshooting p360's...You could have a worn out optical sensor, or it could just plain be dirty, have you opened up the control panel to look?

[coliveira]

Yeah.  I don't know.  It was weird.  In the middle of a game it just 'broke' for lack of a better term.  I guess I'll try to take it apart and reassemble it.  Maybe it's just dirty.  Also, even though the jpac lights look fine, I suppose it can't hurt to run continuity checks to make sure it didn't randomly lose power.  I suppose I should unwire it and see if I have the same issue with the other one.  If not, it must be the stick.

Thanks for your time on this.
Chris

[boardjunkie]

I had p360s installed in one of my games when they first came out almost 20 years ago. They did indeed like to "freak out" as you described, so I yanked them out. Nice idea, never worked so well in practice.

[coliveira]

Okay.  This is getting stranger.  My joystick now works perfectly again (with me doing nothing).  I'm curious to know if sunlight could've been the cause?  The machine is in the garage right now waiting for it's new home.  The day it started freaking out, the garage door was open.  The back of the machine is off as I'm having a bit of a monitor issue (please feel free to check out that past too - haha).  Is it possible that the sunlight coming through the back caused an issue for the optical microswitch?  Is that possible?

Thanks
Chris

[Gray_Area]

Only recently have I had consistent issues like this, mainly in Robotron, leading me to think it was either MAME/PC or my controller. However, it comes to mind that if the 5v supply to it isn't consistent, there could be a drop out of one or more leds, which I imagine would register as 'movement'.

[coliveira]

Thanks for the response.  That makes sense.  I guess I'll start there in case I have these issues again.

[Gray_Area]

Well, it turns out it may have been the stick. I replaced it with another P360, and million-plus games with no problems. Maybe the PCBs can go bad after a while.