So what happens when you decide to take out your old Atari 2600 console with the intention of playing it only to find that the controllers don’t work? Make your own controllers of course! So I spent like 30 minutes looking for parts in Brunei. What I needed was 5 buttons (4 for direction and 1 for the fire button). We really need a good place to buy electronic parts like these in Brunei. Recommendations anybody? Anyway I found them and Batu Bersurat at the toy shop opposite Ayamku, I think it’s called Little ‘M’ Children but I could be wrong. I did my research on the controllers on Chinese New Year’s Eve (BTW Happy New Year everybody) and found it all documented online here. But I got my documentation the hard way.. With a multimeter and my own serial port connectors. That was one of the reasons I got 2 hours of sleep that night/morning. Anyway photos to come later. I need to sleep I have work in a few hours and some Android lurking to get back to too
Updates:
The original Atari 2600 controller opened up: nice simplistic circuit with the common ground and I tried to keep the same wire colour convention but I didn’t have a white so I used gray instead.
Colour | Pin # | Function
-------+-------+----------------
White | 1 | Joystick Up
Blue | 2 | Joystick Down
Green | 3 | Joystick Left
Brown | 4 | Joystick Right
| 5 | Left Paddle
Orange | 6 | Fire
| 7 | +5v
Black | 8 | Ground
| 9 | Right Paddle
Male connector on the Atari itself, controller uses female connector soldered as show below
Top view:
Bottom view:
Top view of controller:
Bottom view of controller (wire wrapped and soldered):
Now all I need is a box to put it in….
Powered by ScribeFire.
The Wheat Field 