Xbox 360 arcade stick padhack

[jay_red]

My cousin has been getting into fighting games recently, and when he comes over here he likes to use our arcade sticks over the standard controller. I had enough spare parts laying around that I figured I could throw together his own stick for the 360. After quite a few hours and a couple of frustrated nights I have completed my cleanest pad hack yet.

I started with needing a common ground wired controller, I stumbled across a "joytech" brand controller, and a quick search online confirmed that this would be a common ground. Payed 18 bucks for it and was off! Well I start to get the buttons wired up, making a super clean nice daisy chain for the grounds, getting everything looking nice and I go to try it out, and the A button registers as down? none of the other buttons did anything! So I closely look over the board and discover this is infact, not a common ground controller! There must have been a revision of it, because as soon as I compared it to the diagram it was obvious that this was not the same board.

Frustrated I started to solder wires all over the place, it looked terrible, they were everywhere! And I hadn't even started on the joystick yet. I had to put it away and come back later. Went to radio shack to get a new solder tip and wire, and discovered they had some terminal strips on clearance for 2 bucks, so I grabbed them to see if I could make it look better. Got home and started over, desoldered everything and started from scratch. After 4 hours or so of wiring, testing, and redoing things, I have what I feel is a very nice hack. I learned that in this case, 24 gauge speaker wire was a godsend, as I could handle the signal and ground in one swoop, and it kept it looking clean.


you can see the strips I was talking about, they magically lined up with some posts already molded in the case, and screwed in secure.


I didnt have anything to put in the upper corner, so I cut out a black piece of plastic and glued it there to not have a gaping hole. I didnt wire up the triggers, so it has A,B,X,Y, LB,RB. There are 2 buttons on the back, I made them start and The Xbox button. The top grey button is "Back" and the bottom one is non functional.

[CRTGAMER]

Went to radio shack to get a new solder tip and wire, and discovered they had some terminal strips on clearance for 2 bucks, so I grabbed them to see if I could make it look better. Got home and started over, desoldered everything and started from scratch. After 4 hours or so of wiring, testing, and redoing things, I have what I feel is a very nice hack. I learned that in this case, 24 gauge speaker wire was a godsend, as I could handle the signal and ground in one swoop, and it kept it looking clean.

Great idea on the speaker wire and terminal strips. They really help for a clean layout. Maybe expand your guide with a closeup of the XBox controller PCB and a diagram to show the wiring layout for one who might attempt your mod?

[s8n]

i have done some Pad Hacking in my time also and found this site below


http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/pcb_wiring.html


theres some Photos of XBOX360 Controller PCB's of different Pads amongst other systems........

[fvgazi]

Slag Coin was the site I used to help me build my first arcade stick. There's lots of fantastic info on there. The 360 w/ a common ground is a pretty clean cut mod to do. Looks fantastic! I can't overstate how great terminal strips can be.