PC to NES controller?

[A Button]

I just got a NES at a garage sale and it works pretty well, but the controllers get really uncomfortable after playing for a while, so I've decided to make my own. If I screw up I can spend $7 on a dog bone controller on Ebay, but where's the fun in that?

I've seen a lot of NES to PC tutorials, but I want to do the opposite: Solder the innards of an NES controller to the innards of an old-school Sidewinder I've had laying around. The Sidewinder pads are gigantic and not square, so it's pretty much ideal for a mod. Since the NES controller doesn't use encoding I think this should be fairly easy, but I'm new to modding and I'm not quite sure how to go about this.

The sidewinder controller: http://livingwithanerd.com/wp-content/u ... rosoft.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The sidewinder PCB: http://arcadecontrols.com/images/staticx_9.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So, any help getting started would be appreciated.

[jaqiefox]

the very first thing to find out is if the D pad is digital or analog.... if it is digital (uses switches and not variable resistors of some sort to emulate a joystick) then its a pretty easy mod. if not, youve got a headache on your hands, but its not impossible.

If its digital, ignore this part but if its analog, you have to gut the analog parts out of it and find some microswitches that fit underneath the D pad and put the switches on a pcb, cut it to a size that will fit, and fit it underneath the D pad in a way that it will operate the switches directly.

After making sure you have the d pad digital (on off switches) you just slice off all of the electronics on the sidewinder pad, dremel or something would be fine, and then solder each switch to the proper traces on the sacrificial nes controller circuitboard. there are tutorials all over the net on the particulars of soldering onto pcbs and such.

and whatever you do, please dont sacrifice an actual nintendo original dogbone pad for this! those things are wonderful and getting hard to find already