Don't you hate the N64 joysticks? No worries. Try this mod!

[marshallh]

I'm 99% sure those problems are because of different resistances.

Try this: put your ohmmeter on one of the lines (say, horizontal) and measure the mid and max travel points. Then measure the same points on the original joystick.

I have no idea of the number, but if the PSP joystick has a higher resistance, you can put a resistor in parallel with that axis to bring the resistance down to the levels it expects. Conversely you can put a resistor in series with it if you need to raise the overall resistance.

This is also the reason it won't recenter - it's looking for values in a certain range and the values it reads from the PSP joystick are out of range. Once you fix the above issue it should recenter automatically.

[bacteria]

Very interesting marshallh.

So are you basically saying to use a multimeter, set to ohms (like when measuring the ohms of a resistor), compare the values, then use a resistor which has a value of the difference between the two (so they are both about the same)?

If this is what you mean, then, setting my multimeter to 20k setting, I get with the PSP: about 4.2 at rest, vertical one way 2.5 and 4.8 the other way; horizontal 4.2 and 2. On the N64 joystick, at rest, about 1.9-2, vertical 2.25 > 1.08 and horizontal 2 > 1.07.

There is fluctuation between the readings, and thinking about it, not sure if the readings I got above was H on PSP > H on N64 or H on PSP and V on N64, if you follow my meaning.

What resistors do you think I should experiment with? Are we saying for example that the PSP at rest is about 4.2 and the N64 controller (SuperPad) about 1.9 at rest, so a difference meaning needing a 2300 ohm resistor on H and V? (or am I entirely off the track?). Please elaborate!

Please elaborate when you talk about using resistors in parallel and series - perhaps a pic please (I can't visualise it)? I presume you are indicating that what I need to do is put the H wire to a resistor and the other end of the resistor to the V terminal on the PSP joystick? (for reasons in last post).

I must say, if this issue can be resolved, using a PSP joystick will be really quite good. I tested on Donkey Kong 64 and also Duke Nukem Zero Hour; ignoring the issues above, the PSP joystick felt quite nice to use and is small. I can see these joysticks being a feature of many portables to come potentially, especially as it will stop having long sticks sticking out of a case - also better for clam-shell cases too.

I fortunately bought three of these joysticks, I destroyed one of them as I was curious how it worked and if I could make any adjustments to one - then couldn't get it back together! They don't cost much, under £2 each from an e-bay seller in Hong Kong.

[marshallh]

Looks like the resistances are multiplied by a factor of two.

The PSP joystick has two pots of higher resistance, so by placing resistors in parallel with the pot terminals you can effectively lower the resistance.

Using the Parallel resistor formula I got about 3800ohms for the resistor. Closest common resistor size is 3300 or 3900ohms.

One end of the resistor will need to go to the V/H terminal and the other will go to (I think) Vcc. You may have to play around a bit but I think that should work.

[blaze3927]

I used article

http://mechail.wordpress.com/2009/04/23 ... -part-one/

for the pinout and it has some very interesting stuff about resistance, heres what he said;

The pinout for the PSP Analog Stick is as shown above. Dead Center would be about 2K ohms on both X &Y axis. If you’re using a multimeter to check for the connections, the values would read 4k ohms on the X & Y. These values drop once you input power.

not sure if it's relative or not, but if it became feasible to use them on 64's it would be a nice spacesaver for portables.

[bacteria]

I have some time free today, was going to spend it on my TurboGrafx (and will still if I have time), but will spend time playing with some resistors and experimenting with the PSP joystick and my N64 setup. Bottom line is I don't have to be exact in my resistors, I just need enough so that when you move the stick back to center the character stops moving about, reliably, and the stick behaves the same way in all directions; so I may not get "the perfect" resistance resistor, but one that "is good enough". I think I have a piece of breadboard somewhere, so I can change resistors on the fly for testing.

Will let you guys know how I progress.

Thanks for the link blaze3927, nice background info. Indeed, that is the whole point - using PSP joysticks on a portable will be a very nice space saver - smaller hole to cut in case, far neater, depth inside case of 7mm instead of about 20mm, smaller, easier to mount; on outside of case, flat with no joystick sticking out.

My motivation for this BTW was that the only thing I don't like in my IntoPlay project is the fact the joysticks stick out like they do - not an issue when playing, but ugly when not as everything else is flat. I thus thought of either using a finger slide like on this NES pad



...however the size would need to be quite large to cover the movement of a standard joystick; or of course the far better solution of a small assembly like the PSP joystick; which is certainly favourite!

Time to experiment...

[blaze3927]

Well good luck to you indeed!

but a few questions on the side,

would this work backwards (or reversed?) to get the PSP analog stick to work on a psone/two controller?:
(these pics were taken from a tutorial on how to replace psp analog stick with a pstwo analog stick)
1

2


link to tutorial:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/10/how- ... r-sony-psp

*Also in your opinion, which would be a better stick to use, the PSP 1000 stick (one used above) or the PSP 2000 analog stick (one pictured earlier)
I've only ever used the PSP 1000 stick and I like it.

**Also if you/me gets this working would you be able to help me set up a complete Noobs guide on how to set this up for compatible n64 third party controllers (maybe a list is in order?) and/or psone/two controllers (basically would be the same thing but resistance/ basic wiring might be a bit different)

[bacteria]

(reply to above post after I made mine):

blaze3927 - I saw those pics a while back. Comments:

That is why joysticks with 6 connections actually only have 4 unique ones - two always share ground and two always share VCC.

No idea if the joystick for the original (phat) are better, or worse than the PSP slim joystick I used - what I would say is I don't think we can get the slim ones to work. Do you have both??

Yes, if you can make this work, please make a guide! I have taken this as far as I can - see post below. It should work on any N64 third party controller that doesn't use the joystick assembly like the original N64 controllers (eg Wild Things and Competition Pro models).

If you wire up the H from the controller to H on the PSP and V>V in the same way, and you find that either vertical is fine and horizontal is backwards, or horizontal is fine and vertical is backwards, then if you wire H from the controller to V on the PSP and V>H then it rectifies the problem. I noticed this on my Multi-platform system too a while back.

my post:
Ok, can't make it work, tried various things (i'm no expert though in this, perhaps someone else can try?); even if you can make it work, the PSP joystick, although analogue, doesn't seem to be progressive, so not ideal anyway. I tried various combinations, same result. I did test with the multimeter during a game, the link above indicated that the ohms would reduce when powered, the opposite was true - doubled in fact, and the difference between the two opposites went down to a third approximately. I don't know what I am doing to make this work; so can't do it.

One thing I did discover is that you can make your analogue joystick into a digital D-pad quite easily:

Up = VCC + H
Down = H + ground
Left = V + ground
Right = VCC + V

Downside of course is that there is no variable speed for a character like you get with an analogue joystick, it is either on or off, however, you can press one side quickly and it has a fairly similar effect in that your character can make small movements. Just did a tentative test with a rubber tact switch, seemed to work ok in principle. Probably best to make a d-pad with four rubber tact switches on a board rather than a normal d-pad, because, as you see above, there is no common ground.

No idea how it would react to diagonals though; that would be a make or break. Also don't know if this idea sucks or is a good one, without making up a d-pad and testing on various games.

What's the benefit of this you ask? Well, most N64 games use the joystick and not the D-pad, although some games use both but work better on the d-pad (eg Pokemon Puzzle League); hence an N64 portable really needs both joystick and d-pad to be complete. Problem though with having both a d-pad and a joystick is that only one of them can be in prime using position, the other one (d-pad) ends up going somewhere less ideal and usable. Everything in making portables is a compromise after all.

I need to experiment further with this, by wiring up to a normal d-pad, then trying some games like Donkey Kong 64, Doom 64 and Mario 64, as well as Pokemon Puzzle League (to see if any conflicts). It might be that with a little practice you can use a digital d-pad as well as an analogue joystick in games, and therefore only use one d-pad to play all games on the N64. That would mean a neater portable.

If I spend more time playing with this concept at the moment, it will divert me from my current project, however, I will be making an N64 handheld in my next project, so will do my testing then. My case has plenty of space for a much larger joystick, like in the SuperPad as the N64 board will fit alongside fine; and that will be probably my preferred option as although the SuperPad has a large joystick it is a joy to use and will fit in my case ok.

Always worth experimenting, though! May come to nothing, but experimentation is always fun.

If the concept works though, it might be worth experimenting with using a d-pad for the left and also right joysticks on the PSone - if works, then that would keep the portable flat on top. Many games work fine with just the d-pad, however of course some games need the joysticks instead. Yes, further experimentation for another project! (I have many projects in the works!).

[blaze3927]

well as of five minutes ago I fried my PSP so looks like I have a spare PSP 1000 analog stick to play around with, will test on Psone first, then i'll try it on a 3rd party n64 once my controller arrives, will post my findings, as for getting the resistance right on the n64,....I've read up a bit on acidmods about it, if I cant get the right combination maybe marshallh might know (quite) a bit more on this than I do

[blaze3927]

Okay, trying to do the PSP joystick thing backwards for psone use didnt work, all that happened was the psone thought I was either pressing start or select whenever I moved...
When I get my n64 controller I'll give it another go:
btw for this test I used a PSP 1000 joystick

[bacteria]

Don't see why the PSone would think that - connect to the joystick connections...

Have you pics of the PSP 1000 joystick?

Anything then on Acidmods about the PSP joystick, for what we are wanting to do??

[neverused]

Hooking up the psp razor nub to a ps/ps2 controller kind of works, though I gave up after a while. You have to remove the pots completely and wire them up the same way. I got the left stick to work fine, but I couldn't get the right one to work right. The stick seemed to be "stuck" going to the right I believe. It's been a while since I tried it, but it was either due to a bad soldering on my job (a pretty good chance as I accidently damaged the joint) or the resistance was wrong. The right stick couldn't find the center, but it's worth another shot as some else will likely have better results if they're not learning how to desolder quickly on the one controller they have (which is just dumb).

[blaze3927]

well here's a pic taken from acidmods that shows the PSP 1000 stick I used, and heres a bit of stolen info from the same post:

The way the Analog Nub works is based on resistance. The circuit is always closed with a resistance between 15.0 ohms and 5.6k ohms for dead center when the resistance on pins 1&2 or 3&4 is raised or lowered would result in movement in a particular direction. This is why some people experience a runaway curser on some PSP’s if the faceplate does not have enough pressure or the contacts are dirty it will result in unbalanced resistance causing unexpected results in movement. An easy solution to this problem would to simple tighten the faceplate or clean the contacts..

i know this above information is about the PSP 1000 analog stick,

This is what the psp 2000 joystick looks like (to clear up any confusion, this is what the guy talked about earlier used))


will hopefully have more dug-up info soon

[bacteria]

Similar pics to the PSP joystick I am using.

So what the guy is saying basically is that you need to apply enough pressure on the case (with the stick underneath) to help the joystick to center - in other words, to try to compensate for a badly made joystick. The cursor roaming he is talking about illustrates the PSP seem to suffer from the same problem - not good joysticks.

Better ones, anyone? Someone mentioned a Tapwave Zodiac one, but can't get them - any other ideas?

[blaze3927]

Sorry I misled you
the info i posted was suppose to ony be about the resistance . the PSP connects the joystick to the mobo through this conductive plastic thing, and sometimes if you muk the case up or have dirty contacs the controller can scroll, I"ve personally never experienced that proble and if you are soldering directly to the PSP joystick (which we are) the scrolling/less responsive hurdle should be cleared.
In other words I wouldn't completely write off the psp analog stick yet,

[blaze3927]

Another Idea if the PSP analog stick doesnt work, has anyone used/ heard of the neo-geo pocket colour? they have an analog stick that may be pretty small.....