Radica with External Controller Port

[dankicksass]

Has anyone successfully attached an external controller port to a Radica (v1,v2,SF2) - I see that Ben had difficulty doing so with the Exodus. Is it possible to put a standard controller port on the Radica? Thanks guys.

[Skyone]

I was just about to ask... Uhr, I think I'll try to do it, give me an hour.

[dankicksass]

I'd do it myself, but I'm in the middle of an essay and finishing the button layout on my Game Boy case. I've got a genuine Genesis D-pad in there now, looks hella sweet! [pics tomorrow] I'm putting my G16 on hold for a couple of days though, going to do the Coleco Super Fist PSX conversion and finals this week.

[Skyone]

Hmmm, It looks do-able with some reverse engineering. I'll work on it some more later.

[dankicksass]

I did some homework.

Radica Info

>> Joypad operation

The chip (with the chip-on-board package) inside the Radica controller is the same as a 74HC157 data selector

First, here are the signals going to the controller:

Code: Select all

COLOR - SIGNAL FUNCTION
Brown - SEL
Red - B/A
Orange - UP
Yellow - DOWN
Green - LEFT/0
Blue - RIGHT/0
Purple - C/START
Gray - +3.3V
Black - GND
White - RESET

The SEL signal is directly hooked up to the 74HC157's select line. A low on SEL selects the B/Left/Right/C Buttons. A high on SEL selects the A/Start Buttons. The Up/Down/Reset buttons are independent of the SEL signal. All buttons are active low, and pull-ups should be provided to each button in order to present a logic 1 when a button is depressed.

Genesis Info

Sega genesist used a little but different approach in joystick connection than Atari. The Sega joytick pinout seems to be the "standard" 2 button joystick configuration where pins 6 and 9 are used for buttons which ground the pin when pressed. The only strange thing is that the joystick seems to want +5V also at pin 5. Sega has added more buttons to it"s newer joystick models (there are 3 and 6 bitton models). Those joysticks use basically the same interface, but more buttons are added by extra electronics which multiplexes the new button signals with the existing joystick signals using control bit in connector pin 7.

Code: Select all

Pin 	Name (Select=GND) 	Name (Select=+5V)
1	 Up	                        Up
2	 Down	                    Down
3	 Gnd / Left
4	 Gnd / Right
5	 +5VDC	                  +5VDC
6	 Button A	                Button B
7	 SEL	                      SEL
8    Ground	                 Ground
9    Start	                   Button C

The chip inside the controller is a 74HC157. This is a high-speed cmos quad 2-line to 1-line multiplexer. The console can with help of the Select-pin choose from two functions on each input.
9 pin D-SUB male connector at the game

Thus, I've come up with this Radica plug sheet.

Code: Select all

1 Orange
2 Yellow
3 Green
4 Blue
5 +5v from 7805
6 Red
7 Brown
8 Black
9 Purple

Skyone tried this, it works.

[Skyone]

Sure! I'll test it out when I get back home!

[Dragon Man]

to make this more easy, if you were to say extend the radica controler and change it to the Sega controler.
What colour wire of the radica controler cable connects to the sega controler wire?

i know that there will be a wire short for the reset but this wont bother me as you can just turn the radica off and on again xD

thanks peeps.