Carefully remove the 4 tact buttons, the slider switch and the 5 LEDs. Salvage necessary components: Some parts are needed to be salvaged from the main PCB, to be used on the replacement one. By default its on, so we do not need the direct button wiring) (There is a button in the grip just under the POV lever, that selects if the 4 main buttons will be send using the com chip or using the 4 direct wires. The other 4 wires coming from the grip are the original game port buttons and we don’t need them. 5 of the wires coming from the grip must be carefully noted and marked before disconnection: GND, PR, CS, D0-D1, and Pi-P/S There are 4 wires connecting the pots, and 9 wires connecting the grip. Using a soldering iron start removing all wires from the PCB. Remove the PCB: Unscrew the 5 PCB holding screws. Unscrew the base screws and remove the metal base. Reveal the base screws by pealing off the rubber pads. Open the base: remove the suction cups by unscrewing them. We now need to carefully remove the base PCB taking notes of some wiring connections. This also eliminate the need to replace the PCB in the grip. Turns out its a simple parallel to serial converter, easily handled by a microcontroller. I had to reverse engineer this communication since the communication chip was too old to find a datasheet for. The joystick itself contains 2 PCBs inside, one at the base that controls all programmable functions and keyboard emulation, and another one inside the grip that collects all button presses and communicate them with the base PCB. This function is now obsolete since a USB joystick can support as many buttons as needed. It has a programmable feature to set what key is mapped to which button. This function was necessary since PC Game-port supports only 4 buttons. The SFT joystick, aside from Game-port connector, have a keyboard bypass connector that enables the joystick to convert joystick buttons into keystrokes. The PCB have several extra inputs to accommodate for extra inputs/axis. This project is intended to replace the hardware of a Suncom f15 Talon joystick, but with little tweaks can be used for other types of joysticks. Note: This project requires basic electronics understanding and soldering skills, And of course, everything provided here is given as-is, use it wisely and on your own risk. I will also provide PCB schematics and PIC firmware. In this post I will explain in detail how to convert an old Game Port joystick to USB using pic microcontroller. So, you want to convert your good old Suncom F15 Talon joystick from this: You can enter to win them here.This project intend to revive old PC Game port type joysticks by converting them to modern USB HID game device. The advantage to this is that anyone will some basic Lua scripting experience can make a HID device do almost anything imaginable.Īs is always the tradition, we have secured a few copies to give away to our readers. Every HID compatible device will work but you need to have some basic scripting experience to write your own configurations. Just a word of warning, MidiHID is not plug and play software like Guitar Translator. Pierre, who was also the man behind Quartz composer and PixelShox, is a very good developer so his HID translator is super fast with low latency and very reliable performance. Instead of waiting around in the wings, Pierre went ahead and built a full version of the software that supports all HID devices and allows anyone to customize their own presets. Since creating Guitar Translator, things at the TechTools office have been out of control busy, so we delayed the release until I actually had time to support it. To fill the gap, Dj TechTools worked with Pierre last year in creating our own Guitar Translator, a simple but powerful program that serves one purpose: connecting guitar controllers to dj software so you can get your axe on in da club. While there are already several HID to Midi converters on the market, most of them are under-supported and the only decent one for mac, Junxion, is over $60. This translator allows you to take any HID device out there, including such devices as the Apple Remote, Rock Band guitar or a P5 Virtual Reality Glove and control dj software and create complex presets for each controller. An old friend of Dj TechTools, Pierre-Olivier Latour, has created a fast and powerful HID to Midi translator program called MidiHID that you may want to check out.
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