Atari 2600 Paddle As Joystick with 2 Buttons

[PAC-MAN-RED]

I'm messing around with 2600 controllers these days, on top of making sprites/title screens, and I've made a circuit that allows the 2 paddle lines from the 2600 to act like a Joystick. This Idea has come up before a few times in the past.

 

After testing, I can say that this works on REAL hardware and works with the 2600-daptor which oddly enough sees it as the Paddles when Stella is set for Paddles and as a Joystick when Stella is set for Joystick... that's probably my fault. Anyway, the completely unintended result leads to the controller design also allowing 2 Fire buttons(The Left and Right directions that are used by the Paddles as fire buttons).

 

Here Check it out:

 

 

In the thread Session 23: Moving Sprites Vertically by Andrew Davie, there's a post by Galaga_Freaks who has written a simple program to test all of the directional movements of this controller.

 

Here's the code & bin:

hvpaddle.zip

 

Unfortunately, he did not include the Fire buttons in his code. If anyone could add-in the Fire buttons then the program would be complete. Or if some one could write one in Batari Basic that would be great too.

 

If you want to test this on the 2600, then grab your copy of Warlords and pop that sucker in. The two players will be able to move left and right(no diagonals of course) along their designated paths, and the Buttons will be able to grab the ball for either player.

 

Enjoy... and be careful to always double check your wiring, lest you wreck your Atari... then I get to say, "I told you so."

 

Illya

[+stephena]

I'm messing around with 2600 controllers these days, on top of making sprites/title screens, and I've made a circuit that allows the 2 paddle lines from the 2600 to act like a Joystick. This Idea has come up before a few times in the past.

 

After testing, I can say that this works on REAL hardware and works with the 2600-daptor which oddly enough sees it as the Paddles when Stella is set for Paddles and as a Joystick when Stella is set for Joystick... that's probably my fault. Anyway, the completely unintended result leads to the controller design also allowing 2 Fire buttons(The Left and Right directions that are used by the Paddles as fire buttons).

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, this is exactly what should be happening. If you tell Stella that a game uses paddles, it probes the 'pins' that correspond to paddles. The same is true for joysticks. That is, different codepaths are taken depending on what type of controller is 'virtually' connected to the emulated port. Now of course, Stella has no way of knowing what you've actually connected; it can only act on what its internal database told it is connected.

[PAC-MAN-RED]

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, this is exactly what should be happening. If you tell Stella that a game uses paddles, it probes the 'pins' that correspond to paddles. The same is true for joysticks. That is, different codepaths are taken depending on what type of controller is 'virtually' connected to the emulated port. Now of course, Stella has no way of knowing what you've actually connected; it can only act on what its internal database told it is connected.

 

You're right, I misjudged my circuit building prowess. Stella wins, but it is awfully difficult to play Breakout with a regular Joystick.

 

Having said that though, the above circuit would make playing games programmed for the regular Joystick, and games programmed for this circuit practically seamless while using Stella, seeing as this circuit requires paddle code. Awesome programming with Stella btw.

 

Illya

 

PS - Forgot to mention this in my first post - I tuned the 2 POTs in conjunction with the hvpaddle program to align the "man" into the center of the screen. That's why they have such funky values. Through future testing/tweaking, those values may have to change.

 

EDIT: UPDATE!

 

Seems as though the hvpaddle program has the Left and Right movements reversed! After more testing in Stella and on real hardware this seems to be true. A better program is definitely needed for this. Here's an updated Circuit:

 

 

Yes I simply flipped the circuit around in my editing program. Well it was easier than redrawing the whole thing.

Edited August 29, 2011 by PAC-MAN-RED