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Help: Atari-to-PC joystick et al


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#1 Entertainer OFFLINE  

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Posted Tue Mar 18, 2003 11:09 PM

Hi all,
Short time lurker, first time poster. :D
I read in the FAQ that there are hypothetical places one could buy an adaptor to use original Atari joysticks with a PC emulator but after some pretty extensive searching I was only able to find the plans.
Before I delve into the circuitry I was just wondering if anyone knew of a reliable vendor selling them ?
And has anyone ever built a custom PC with a TV video card and Atari joysticks for living-room use ? That's what I'm thinking of doing.

Thanks !
Entertainer

#2 BeerGnome OFFLINE  

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Posted Wed Mar 19, 2003 11:58 PM

First off.. for the custom PC...
I use an ATI all in wonder type video card.. mines very outdated.. but there are new ones out there that do the same thinglike the ATI radeon all in wonder. provides composite and Svideo in and out, as well as RF in.
My actuall set up here is that I use the RF signal in for all my consoles on a chain, and use the TV tuner feature of the card and software to play my consoles on the computer monitor.
But, I'm assuming you want to run an EMU to your computer..
thats fine.. use this type of card to run your computers composit video output to your Television. badda bing.. I do this for playing first person shooters on the PC on a 32 inch television :D
as for the joystick mods, there was a gentleman on the forums who was providing this service, but he seems to have fallen on hard times and has pissed off a lot of people.
my person joystick mod played on the gravis mod. but.. I took it a little further.
basicly.. I took an old atari joystick, kept all the guts and did away with the cord..
then, I took a cheap four button gravis game pad.. and chopped up the circut board, so it would fit inside the body of the atari joystick.
basicly.. the only thing left of the gravis pads circut board was the directional button parts and the one button that works with the atari emus.
at this point just solder leads to complete the connections between the corosponding contacts of the two units... seal it all together and now you basicly have a gravis game pad that looks like a atari joystick.. configure on your computer as such.
for two joysticks.. make two joysticks.. then get a game card for the PC that allows the input of two joysticks..
yeah its a little bit of work, and it aint quite the easy answer yer looking for.. but.. it works
hope that helps!

#3 Entertainer OFFLINE  

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Posted Thu Mar 20, 2003 10:27 AM

Thanks for the help. I'm torn between buying a 2600 and going with the emulation. I might do both :)
Thx.

Entertainer

#4 BeerGnome OFFLINE  

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Posted Tue Mar 25, 2003 11:59 AM

you can do both!
Get yourself a console, perhaps a Junior model, just becouse its easier to do the video mod, if you so desire. Next.. you get an Arcadia Supercharger that readsgames recorded in cassette format.
Next you get the wplaybin application that will translate your .bin files to .wav and then play them out your computers speaker outputs.
plug supercharger into the computers speaker output.
badda-bing.. now you got the best of both worlds!, sorta.. becouse not all the games will play on an unmodified supercharger.

#5 IceCold OFFLINE  

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Posted Tue Mar 25, 2003 12:21 PM

Entertainer said:

Thanks for the help. I'm torn between buying a 2600 and going with the emulation. I might do both :)
Thx.

Entertainer

Here's 2600 with a low BIN. And here's a nearly mint condition 2600 that you could try to win.

BeerGnome - you may have gotten the idea from this site , but why didn't you do how it says on this webpage, then you would still be able to use the joystick on 2600, and use the gravis gamepad on pc...

#6 CPUWIZ OFFLINE  

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Posted Tue Mar 25, 2003 12:26 PM

IceCold said:

Here's 2600 with a low BIN. And here's a nearly mint condition 2600 that you could try to win.

BeerGnome - you may have gotten the idea from this site , but why didn't you do how it says on this webpage, then you would still be able to use the joystick on 2600, and use the gravis gamepad on pc...

MiniPimp. :D

#7 IceCold OFFLINE  

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Posted Tue Mar 25, 2003 12:52 PM

CPUWIZ said:

IceCold said:

Here's 2600 with a low BIN. And here's a nearly mint condition 2600 that you could try to win.

BeerGnome - you may have gotten the idea from this site , but why didn't you do how it says on this webpage, then you would still be able to use the joystick on 2600, and use the gravis gamepad on pc...

MiniPimp. :D

Hehe, just trying to help the guy find a good 2600 to buy ;)

:P

#8 BeerGnome OFFLINE  

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Posted Tue Mar 25, 2003 2:21 PM

IceCold said:

Entertainer said:

Thanks for the help. I'm torn between buying a 2600 and going with the emulation. I might do both :)
Thx.

Entertainer

Here's 2600 with a low BIN. And here's a nearly mint condition 2600 that you could try to win.

BeerGnome - you may have gotten the idea from this site , but why didn't you do how it says on this webpage, then you would still be able to use the joystick on 2600, and use the gravis gamepad on pc...

yep..thats where I got the idea.. but to be quite honest.. I didnt care about useing the gamepad anymore..
I wanted less wires, and clutter, and of course.. A PC based, all self contained Atari joystick is just cool!

besides, the project gave me an excuse to do some tinkering and break out the trusty dremel tool :D

#9 IceCold OFFLINE  

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Posted Tue Mar 25, 2003 5:29 PM

Actually, it wouldn't really be the gamepad that I'd care about not being able to use anymore, it'd be the 2600 stick...

Although I'll probably do something similar to what you did once I have my MAME cabinet done, then I'll have cool 2600 emulation on it too. Atlhough arcade controls would be cool on 2600 games too...

#10 BeerGnome OFFLINE  

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Posted Tue Mar 25, 2003 5:44 PM

IceCold said:

Actually, it wouldn't really be the gamepad that I'd care about not being able to use anymore, it'd be the 2600 stick...

Although I'll probably do something similar to what you did once I have my MAME cabinet done, then I'll have cool 2600 emulation on it too.  Atlhough arcade controls would be cool on 2600 games too...

Arcade controlls for 2600? I almost exclusivly use a Sega Arcade power stick for my console, feels great, works great, has rapid fire!

And I hear ya about the stick, but I had a couple of messed up sticks I was able to use for the hack, this was back in the day when I had a mess of controllers and no console.. the one I had was a sears clone i found in an abandond house, never got a power supply for it, and it vanished anyways :roll:

so.. whats one to do with an emulator and a bunch of seemingly useless parts? Hackidy hack!
I also hadn't gotten into this part of the hobby yet so it never occured to me to keep the thing intact.
I'm more considerate of my hardware now

#11 IceCold OFFLINE  

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Posted Tue Mar 25, 2003 6:11 PM

BeerGnome said:

IceCold said:

Actually, it wouldn't really be the gamepad that I'd care about not being able to use anymore, it'd be the 2600 stick...

Although I'll probably do something similar to what you did once I have my MAME cabinet done, then I'll have cool 2600 emulation on it too.  Atlhough arcade controls would be cool on 2600 games too...

Arcade controlls for 2600? I almost exclusivly use a Sega Arcade power stick for my console, feels great, works great, has rapid fire!

And I hear ya about the stick, but I had a couple of messed up sticks I was able to use for the hack, this was back in the day when I had a mess of controllers and no console.. the one I had was a sears clone i found in an abandond house, never got a power supply for it, and it vanished anyways :roll:

so.. whats one to do with an emulator and a bunch of seemingly useless parts? Hackidy hack!
I also hadn't gotten into this part of the hobby yet so it never occured to me to keep the thing intact.
I'm more considerate of my hardware now

Hehe, except mine will be REAL arcade controls :D , not a stick that's supposed to be like an arcade stick, but isn't ;) .

#12 mrushton OFFLINE  

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Posted Fri Apr 11, 2003 6:57 PM

Do you know how to get 2 Joysticks to run under Stellax ???

I am trying to get 2 USB joysticks to work with it.

I fiddled around with the Stella Pro, but no luck. I want to play Combat with my 5 year old nephew.

#13 IceCold OFFLINE  

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Posted Fri Apr 11, 2003 7:42 PM

did you try using PCAEWIN instead? I'm pretty sure it works with 2 joysticks...

#14 mrushton OFFLINE  

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Posted Mon Apr 14, 2003 9:45 PM

I had problems running PCAWIN. I am running Windoze XP on my main machine.

It kept goofing up the video card. :? :?

#15 Vardelith OFFLINE  

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Posted Wed Apr 16, 2003 12:48 AM

Ice Cold: I just finished building a stand alone arcade joystick that plugs into both my Atari's ( a 2600 and a 7800) I'm also building a cabinet or two as you already know, but I still like my actual consoles! :P so I built a control panel that sits over your legs with some spare parts from my cabinet making projects! :P It plays very nice! :)

BTW: Your going to have to show us your cabinet when it's done! :)

Personally! I think it's more fun to play the Atari games when you have a good joystick. I enjoy even the nasties games if I can at least get my joystick to move smoothly! :P I improved my score in stampede by a couple thousand today testing my latest controller modifications! :P

#16 rickb20 OFFLINE  

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Posted Tue Jun 17, 2003 8:21 PM

Vardelith:

Do you have any pics posted? I would love to see this controller that you've built.

Thanks,
Rick

#17 PacManPlus OFFLINE  

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Posted Mon Jun 23, 2003 6:12 AM

Hello all:

One way to do it is to use an I-Pac (From Ultimarc) and just wire it up to a DB-9 connector - that's what I did! :) Although I housed everything in a dead 5200 case to make it portable...

see this link:
http://www.atariage....ght=hacked 5200

You have to scroll down a bit to see it...

#18 IceCold OFFLINE  

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Posted Mon Jun 23, 2003 9:38 AM

PacManPlus said:

Hello all:

One way to do it is to use an I-Pac (From Ultimarc) and just wire it up to a DB-9 connector - that's what I did! :) Although I housed everything in a dead 5200 case to make it portable...

see this link:
http://www.atariage....ght=hacked 5200

You have to scroll down a bit to see it...
I'm not trying to offend you or anything, or say you did anything wrong...

BUT, an i-pac is pretty expensive just for a joystick and a few buttons. I would have just hacked a cheap gamepad for it.

But then again, I've heard people say on arcadecontrols.com that they wished they would have used an i-pac instead of a gamepad hack.

For my arcade control panel(for the mame cabinet I'm creating) I hacked 2 gamepads. I haven't gotten the cabinet playable yet though, so I can't comment on how well the gamepad hacks worked out.

#19 PacManPlus OFFLINE  

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Posted Mon Jun 23, 2003 1:08 PM

ok - no problem :) just trying to offer an alternative




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