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Cyber Sidewinder Arcade Stick
How to Build your own Arcade Stick
Playing your favorite MAME games on the keyboard just isn't the same. So I got my self a Sidewinder Game Pad, but even then something was missing. That's when I got this crazy idea to build my own Arcade Joy Stick. So I started looking around for parts and I found them all at Happcontrols, the buttons the joystick it was all their. All I needed now was an Interface device (a gamepad) Since I really enjoyed the Sidewinder I decided to open it up and take a look inside. To my amazement I found out that all of the solder points were already labeled for me. Here take a look and see for yourself.
You can clearly see it has been Labeled "U" for up and "R" for right. The second shot is where the buttons are labeled. Its kind of hard with all the wires but trust me everything is clearly labeled for you. All you have to do is stick a wire through it and on the other side drop a piece of solder to seal it. Trust me its really easy I have never soldered shit in my life and I was able to do it. Its not the cleanest job but it works. If you don't believe me take a look at this:
Ok now all you need to do is find the Ground and on these game pads it's easy. All you need to do is look for the thick traces on the Sidewinder game pad or look for the GND label on the top buttons. Once you found Ground solder a long piece of wire to it. From this wire your going to link to every microswitch on the buttons and joystick [ground]. Basically you want to daisy chain this wire to all the microswitches. Kind of scary but as long as the solder doesn't touch the other joints its ok. Once your done all you have to do is solder the wire to the appropriate buttons and joystick. That's the easy part since the buttons and joy stick are industrial quality, you can't mess this part up. Once your done, it should look something like this:
Ok you almost finished now all you have to do is plug it in and run the Sidewinder control applet to make sure it works. It should report it as a Sidewinder Game Pad. What's really cool is you can daisy chain this joystick to a Sidewinder Game Pad and go head to head with your friends. Its really cool in all types of games not just retro gaming. I use it for NFL Blitz. And what's really cool is that most games support it. You don't have to worry about it not working.
If you want to know more detail please hit the continue button. CONTINUE?
