Are you serious?

Typical! That's the only word to describe it. This is the story of my life. Less than ten days after I finish building my own joystick, what happens? That's right, the MadCatz joysticks are now back in stock and ready to be shipped out to all who want one. Dang it!

So now I'm torn. Yes my joystick works, but it lacks quality and functionality compared to those made by, well, any retail manufacturer. I can now completely appreciate the $150 price tag on the Tournament Edition FightStick as I know the parts alone will run you over $100. And the retail sticks will last, which is very important.

I don't know. I just don't know. I'll hold off for now and live with what I've got. I'm just afraid this may be my last chance to snag one of those Tournament Edition joysticks.

Ugh, the choices life presents us.

Good ol' Chicago Ave

There seems to be a new, reoccurring theme in my life: my daily walk to Subway on Chicago Ave. It may sound simple enough, but that street is ghetto and full of surprises. For example, just the other day we found a lone pair of dentures sitting on a trashcan, waiting for their owner to return. And today, we saw a car getting towed that had been obliterated by someone who felt it necessary to sideswipe it and drive away. Or how about the crazy woman a few weeks ago who got so excited when she saw my coworker's retractable badge clip, asking with glee if it was a whistle or maybe even a loudspeaker!

Now that my joystick project has come to an end, this will make for a new, good theme as I continue my adventure in MN. Keep your eyes peeled for more craziness from Chicago Ave. I'll see you soon.

Here it is!

Here are those pictures that I promised. I ended up taking quite a bit less than I had originally planned, but you'll get the basic idea for how this project progressed. Enjoy!

It's finished!!

Oh my God, I'm finally finished with the joystick. And guess what? It actually works!! Who-da-thunk-it?!

I'll post some pictures of the finished product soon. It looks good on the outside, but being able to see the wires on the inside, as well as how I chose to lay it out, does not look so good after all. If I ever decide to make another joystick, the design I chose this time will be the last on my list.

Live and learn, right? =)

Progress Report

It's been a while since I mentioned anything regarding the joystick project, so I thought I'd do that now. It's coming along. The box (case) is assembled, the polycarbonate has been drilled and the Sanwa parts are all in place. The case didn't line up as well as I had hoped, but it's not that noticeable with it all painted black.

The soldering of the arcade parts to the Xbox 360 controller's PCB is an entirely different story. Talk about having zero luck. The solder never sticks; never, ever, ever! I even resulted to only hot gluing the wires in place, and while it works, it's not reliable and the wires still pop off.

What makes matters even worse is that the controller that I bought had the old PCB in it. Why is that bad? There's about 8 common grounds. What does this mean? I have to solder (or hot glue) quite a few more wires to the circuit board. I also had to damage my Sanwa joystick and solder extra wires to it in order to make it work with this PCB. Had I gotten one of the new PCB's, the entire board is wired to one common ground, which means you can daisy-chain all of the grounds and only have to solder one wire.

Bottomline is that I'm having a really hard time right now actually finishing this project. It's very frustrating spending about 12 hours in one day and not being any further along than when you started.