My Joystick

I had a few arcade-style joystick parts lying around, cannibalized from the iCade gimmick for the early iPad. I felt it was time to finally build an Atari/C64/Kempston joystick.

As usual, every new project needs some more tools or parts I didn't have before.


First experiments

I took some hobby-shop 3mm chipboard and simply began fitting the parts together.

This board was mushy, and when drilling it felt closer to cardboard than chipboard or wood. Besides the messiness, it worked well enough.

Some of the parts

I drew a rough 8cm x 10cm area for the joystick as a sort of minimum estimated fit for the parts inside. At this point I'm not sure how big it is going to be.

Protip: Do the central hole for the joystick shaft first, it will be easier to do the holes for the screws afterwards. Or just be more careful with the pilot hole drilling.

The joystick part has a kind of extrusion at the root of the shaft, which would require a 21mm hole. This caused some woes at later stage.

Here I'm still searching for the fire button positions, not following any existing measures.

Drilling with the 24mm flat head (wrong size)

 Arcade buttons are like icebergs, there's a lot more of them under the surface. So I have to put healthy space between the joystick shaft and the button. This can also make the case very tall.

After drilling the hole for the fire button, I found out I could not fit the part!

It turned out I need a 28mm drill and not 24mm. Not sure why I thought I owned a correct size.

This was the time to throw away the first test piece, I won't even dignify it with the name "prototype". Tiny problems and mistakes accumulated and there's no way I'm going to re-drill an existing 24mm hole into a 28 one.

Second attempt

As I would almost definitely need the 28mm drill, I thought I should get a 21mm too for the joystick shaft fitting. After the purchases I of course found at I did really already had a 28mm drill...

A 21mm flat drill isn't really a common category. 21mm fluted drills are more common, but I somehow suspect I'd be better off with a flat drill here.

A hole saw is a possibility, but the set I used for making my chess pieces doesn't have the correct sizes and I suspect they aren't accurate enough. 

I have no experience of the more robust looking hole saws, but I tend to think these are for rougher work anyway, such as making holes into drywalls.

Adjustable flat drills look a little shoddy as a concept. I felt it might be enough for the few shallow cuts I need, so I ordered one.

The first impression was that it is a rather crude instrument.

A clunky but perhaps necessary tool

I didn't get how to use it at first, the bite was unnecessarily hard, and it is difficult to use the power drill to get anything done.

After breathing in and out a few times, I properly sandwiched the board with a piece of wood, clamped the whole thing and had another go. It's one of those tools that requires a little patience and just the tiniest amount of skill.

First I drilled a normal 6mm hole through the sandwich so the drill/screw part in the contraption itself doesn't get stuck. 

This worked, the only remaining problem was adjusting the blade to 20.5-21mm. The markings on the blade are not especially useful.

It shouldn't matter too much, if the extrusion doesn't fit 100% snugly, but through trial and error I reached a fairly accurate result, after which I don't need to change the adjustment.

It's worth checking the blade really goes through the board and cuts the underlying wood fully, otherwise there's the tedious task of removing and filing away remnants.

The blade and the drill hole need to be constantly cleaned of fluff and dust.

This material is crap for drilling

The result is clean enough, any inaccuracies and muddiness is probably due to the board material rather than any problem with the adjustable flat drill. Still, I suspect there might be better variable drills.

The problem with the arcade buttons is the height they give to the box. They were meant to be installed to the arcade cabinet, after all.

I already became a little tired with the project, and continued when I got better parts and materials.

Some time passes: 3rd attempt

Here I switched to 3mm MDF board, which results in far more accurate cuts and less "fluff".

The 21mm hole was still a dirty process with the clumsy device.

Ahh, nice and smooth MDF

The 28mm blade was excellent, the bite was just perfect and it didn't take long to push through the 3mm thickness, using a 6mm pilot hole.

It's easy to overestimate how things fit in a small space, so I headed for a larger rather than smaller box. I can make a new box some other time, if necessary.

I ordered shorter arcade buttons, so these no longer determine the height of the box. The stick mechanism is now the tallest piece inside.

I ended up making a 151 x 115 x 42 box.

Putting the box together is a little tricky at first

The 4 screws next to the joystick are 3mm machine screws, there are also two more connection points that can be used.

I glued the outer walls together carefully, without applying too much clamp pressure. This is a precarious moment in this method, but it's also easy to move the parts as the glue isn't too quick to dry.

I don't favor superglue/glue gun approaches as I feel the results are either brittle or messy.

Another layer is added, at the same time giving a sort of rebate for positioning the case bottom. I used some more clamp pressure here.

The project is moving forward

Small slices were added to the corners, giving some substance for screw holes. Again, these slices are clamped together using glue, so the overall package should be quite sturdy. I still suspect the box might give up if it fell from a table at a vicious angle.

The 9-pin cable is from a dead Tac-2 (and believe me it is dead). I'd prefer to create the cable from new parts but this will have to wait for another time. At least the joystick cable has the nooks to keep it firmly attached.

I added a tiny protoboard piece with the necessary soldering for a "ground rail" and a pin strip for continuing the U-D-L-R cabling.

This way I can still alter the configuration.

No matter how simple the project, all elements ought to be have some planning beforehand. The cabling is a little messy but with some luck everything fell into place well enough. 

The box is then shut with the cover, using four small countersunk screws. This solution doesn't use machine screws and bolts, I don't expect to open and shut it many times.

After some minimal sanding and filing of the sharpest corners, it's off to testing.

Some of the tools used.

First games

I took the stick over to my Arduino USB adapter and played a few games on the C64 emulator and Mame. At first I held the joystick on my lap, as the box didn't have rubber feet.

Instantly I can feel the iCade-sourced joystick isn't that great (it wasn't back then). Despite the microswitches there is something ambiguous about it, and it occasionally feels like gears grinding each other. (Edit: Some WD-40 improved it a little.)

In addition, at least to me proper arcade sticks don't work as well with Commodore 64 games, where I'm used to the Tac-2. I'm again looking at games with crisp controls, The Great Giana Sisters and Buck Rogers. After playing some more I can get used to it.

Things felt better with ZX Spectrum evergreens Bruce Lee and Saboteur. Many Spectrum games are a little sluggish and more lenient to begin with. Simulator-type games, such as Elite, are even slower, but for other reasons these are often better played on a keyboard.

Moving over to arcades, Mr Do's Castle and Commando (mind you no grenades) on Mame already felt a little better. It's closer to how it's supposed to feel, if only the joystick part was better.

The final touch for now.

The box makes the microswitches sound quite loud, but that might be another failing of the stick part type. The buttons are more silent.

It remains to be seen whether I need to make another, "final" prototype, or if this is enough after adjustments. I can look at making it more gentle on the hands, and maybe damp the sound somewhat.