Noobero Uno

I added an Atari/Amiga/Commodore joystick port to my Xbox 360 X-Arcade stick today… Why you ask? Sensible World of Soccer of course! Although I never played the older versions, I have become very addicted to the recent Xbox Live Arcade release. The guys at sensiblesoccer.de seem to prefer an Amiga joystick over any other type of control method so I decided I would give it a shot. Since the Xbox 360 controller can be used on the PC, I figured this project would also be good for emulation.

The gamepad I used is a wired Xbox 360 MicroCon Game Pad Pro. I had to use a relay (TF2E-4.5v-1-H50  ATF20620) on the left and right buttons because they don’t share a common ground. If you decide to do this and just want a joystick port on the controller and not the X-Arcade stick, you should use an opto-isolator instead of a relay as they are smaller.

On my controller, pins 3 and 4 go to the following relays which connect to the left and right d-pad buttons. Other controllers may be set up differently. Any button that does not share a common ground needs a relay or an opto-isolator.

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I recently bought a broken Guitar Hero X-Plorer guitar on Ebay for $23 hoping to be able to fix it. After plugging it in, the Xbox wouldn’t turn on. This scared me a great deal to say the least. I looked at the power supply and the light was red instead of the usual orange. It had detected a fault and was protecting the console.

Knowing it was a problem with the power, I narrowed the problem down to two things. Either the USB cable was broken internally or the previous owner spilled liquid on the controller. Lucky for me it was the USB cable, an extremely simple fix. The +5 (red) wire was broken right were it starts to come out of the guitar, most likely due to the previous owner wrapping the cable around the controller.

If your X-Plorer controller isn’t working there is a good chance this is the problem. If you want to be sure, test each end of the USB cable with a multimeter. If this is the problem, all you have to do is cut the bad part of the USB cable out and reconnect the two good parts. The bad part will most likely be the thick rubber part coming out of the guitar.

To connect the two good pieces of the cable back together, twist the wires together, solder them, then use heat shrink tubing to cover the exposed part of the wire (you can also use electrical tape, but heat shrink tubing would be best). You also need to twist the outer part of the two good pieces together and solder them. Use electrical tape to cover anything that is exposed (should only be the outer part of the cable at this point).  When finished, use zip-ties to make sure the electrical tape stays put and to keep the wire from moving around.

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This years Comic-Con was an amazing site. I haven’t been to the convention in over ten years and things have changed quite a bit. The last time I went there were about 15,000 people, this year there were 125,000 people! That is an insane amount of people for a comic convention. I actually planned on buying a few things but the amount of people was so overwhelming, I ended up wandering around for hours never even seeing anything I planned on buying. I ended up spending $12 total.

Since I wasn’t spending much, I decided to try to get as many free promotional things as I could. I’m usually pretty laid back, but apparently when people are handing out free junk I turn into an excited little kid. Every time I saw a booth giving away something decent, I plowed my way over to claim my item having no regard for kids, moms, or other nerds.

As if going to a comic convention isn’t nerdy enough, I spent the majority of the time at the video game booths. I tried a lot of games,  many of which aren’t out yet. I was going to buy most of these anyway, but getting to see them in person sealed the deal.

Puzzle Fighter HD - plays as expected; I didn’t spend a lot of time with it.

Contra DS - I thought the gap in between the dual screens would be annoying but it didn’t cause any problems with the game.

Castle Crashers (360) – I didn’t play it much. It plays smoother than Alien Hominid. Support The Behemoth.

The Eye of Judgment (PS3) – Never even played it but I must have it.

Anyway, enough of my rambling, here are a few pictures of the event.

  

  

  

 

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