JustClaws
What's New Page  Feedback!
|
|
|
JustClaws
What's New Page Feedback!
|
|
Basically the reason I decided to start this project was boredom. I had
seen all the talk of a rotary controller for Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar,
and decided it was finally time to attempt to make my own. So, I went
about finding all the information that I could about it on the net, using
search engines and such. I got most of my information from the Jaguar
FAQ and from Mezmaron's Jaguar page. A lot of credit goes out to
them, for without their documents, and help, I would have had no idea
of what I was doing. :-)
You can expect to invest a little money in this project if you want a quality product. I'd
advise to not go the cheap route if possible (not that I spent over $30). The first item I
went after was the 2600 driving controller (not the tennis ones). Make sure they are the
correct ones by seeing if the rotary knob stops at all. If it does, you have the wrong
kind. If it doesn't, you are on your way to T2k heaven. I picked my driving controller up
from a local flea market for $1, so look around and you should be able to get one pretty
inexpensively. Next, I decided that I would mount it in a new casing,
rather than on the back of the regular controller as Mezmaron did. So,
I headed down to the local Radio Shack for some supplies. I picked up
an 'Experimenter Box' to mount everything in, three 'Momentary
push-button soft -feel switches for the action buttons, 2 regular push
button momentary buttons for pause and option, some wire (you'll
need 13, so different colors help), a soldering iron and some rosin-core solder, and
rubber feet for the bottom. This is just what I used, and you can substitute any other
functional parts. I'm just trying to give you a feel for how I did it.
Once you have your supplies you can get started. The first thing you will need to do is take apart the 2600 driving controller. This can be achieved by unscrewing the 2 screws on the base of the driving controller. The bottom will come off and you will see the 'innards' of the controller. These consist of the one button and the encoder with 3 wires coming off of it. Now you have to pull the knob off the top of the encoder's shaft. It is on quite tightly, so pull hard! But, be careful not to damage anything in the process. Then take the wires off the encoder, and remove it by unscrewing the nut on the top of the casing.
Next you need to open the Jaguar controller. The screws are behind the little rubber feet
on the back of the controller, so you need to take them off. Inside are 2 circuit boards.
The top is for the d-pad and action buttons, and the bottom is for the key pad. They are
connected by a ribbon of 13 wires, which is gray. Unscrew the 2 screws that are
holding the key pad circuit board, then cut the ribbon, disconnecting the 2 boards, and
leaving enough wire for you to work with. You will be using the key pad board for the
internal workings of the rotary controller. What I did was to melt the plastic ribbon off of
the ends of the wires with a soldering iron, while leaving the original connections intact
with the board. That way it kept a good connection with the board and it was a lot
easier for me. I took the crimpers that I bought and connected the 13 wires I had bought
to the now-exposed ribbon ends, labeling the wires with tags as I went. This eliminated
soldering of these wires altogether, and once again simplified the process.
Now that the wires were connected, I went about mounting the buttons and rotary encoder to the plastic case from Radio Shack. I used a regular-old hand drill, but I sprayed the drill bit with WD-40 to help prevent the plastic from cracking. Drill slowly! All of the buttons I used specified the hole sizes required, so that was no problem. I attached the circuit board to the metal bottom of the case with screws, separating the board and the bottom with the rubber feet that I had taken off of the Jaguar controller.
Now comes connecting the wires. I had attempted to play Tempest with the controller a few times before soldering the wires to the button's connections, but it was very glitchy and didn't serve the purpose I had intended - seeing if I had hooked everything up right. Consult Mezmaron's World for a diagram of what wires connect to which buttons. The diagram is more helpful than words in this case.
Once you know where the wires go, its just a matter of soldering the wires to the correct place, closing up the case, and firing up T2k! You may also want to weigh the rotary knob down with some lead fishing sinkers, to give it a sturdier, and more arcade-like feel.
Once again, I'd like to thank Stacy J. Dunkle and Andy Light for their documents, and Andy for his help via e-mail.
Also thanks goes out to JAG! for his interest and support of this project, and for providing space on his web page for little old me. A BIG thanks to all the Jaguar freak o's on the net, especially on Jaguar Interactive, for their interest also (Wes!).
Happy Hacking!
At the Game Options menu, press pause on both controllers to activate the Controller Type menu.
Here's a pic of the Joystick/Rotary controller I made after I made the rotary controller described above. It's tough to see the rotary knob in this pic, but it's on the upper left of the controller. There's a red DPDT switch in the bottom left of the controller to switch between the Joystick and the Rotary. Oh, and for those who were wondering, when you have the Rotary controller enabled in T2K, you can't use the joystick for up and down in the bonus levels. It's automatically mapped out to the A and C buttons...darn.
 |
