Trying to understand the N64 controller

[CentiZen]

Hello there everyone, I'm new to N64 hacking in general but I have some experience with EE and microcontrollers and want to start a new project to make an custom arcade cabinet which will run a N64 and have genuine feeling arcade styled controls for playing the old fighting games I love from my childhood like Flying Dragon.

But I'm having a hard time figuring out how to hack the N64 controller. I've looked around here especially in the stickied mega threads but most of those are on creating portables where the origional buttons are still used, not wiring up different buttons like an arcade button or joystick to them. Actually I'm having a hard time finding much information at all about the pinouts or the schematics of the controller board, or its communication protocol with the N64. With all of the amazing hardware hacks people have pulled off here; I'm sure this informations exists and it's probably right in front of my face.

I'm thinking that I will wire the buttons directly to the traces on the board for each button, or that the memory/rumble pack interface has the buttons available for wiring there. I'm just not sure and need some more information. Could anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

Michael

 

[Hermaphroditus]

What sorts of experience do you have in EE and microcontrollers?

Also, most of the information in regards to controllers accumulated have been in a viewpoint of portables. As far as wiring up buttons to the controller, you can do that as you were thinking. The analog stick is a bit different of a story. It's still possible, but likely will require some work. There's been work done on getting a 3ds slider to work in place of the joystick on the controller, you could look into that. It involves, from what I've seen, using a micro.

 

[CentiZen]

Thanks for the reply Herm, most of my experience with those topics comes from working with the Arduino platform and creating various electronics projects with varying degrees of usefulness. I'm looking to take on a bit of a more complex project now; and this idea came to me and hasn't left my thoughts since.

I've disassmbled my own controller to get access to the board. It looks like the Z,L and R buttons will be very easy to wire up; as they have a ribbon wire coming out off the board with two wires that I assume are shorted when the button is pressed. Start button too.

But the rest of the buttons, are all that weird rubber pad technology that gets used on remote controls and calculator buttons and such, and to be honest I have no idea how these work. It seems that the two different rubber traces on the board are connected to each other when the rubber pad is depressed; but I thought rubber was an insulator?

Also, do you know if there is any merit to my hopes of there being interfaces to the button through the memory card/rumblepak interface?

Thanks again,

Michael

 

[ShockSlayer]

http://forums.shockslayer.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=625

I made that, might be of use to you. If you're making a cabinet then you have plenty of room for the whole controller though, so just sand the carbon pads where the buttons are and just solder to those. One side's ground, the other's signal(probably a better word but that's what I call it.)

Your biggest issue's gonna be the joystick I bet. I don't know jack about fullsize arcades, but if you can find a stick that has potentiometers you can probably use that, but if you're using a 1st party controller then you'll need to make a converter circuit. I've actually ordered a handful of atmega8's and a programmer to screw around with micro's code, so I might be able to make one up for you once they come in.

 

[CentiZen]

You are a gentleman and a scholar sir; that is exactly the information I was looking for. One quick question though; what is the operating voltage of this IC? I'm assuming that to invoke a button event I need to short the pin in question to ground, right? Or do I need to set the pin to HIGH to invoke that event?

Thanks again, I'm going to start reading through your forum as well as it seems to have a treasure trove of info for me.

 

[ShockSlayer]

<3

Yup, signal to ground. And it runs on 3.3v.

SS