This is my own personal creation taking a DTV circuit board and implanting it into this little flat jiffy box. I had long considered doing this but I didn't want to dismantle my DTV joystick unless I was going to do this thing right. Well, one day I got so frustrated with my DTV joystick I decided it was time. The joystick, for those not in the know, is designed very poorly. It is one of the worst joysticks I've ever used. One big problem on my favorite game (Inernational Karate, actually in ROM on the device) is that you must use exact joystick directions to achieve the desired Karate move. Well, the built-in joystick doesn't cut it. Half the time it moves in the wrong direction. So.. I went on to work on this project.
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I did mine different from many people, and in some ways it is more innovative. The circuit board is mounted on regular screw-in standoffs like an ATX motherboard would use. Only, these are the ones most often used on serial ports and the like. I used those because I had the nuts readily available for the other side. But regular motherboard standoffs would work fine too. Having this firm mounting and perfect elevation also made it possible to drill a hole in the top and use the original reset button on the board itself. (cannot see this in the open picture, but look at the assembled pictures and see the little red button on top) I could have actually included all 5 original buttons, but decided there was no need. I actually thought of that at the last minute when I was trying to find a cheap panel-mount pushbutton. The power connector is a standard harddrive or CDROM power connector. I use these on a lot of stuff I make because they are very common. I replaced all the ends of things in my house that use 5V or 12V with these connectors. So I can share power supplies between many decives without having to keep up with them. I could also plug this right into an AT or ATX power supply and run it that way. Also, if you are wondering what the 4 RCA jacks are for, they are Video, Audio, Chroma, and Luma. I decided to go with regular RCA jacks for the chroma and luma since they are easier and cheaper to aquire than an S-video connector. It also makes it easy to hook up to a Commodore monitor with seperated video (such as my 1084) and if you hook it up to a black & white monitor or TV you'll get a cleaner picture from the luma jack. However, at this time I'm still having trouble getting the chroma to work. I also used the original power LED from the jostick and stuck it through a hole in the box.
Just a few last notes. As of this writing, I'm not finished with this thing. I still need to cut the excess off of the bolts sticking out of the top and cover them with something (maybe epoxy). Also the second joystick port isn't connected yet. Its low on the priority list since the UP direction of port 1 isn't available on the board. Also the power connector is held in with epoxy. There is some excess epoxy on the outsideI colored it black with a sharpie marker. It actually looks very natural but the flash of the camera exaggerated it in the picture. Eventually I plan to have panel-mount PS/2 and IEC ports. I'm currently waiting on them to be mail-ordered. So in the meantime I just ran cables with female ends on them out the back. I hope to change the pictures on here once I've completed the last changes. Also I will probably put some kind of labelling on the ports as to what they are.
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