The second of my 'additional' joysticks is the cheapest of the cheap. Cheapo McCheap of Cheapland could not have made this any cheaper if he tried (even on a particularly cheap sort of day).
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| Did I mention it's cheap? |
It worked when I plugged it in to my Amiga but the down direction was a bit sluggish and intermittent. After I unscrewed the one screw in the base it became obvious why and I thought it would be an easy fix.
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| Either a super ingenious enclosure or it's cheap. |
The switches in this stick are formed from a piece of spring metal with four lugs cut out and bent upwards. As the joystick is pushed, the base of the shaft pushes a strip of metal against the lug, making a contact. The 'down' contact just needed to be bent a little bit closer to the metal strip. And then it fell off in my hand. Bugger.
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| Spring Metal Switches - Cheap |
What I ended up doing was using a long bolt and some nuts to make a riser from the base. By drilling a hole for the bolt and then inserting the bolt through the hole, a contact was made to the metal. I added a piece of copper from an old piece of Amiga A500 edge connector I had and screwed that onto the top, bending it slightly so the it was roughly the same location as the lug had been previously.
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| Just call me MacGyver |
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| My heath-robinson switch |
I did have to remove part of the base retainer to make my mod fit.
The handle has no components other than two plastic switches that push down a plastic 'stick'. This presses down onto another piece of (cheap) plastic that then activates the fire button switch. Incidentally, the handle spins round on this joystick but as far as I can tell, there is nothing stopping it nor was there ever anything to stop this. Perhaps they were relying on the friction of the springy rubber block in the base to stop rotation but it doesn't work.
So there you go. My mod fits after a bit of butchery with a craft knife and, yes,it does actually work. If only it weren't so CHEAP.
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