Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by Schooly D »

Doing CC without a lock is just a Dash CC, I think. Tsubame Gaeshi (Returning Swallow) I believe involves landing a normal CC attack, then motion canceling out of the animation as soon as the hit connects by dashing forward or forward-diagonal and quickly hitting the opponent again (if it's still standing) using a Dash CC attack.

That's what I remember, anyway. I haven't explored complex VO moves in ages and I'm probably wrong. MM will correct me.
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by RVR - 42 »

evenpar123 wrote:Doing CC without a lock is just a Dash CC, I think. Tsubame Gaeshi (Returning Swallow) I believe involves landing a normal CC attack, then motion canceling out of the animation as soon as the hit connects by dashing forward or forward-diagonal and quickly hitting the opponent again (if it's still standing) using a Dash CC attack.

That's what I remember, anyway. I haven't explored complex VO moves in ages and I'm probably wrong. MM will correct me.
Ahhhhh, that sounds legit. I like...don't know any of the moves names or anything. LOL What's a Watari Dash exactly? At first I thought that's what it was called but I saw it somewhere and I think it was something completely different. :P
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by Schooly D »

I'm pretty sure a Watari Dash is just the programmed-in move of changing direction during a dash. Nothing particularly special there.

You might be thinking of a Doi-2 dash, which involves canceling a halting animation (such as landing from a jump or air dash) by using a left turbo attack which segues into a dash by holding a direction. The timing's a bit difficult, but the advanced players can do it consistently. Cypher uses a lot of it in that WATC vid.
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by RVR - 42 »

Indeed, indeed. Thanks evenpar. *high fives* Dang it...i've got to go. Just when someone else is on, as I am on too. Good talking with a fellow Cypher pilot as myself. :D *SLCs away*
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by MentholMoose »

Sorry, no progress on this at all. I haven't had a chance to go to the electronics store to try and find a suitable connector. Anyway, here's an auction for modded Saturn Twin Sticks. It looks like the builder put some thought into these:
http://page4.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/d93898189
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by Testament/Seven7 »

Um, menthol, that dosen't look like a modded set of saturn twinsticks, that looks like a heavily modded HARP or MASS fighting stick. The base reminds me of my Tekken 5 stick, but in white, a mirrored plate (yes, thats shiny mirrored metal, whatever kind of metal it is), and........damn, I want it ^^;;;;;;;;;

Edit: the Tekken 5 10th anniversary stick is HORI made, and the base is identical...

I wonder if a plate swap is possable.......hmm...
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by Dreamcazman »

Testament/Seven7 wrote:Um, menthol, that dosen't look like a modded set of saturn twinsticks, that looks like a heavily modded HARP or MASS fighting stick. The base reminds me of my Tekken 5 stick, but in white, a mirrored plate (yes, thats shiny mirrored metal, whatever kind of metal it is), and........damn, I want it ^^;;;;;;;;;

Edit: the Tekken 5 10th anniversary stick is HORI made, and the base is identical...

I wonder if a plate swap is possable.......hmm...
They're definately Saturn twin sticks, got the space at the top left for the start button.

Nice mod he did, but I don't like it that he left a big gaping hole where the Start button was. Personally I would've bogged it up and then paint the whole case.

Also while it's a neat idea to have a plug in cable to a 360 controller, it would be more practical to sacrifice a controller solely for the sticks.

But that's just me.. ;)
Last edited by Dreamcazman on 03 Apr 2009, 03:34, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by Testament/Seven7 »

Yeah, I went back and looked, thats a modded saturn stick...

But the base looks like a carbon copy of the HORI T5 stick, which makes me think a plate swap is deffinitly doable...

Whould any forum member here happen to have a spare top-plate from the saturn twinsticks?

(don't blame me for trying)
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by MentholMoose »

It sounds like a lot of these arcade sticks are similar. It makes sense since probably only a few companies make them to be branded by other companies.

The stick assemblies are definitely from the Saturn Twin Sticks. The rest looks similar to the Saturn Twin Sticks, plus it wouldn't make a lot of sense to transplant the sticks to another base. I wonder where he got those connectors for the small PCB he installed... maybe just ripped off the Saturn Twin Sticks PCB.

I didn't notice the mirror finish; it's a nice touch.
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by MentholMoose »

Here's a guide in Japanese for modding Saturn Twin Sticks. They actually used one of the crazy non-common ground 1st party controller!

http://healthya.web.fc2.com/xbox360ts/00.html
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by VMS »

evenpar123 wrote:Real men used the DC control pad and LIKED IT.
I'm gonna stir the pot here.

Coming from Saturn VO:OMG - where every move actually could be done on the pad with less movement and/or less button presses - I was praying for a similar situation with DC VOOT.

However, less buttons available on the Dreamcast platform meant that the Saturn mapping scheme couldn't be duplicated, and some operations couldn't even be PERFORMED without the sticks.

I'm afraid the 360 will need sticks both because the d-pad is useless, and because of the complexity of VOOT over VO.

So, VO=pad, VOOT=sticks. One man's opinion based on facts :x
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by Billkwando »

MentholMoose wrote:Here are a couple of pics of what I have so far... this is a pair of Saturn Twin Sticks, modded with new wiring and a connector that I will connect to a modded Xbox 360 controller. The controller I ordered should be here any day now, so I will possibly have this working sometime next week (although I'm not sure when I'll buy a 360 console, which is necessary to verify functionality). Anyway, stay tuned!!

This shows the PCB with new wiring attached.
IMGP2434.jpg
This shows the wiring as well as the new controller.
IMGP2435.jpg
Hey nice! Do you have any additional pics of the sticks from the inside (microswitches, etc)?

I have a Saturn twin stick (and a Netlink!), and I'd like to mod it for 360, but I don't want to damage it or alter the Saturn (and by extension, Dreamcast) functionality.

I see you soldered jumpers to the PCB. I live in mortal fear of that. Wouldn't it be possible to tap into the contacts on the microswitches themselves, as if you were wiring a stick from scratch? That way, it would be like you had 2 separate, but complete, sets of wiring. It sounds a lot less harrowing if it's possible, because you wouldn't have to worry about messing up the board. Of course, the start button is another issue.

I have an old set of Rock Band 2 drums that I tore apart (the pads were busted... plus I'm a peripheral whore, so I got the Ions) and I was thinking of jumpering those up (less afraid to break what's already junk) and then maybe just drilling a hole in the twin stick casing for a cable to come out, that would then be linked to the 360 controller. That's the notion anyway.

How does that sound?



VMS wrote:
Edit: Oh shizzle! Is that a Herzog Zwei reference I see in the sig above?
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by MentholMoose »

Billkwando wrote:I see you soldered jumpers to the PCB. I live in mortal fear of that. Wouldn't it be possible to tap into the contacts on the microswitches themselves, as if you were wiring a stick from scratch? That way, it would be like you had 2 separate, but complete, sets of wiring. It sounds a lot less harrowing if it's possible, because you wouldn't have to worry about messing up the board. Of course, the start button is another issue.
Soldering to the PCB like in my pics does render the Saturn support inoperable, so you'd probably want another solution. Your idea of soldering to the switches would work for the movement. It would not work for the turbo, weapon, and pause buttons. The weapon trigger technically does have a microswitch, but it is surface mounted on a small PCB inside the stick. The turbo button has no microswitch at all and uses a pad on the same PCB. The pause button has no microswitch and actually uses a pad on the Saturn controller PCB.

Doing this mod will at least require soldering to an Xbox 360 controller, so there's no way to avoid soldering to a PCB. You could avoid destroying the Saturn support if you find a connector compatible with those in the Saturn Twin Sticks. I never found one that worked perfectly, although I did find that a standard jumper header like used in PCs will work okay if you remove the housings from the ends of the connectors in the Saturn Twin Sticks. The pins don't quite stay connected fully, though, so you'd have to secure them some other way. I pretty much gave up on this mod since I couldn't find fully compatible connectors, and thus couldn't make a good, reversible mod. If you don't care about reversibility, you can hack off the connectors and solder the wire directly to the Xbox 360 controller... this would work for everything except for the pause button.
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by Billkwando »

MentholMoose wrote:
Billkwando wrote:I see you soldered jumpers to the PCB. I live in mortal fear of that. Wouldn't it be possible to tap into the contacts on the microswitches themselves, as if you were wiring a stick from scratch? That way, it would be like you had 2 separate, but complete, sets of wiring. It sounds a lot less harrowing if it's possible, because you wouldn't have to worry about messing up the board. Of course, the start button is another issue.
Soldering to the PCB like in my pics does render the Saturn support inoperable, so you'd probably want another solution. Your idea of soldering to the switches would work for the movement. It would not work for the turbo, weapon, and pause buttons. The weapon trigger technically does have a microswitch, but it is surface mounted on a small PCB inside the stick. The turbo button has no microswitch at all and uses a pad on the same PCB. The pause button has no microswitch and actually uses a pad on the Saturn controller PCB.
Oh crap.....forgot about the buttons. In theory though, couldn't I just tap into the wires running through the stick?

Of course, there's still the start button.
Doing this mod will at least require soldering to an Xbox 360 controller, so there's no way to avoid soldering to a PCB. You could avoid destroying the Saturn support if you find a connector compatible with those in the Saturn Twin Sticks. I never found one that worked perfectly, although I did find that a standard jumper header like used in PCs will work okay if you remove the housings from the ends of the connectors in the Saturn Twin Sticks. The pins don't quite stay connected fully, though, so you'd have to secure them some other way. I pretty much gave up on this mod since I couldn't find fully compatible connectors, and thus couldn't make a good, reversible mod. If you don't care about reversibility, you can hack off the connectors and solder the wire directly to the Xbox 360 controller... this would work for everything except for the pause button.
Yeah, I'm not worried about the 360 controller. I can always find another. The twin sticks on the other hand...

As for the Saturn connector, I do have a couple Saturn extension cords laying around... I guess I could try to tap into one of those, assuming the wires are usable. I guess I'm off to gamesx for a pinout.....

Using a cable sounds a lot saner and cleaner anyway....
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by MentholMoose »

Billkwando wrote:As for the Saturn connector, I do have a couple Saturn extension cords laying around... I guess I could try to tap into one of those, assuming the wires are usable. I guess I'm off to gamesx for a pinout.....

Using a cable sounds a lot saner and cleaner anyway....
I was actually referring to the connectors inside the Saturn Twin Sticks... each stick and the left and right buttons have wiring harnesses (four total) that connects to the controller PCB inside the Twin Sticks. I couldn't find connectors compatible with those. Making a converter that has a Saturn input allowing you to plug in unmodified Twin Sticks and converts it for use on Xbox 360 is a completely different mod. This actually has been done, but is quite a bit more involved, requiring more serious electronics know-how:
Converting A Sega Saturn Controller To Xbox 360
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by VMS »

Billkwando wrote:Edit: Oh shizzle! Is that a Herzog Zwei reference I see in the sig above?
Yep. Another great mech vs. game ;)
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by Heiligekuh »

Thanks for bringing back the discussion of these Saturn sticks. I opened mine up yesterday to take a look at the wiring. I had been hoping to find matching connectors to the ones currently used between the controls and Saturn PCB, but if Menthol says they're hard to find, I'll just wire in a 360 pad.

How do you handle the grounds in this situation? Each section of the Saturn controls seems to have it's own ground wire. When connecting to a common ground 360 pad, would you just chain those together and then solder that joined wire onto the pad?

While I do have soldering experience (modding a few old Xbox, swapping buttons and sticks) this is the first time I've considered adding a new PCB to a controller.
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by MentholMoose »

If you can go to a good electronics store, then bring the connectors to see if anything is compatible. The connectors very nearly work with standard PC headers (e.g. the headers used for jumpers and such in almost every PC), but the pins on standard PC headers are just slightly too fat. So if you could find something like a PC header but with slightly thinner pins, it would be perfect. If you find these please let me know!! Also if I can find the time to get to an electronics store, I'll report my findings.

The Saturn Twin Sticks mod is basically the same as the non-reversible Dreamcast Twin Sticks mod in my guide. You need four connections to ground... the left and right movement, and the left and right buttons. You can chain these together if you want, or just connect each one to ground on the Xbox 360 PCB, or any combination (e.g. chain the grounds for movement together and connect one to the Xbox 360 PCB ground, and connect both button grounds individually to the Xbox 360 PCB ground... or whatever :D ).

The pause button most likely is unusable without more serious modding. Basically for pause, you have two options. You can replace the button with a standard pushbutton, and remove the Saturn controller PCB. Or, you can leave the Saturn PCB in place, but remove the chips and controller cable, then solder to the Saturn controller PCB... if you go this route, you can just solder everything to the Saturn controller PCB... this is what was done in my pictures in this thread.

If you're not going to be hacking up the Saturn controller PCB, then for movement, just follow the DC Twin Sticks guide, and solder to the stick PCB (I will get you the wiring layout tonight). For the buttons, if you can't find compatible connectors, you can hack off the connectors and solder the wiring to the Xbox 360 controller PCB.

If you've soldered before, and especially done console mods which typically require precise soldering, then this controller mod isn't difficult at all, you just have to understand the basics of the controller electronics. In my DC Twin Sticks modding guide thread, I posted links to two general controller modding guides, both of which have some background info on the electronics of controllers.
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by Heiligekuh »

Thanks for that response. I'm not too worried about my soldering hand - I'm shaky, but never so bad that I can't wick away my mistakes - but I wasn't sure whether an Xbox pad would have 4 free ground contacts.

My plan is to leave the Saturn PCB intact, and just mount the Xbox pad elsewhere in the spacious Saturn case. There is a decent electronics store near by, so I'll wander down sometime this week with the controller and see if I can find a match. The fewer new connections I have to make, the happier I am just for the sake of troubleshooting.
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Re: Modded Saturn Twin Sticks for Xbox 360 - in progress

Post by MentholMoose »

Heiligekuh wrote:I wasn't sure whether an Xbox pad would have 4 free ground contacts.
Well as long as you using a common ground controller, you can connect the four ground wires to the same place on the pad. That said, you will actually need a common ground controller for this mod to work without destroying the Saturn Twin Sticks. Check out the slagcoin guide for info on which controllers have a common ground.
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