Capcom Fighter Power Stick pinout?

[izarate]

I bought one at a flea market but the guy didn't have the cable that plugs at the back. I also bought a broken SNES pad from him hoping that I could use it to connect the stick to the SNES.

I see two possible venues for this:

1) connect the stick's inputs to the SNES pad's PCB.

2) make a custom cable for the stick.



It looks as if (1) is the easier way. I'd lose the special functions of the stick this way, thought, so the question is: does someone know the pinout for the stick?.

[Chuplayer]

Oh shit, you mean one of these? http://thewarpzone.classicgaming.gamespy.com/cpsfighter.html

I've got two of them. I suppose I could give the pinout a shot. I've never done it before, but it would be a good way to spend the long weekend. I might even learn something.

The trick is to not forget!

[izarate]

Yeah, that is what I'm talking about.

If you're going to try to make out the pinout you'll likely need a multimeter or a continuity tester and a pair of clips. Since the multimeter terminals are bigger than the cable's terminals you'll have to take the clips and insert them in the terminals.


I already went with option (1), using the SNES controller. The stick works and feels great but I'd like to get all the functions if possible, so if you could provide the pinout that would be great.

http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/9092/img4636us7.jpg

http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/1268/img4650ji2.jpg

http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/6420/img4652ak5.jpg


By the way, the battery compartment is used in the Capcom Power Stick Fighter (not Capcom Fighter Power Stick). It looks pretty much the same but has the "Capcom Power Stick Fighter" legend in big letters at the right corner. It has the option to store moves and perform them at the press of a button, if I recall correctly. The batteries keep the moves in the controller's RAM.

The little "door" at the side of the connector ("Even More Mysteries" in your site) is for the Genesis connector , not present in the Nintendo version of course. That is because the Genesis controllers use a different way than the NES/SNES controllers to send data to the console. In fact a lot of the "missing" electronics inside the stick might be for that version. It looks as if Capcom used the same PCB and shell for every version and just changed the components needed. The Genesis version should have a similar door in place of the NES/SNES connector.

The stick sounds clicky because it uses the same switches used by the trigger of the NES Zapper.

[Chuplayer]

Um... what the hell is going on in those pics? Why did you solder the button pads on the two PCBs together already? You don't need to sacrifice the entire SNES controller PCB. You just wanted a pinout diagram of the stick's funky port, right? That way you could find out what wires to solder together from the SNES controller cable to the wires or whatever that go to the port. You're going to have to remove the port or drill a hole in the thing to allow for the (as far as this joystick is concerned) nonstandard cable.

You won't be able to retain all the functions of the joystick if you're using the SNES controller as a passthrough. What you're doing right now is effectively what people do when they make custom joystick controllers with real arcade parts. The main principle there is to relocate the switch. You don't need to do that. You need to take your signals off of the joystick's PCB if you want to use the joystick as it was intended.

I also don't know what cable that is in your last pic. Is that from the original SNES controller?

I have the original cable, so telling you exactly what goes where should be a cinch. By definition, that's what the cable and plugs do. Capcom just made their own proprietary port at their end of the hardware. It's there so you can plug in an NES cable (which I also own) to use with the NES or other cables for other systems, if they were made, but there would likely have to be some extra hardware in the wire end of things because what's going on inside the joystick is almost definitely a run of the mill 3rd party SNES controller with bonus turbo functions and the like. Or maybe it has Genesis support built in, and that's what those extra pins are for. This joystick was also used with Capcom's little known CPS equivalent to the Neo Geo AES, so there may be some workings going on there, too. I don't know, but I can at least tell you what goes where as far as SNES functionality goes.

Or if you don't feel like doing that, you can continue to use the setup as you've got it.

[izarate]

Um... what the hell is going on in those pics? Why did you solder the button pads on the two PCBs together already? You don't need to sacrifice the entire SNES controller PCB. You just wanted a pinout diagram of the stick's funky port, right?

That's what I told you in my previous post, that I had already used the SNES controller to connect the stick before I got your reply but I still wanted the pinout:


[...] but I'd like to get all the functions if possible, so if you could provide the pinout that would be great. [...]






I also don't know what cable that is in your last pic. Is that from the original SNES controller?


Yeah, that's from the broken SNES controller that I bought from the guy that had the stick.





Or if you don't feel like doing that, you can continue to use the setup as you've got it.

Please, it would be great if you could provide the pinout since I'd like to get full functionality from the stick as I stated. Thanks in advance.

[Chuplayer]

Aye, yeah, I honestly didn't read a lot of the post. I saw the pics and thought "WTF is this guy thinking?"

I'll give it a shot tomorrow.

[Chuplayer]

Here's the pinout. It took longer than I expected because I didn't have anything small enough that I could securely shove into the plugs for readings, so I had to open up the console and the joystick and read through the PCBs.

These pinouts are from the point of view from outside the fully assembled units. I used the SNES controller port pinout from GameSX. I made up my own Capcom controller pinout.

http://img377.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capcomsnesstickpinoutnf4.gif

All done in Paint. Yes, the left side of the SNES port is the rounded side. I did that by hand. Should have just used the circle tool. I learned my lesson later.

[izarate]

Thanks. I'll give it a shot and post back.

[izarate]

Thank you Chuplayer. The pinout was accurate. The stick is fully working now.

One thing to take into account is that SNES pins 2 and 3 aren't used by this version of the stick, even thought the cable connects them.

[Chuplayer]

Thank you Chuplayer. The pinout was accurate. The stick is fully working now.

One thing to take into account is that SNES pins 2 and 3 aren't used by this version of the stick, even thought the cable connects them.

You're welcome. I'm glad I could help.

Yeah, I know what pins 2 and 3 are for. I just figured I'd include them for completeness's sake.