atari joystick fixing guide

[coinheaven]

i have about 10-20 joysticks that either dont move in one direction or the button doesnt work. is there a guide somewhere that show me how to fix these?

[MrSparkle]

surprisingly i dont really see any guides online. Crack one of those suckers open its a pretty basic design. just check all the springs and give the contacts a quick cleaning then break out a multimeter and check to make sure everythings working as it should.

[coinheaven]

ok, thanks for the info, ill try that

[bones11]

Yeah, it's a pretty easy design to work with. Besides cleaning contacts, look for any obvious broken parts. I usually check to see if the white plastic handle insert is cracked or severely warped and throw those out. Once those are done you can test the cord by removing the wires from the pcb and touching the black wire to each of the other 5 wires to see if you're getting the correct result. Defender is a good game to test with, Missile Command is another. If you've got a good cord and a good plastic handle insert it's probably the pcb, and that can be cleaned up or replaced. Just by swapping parts you can probably get 2/3 of the sticks working and can buy replacement parts to fix up the rest.

[coinheaven]

thanks! i found this too:

http://www.atariguide.com/help/care.htm