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+--- Thread: Microbee Joystick (/thread-101.html)
Microbee Joystick - ChickenMan - 09-03-2020
Not able to locate the Joystick I had 30+ years ago, I decided its time to make one up. Basically I needed an old Atari or Spectravideo joystick that has a 9 pin plug on the cable and uses switches for the 4 directions and a fire button.
The microbee_engineering_notebook.pdf doc has the wiring thats needed (though they got 2 of the directions wrong, BROWN is RIGHT and GREEN is LEFT). The wire colours were the same for my Wico Joystick so was easy to wire up. Just need 8 x 10k and 1 x 1.2k resistors, I use 1/4w metal film ones and a DB15pin Male plug and its backshell. I used an extra long backshell to help fit it all in. All soldered up and time to test. Plugged into the PP+ and fired up Galaxy Invasion and Left, Right and Fire all work
Then fired up Scavenger and all 4 directions work but no need for Fire. So finally fired up Hoards of the Deep Realm and all is working great. So look out Arcade 3 disk with the Joystick only versions of those TRS-80 games. Thank goodness tomorrow is a holiday Final assembly is not pretty but looks like
RE: Microbee Joystick - someone - 09-03-2020
The way you did it was exactly the same way as the microbee produced it.
It was awful and limited the number of joysticks to one.
There was a nice and neat PCB laid out to support two joysticks using DB-9 sockets but the above was chosen as the released product.