I have a question: I see that you removed the individual speakers from the cabinets. I don’t see where removing them helps the work flow, what am I missing?

I know the way the Twin Stick works in game differs from when the Digital pad is used, D-pad up moves forward while on the TS both sticks have to be moved up, so it must be reporting as some other type of controller when it’s plugged in. My guess would be it reports as an Analog stick there, and just uses fixed values for the movements, 255, 128, and 0 in there when the sticks are moved for one direction, center and the other direction.

The 3D controller does something like this for the L and R Triggers when it’s in the Analog mode. Even though they aren’t Analog, they each have a full Byte for it, but unpressed the values read as 0, and pressed they are 255, but there’s no middle ground there at all on them as the controller isn’t made for it.

If you, or anyone that happens across this, has a Twin Stick and VO game that’s just sitting around, or is also curious about how it works, I wouldn’t mind borrowing it for a few days and seeing what it looks like on the Logic Analyzer. No screw would be touched on it at all, unless I have permission to open it up fro pics and a look see, but it’s all done using an extension cable I tap into so the thing wouldn’t be ‘violated’ in any way.

http://forums.modretro.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=11345&p=145183#p145183

Yeah there are just a couple of Hall sensors for On and Off on the L and R of the 3D controller. They had the potential to be Analog, and the Saturn has more than enough Data slots for them to have been, but they didn’t go that route for whatever reason and just made then ‘feel’ that way instead, must have just saved it for the DC.

http://forums.modretro.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&p=145097#p145097

Thanks for posting up!

For whatever reason here lately, I’ve been tinkering around with different controller protocols. The Sony neGcon then PSX controllers first, then the N64 controller (what a timing witch) and then I remembered the work you did on this thing here. I don’t really get assembly at all, and what I know about C could probably fill a thimble, but I’ve been messing with it for awhile now anyway.

I had the original Saturn 6 button pad working after a little bit, but wasn’t really content with that, so I moved on to the 3D controller. Which started off being a real PITA, until I put the parking brake on. The PIC can run much faster and miss, skip and just plain get all kind of things wrong, so after I drilled it way back to timings closer to how it actually ‘talks’ to the Saturn it was just one step after another then. The 6 button pad can take being run a whole lot faster, but the 3D pad doesn’t like that one bit.

http://s50.beta.photobucket.com/user/RDCXBG/library/Saturn%203D

The first 5 pics and vid are of the work I just did. The rest are from close to 3 years ago when I decided to open one up and poke around in there with a scope to see what was going on. The 3D controller uses Hall Sensors on the ‘Stick’ and L/R Triggers, as does it’s successor the Dreamcast controller, but only the ‘Stick’ is Analog on the 3D, while the DC had Analog triggers as well.

Anyway, figured this was about the best place to post this since you already cracked open the door here.

Is there anywhere a tutorial or documentation about refurbishing the wood surface?