Fix em up! Scored on a controller lot.

[drxandy | 3,225]

Won this lot and it arrived yesterday, started sorting through it but dead in the center a dakota duke! Couldn't be more stoked.

All of the xbox controllers were missing their breakaway cables, the dakota uses a proprietary breakaway and will not work with a standard cable but luckily I have one complete so I tested it and it worked perfectly. Now I'm wondering if I could rewire a regular cable to work with the dakota, but it's a killer display piece regardless.

So far these are the ones I've repaired and cleaned:

2 of 3 snes worked, one had a rip in the cable sleeve and a slightly soft L button but works just fine so I electrical taped it and good to go, one had a borked cord but perfect inside and out minus a rusted screw I had to drill out, and the 3rd had shell and board damage but a near perfect cable so I harvested the cable and boom it's crispy.

Dakota needs the cable, gtg

Blue s needed new thumbsticks and breakaway, had spares for both - works a treat

I swear the gamecube madcatz had the analog thumbstick cap installed in the factory upside down because I flipped it and it works fine. 

Blue bootleg ps3 controller i stripped down to the pcb, could make an arcade stick down the line maybe.

I tested each xbox controller in the lot and only one didn't work (prob cable issue), others had various problems gonna have to piece them together to make a couple working.

Next up is testing the genesis pads.

 

 

 

 

 

[croagunk | 798]

Awesome deal!

[RH | 4,895]

Man, that's an awesome lot. I just got these uglies in. I think they might clean up quite well and were not sold AS-IS, just sold as dirty. Will post a before and after when it's all said and done.

 

[drxandy | 3,225]

@RHheck yeah those are gonna be a fun project, betcha they will clean up nice! Can't wait to see.

[drxandy | 3,225]

Through the weekend I detail cleaned and tested everything I could and here's the results. 

First off, the stuff in good working order.

All are missing their breakaway connector, I have ordered replacements.

Top dukes have no wire issues, only normal wear on the sticks. Bottom left duke has been worked on before, had ps2 sticks and probably had the same issue that plagues these with the wire breaking at the flex point (kinda defeats the purpose of it haha). The cord was reattached nicely by the last person to work on it and each wire was heat shrinked, I had some fun and added a 360 slim style stick for the left side and kept the right ps2.

The madcatz microcon: start button wouldn't work because the silicone pad somehow slipped out of place. Reseated and cleaned it up and now the only thing wrong is the worn down sticks. Ordered some ps2 to see if they will fit, but it still works and I like the size of it.

 

These all only needed a deep clean! The boards were a little gross, dusty and some had obscene amounts of flux leftover from the factory.

As for the rest:

Mad catz and gamester xbox controllers technically work but have issues that make them not really desirable, will save for potential arcade stick projects, I think the gamester one would be really cool to work into one because it has built in headset tech, pointless now but cool if online came back 

2 dukes have frayed wires by the flex connector so not an easy spot to electrical tape. One works with no issues now, the other shorts out. One has a gross faceplate that I am not able to clean and am considering sanding and painting for the heck of it.

2 S controllers: black has cord short but works fine as long as you keep the cord in the same spot haha, green has issue with directional stick, keeps scrolling in menus. Might need to replace that stick box and be a bit of work, so for now I have just cleaned and set them aside.

The lone sega pad that didn't work had a couple wires broken off inside, also was missing 3 of the screws. Could still be fixed or harvest parts. 

The 3rd party genesis pad was disassembled, it uses rubber contact pads that weren't easily removable, one for every button.. so a lot of cleaning would be involved. Since I didn't plan on keeping it, just reassambled and gave it a test.. didn't work but weird thing is that it also uses a aaa battery to save controller maps and I didn't want to put one in.. maybe it needs it to work, not sure because i stopped before I got carried away.

All said and done, to come out with 13-15 fully working controllers (and the most common prototype xbox pad!) for nothing more than a few replacement parts, hours of time and elbow grease.. I am stoked.

Edited May 3, 2021 by drxandy

[NZCollector | 107]

31 dollars shipping!? Aside from that, fantastic find and great you got a few in working order again! 

(Just realised this is a pretty big bump, got any others fixed since posting?) 

Edited July 7, 2021 by NZCollector

[drxandy | 3,225]

Idk it was a heavy box @NZCollectorI'm not complaining hehe

Been thinking of doing replacement cables for the dukes that had issues since I did a snes controller with Paracord:

Snagged the membranes for this one from a broken snes controller in that lot. Just got a couple crystal Xbox controllers that have issues but haven't worked on em other than cleaning one.

Other than that I haven't been fixing much, waiting for cooler weather to keep me inside.