Upgrading X-Arcade

A long long time ago, a friend decided to move to the Bay area. In the process, he left a bunch of retro gaming gear with me instead of hauling it out to the coast.

That pile has sat in a box in my office the whole time. Recently, I started playing with RetroPie. I’ve used a bunch of different controls.

Through this process my son has discovered the joy of Street Fighter. Playing that with a touch pad is terrible! Since I own a custom fight stick - I prefer to use it. He considers that an unfair advantage. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to get another one for something that could turn out to be a phase, but the I remembered that box of stuff. In it was a two person X-Arcade controller.

One small problem… It was wired up for an original X-Box. Things have changed a lot since that controller shipped. I figured this was going to be a crazy project to update the wiring to use it with RetroPie. It turns out that X-Arcade solved this problem for me. Since all their modern controllers ship with USB support, they sell a USB upgrade kit.

I got it in the mail and followed the two instructional videos - How To Open and How to Install.

30 minutes later the stick was up in fighting shape.

They included some replacement switches in the package. Which I didn’t need but am happy to have on hand. I think it is interesting that they either make them or badge them.

I wish I had taken a better picture of the new board. It is really amazing to see the shift from thru hole to surface mount on the PCB

Small Update

I tested that it the controller worked by hooking it up to my computer. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the article Online Testing App that gives you a visual confirmation that all of the cables get put in the right place. I accidentally swapped two sets of jumpers so I had to take the thing apart to fix it.