Pad Hacking Page
Often the simplest and cheapest way to make the electronics required in an arcade style controller is to "pad hack" an existing cheap joypad. Here we purchased a couple of Sega Megadrive controllers from Amazon and used those instead of buying a specific printed circuit board from a company such as Brook Gaming.
Not only is our hacked board a lot cheaper than any commercial offering but in the case of the Sega Megadrive (Genesis in the US) it is not available on the Brook Retroboard.
Not only is our hacked board a lot cheaper than any commercial offering but in the case of the Sega Megadrive (Genesis in the US) it is not available on the Brook Retroboard.
This picture shows the external plastic casing of the Megadrive controller and the circuit board inside it. To open it is easy using a cross head screwdriver.
On the internal circuit board there are circular pads (most likely used as test points at the electronics manufacturing facility) and these make perfect solder points for the controller plus if you decide to reassemble the unit it's function will be unaffected.
The picture above shows the different functions available from those aforementioned solder points. Remember the circuit requires the use of a ground (GND) connection in order to send the closed switch signal to the console. No ground (GND) no go.