Get Your Atari 5200 and 7800 working with the Tankstick and Tron 80's Arcade controller (Vid #52)

Описание: Today's video is all about getting your Atari 5200 and 7800 games working with trackball and joystick control. Featured in this episode are two really top-notch PC controllers- the X-Arcade Tankstick and the Tron 80's Arcade Multicontroller (assembled on Wired-Up Retro #44). The Tron controller isn't just about trackball control, but also spinner control. Today, you'll see me put these controllers into use in some very surprising ways.

During the course of the presentation, a number of diagrams are shown. These can also be viewed online, so check them out, and feel free to print any diagram that you think could be helpful in setting up your own Atari system multicontroller.

Diagram #1: Atari 7800 adapters diagram for the X-Arcade Tankstick (for simultaneous joystick and trackball control): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kz-k...

Diagram #2: Atari 5200 adapters diagram for the X-Arcade Tankstick (for simultaneous joystick and trackball control): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LBM5...

Diagram #3: Atari 5200 adapters diagram for the Tron 80's Arcade Multicontroller (for joystick and buttons control only): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LDzK...

Diagram #4: Atari 5200 adapters diagram for the Tron 80's Arcade Multicontroller (for joystick, trackball, spinner, buttons control):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LK-a...

Notes: In setup of Diagram #1 (and any of the others), I found that if there were problems getting things functional, that it helps to turn off the game system, unplug power supply(ies) to the adapter(s). Then plug back in and turn on the console. If this isn't helpful- at least on setup #1- then you may need to buy an additional 9 pin female to two 9 pin males splitter cable and put it in your Atari 7800 port and attach everything else in the diagram after that. I found that this solved issues from time to time.

When getting into discussing diagram 3, I mentioned in the video at around 12:00 that you need a CronusMax Plus adapter for compatibility with the Tron 80's Arcade Multicontroller. The prior X-Arcade Tankstick setup did not require you to have one of these, but involved a simple Playstation to USB controller adapter instead (probably $10 or less). The Tron 80's Multicontroller has a digital joystick encoder board installed that produces a USB output signal that is for working on a Playstation 3 innately. The Tankstick output (when it's put through the 5-in-1 Tankstick adapter) is not a Playstation 3 USB output, but a Playstation 2 controller plug output. So that's part of the reason you can't just use a cheap PS2 to USB controller adapter to get things working.

Another thing worth pointing out is that if you try going with the USB plug directly from the Tronstick to the Brook adapter (which is supposed to receive a PS3 OR PS4 controller signal and convert to a Playstation 2 plug output), the Brook adapter doesn't recognize the output of the Tronstick as a PS3 controller signal for some reason. So, I put the Cronusmax Plus adapter (preset to turn a PS3 controller signal into a PS4 controller signal) in between the Tronstick and the Brook adapter, and it got things working properly.

The addition of the Cronusmax Plus adds to the cost of this setup considerably, but has a great benefit of being able to remap buttons on the multicontroller (which I took advantage of when getting Dreadnaught Factor, Meteorites, and Star Trek into action with the spinner). So I think it's well worth the extra money.

Special thanks to Emforay for the intro music. Check him out on Soundcloud.
Also- special thanks to DJ Kestutis for the outro song, Reborn:
License: http://goo.gl/ZSoZf