Dennis Judd's Blog

Madcatz dual force 2 controller surgery

Probably a few years ago, I bought the cheapest controller I could find at the time for a Sony Playstation 2. It was a madcatz dual force 2, and it was just for when Jen and I were messing around with fighting games, nothing major.

Well since my dual shock died a few days ago, i've been forced to use this to play Star Ocean. And I've come to a conclusion about it.

It sucks donkey balls.

I can deal with it being a huge xbox wanna be, or the sluggish D pad, but when my characters magically decided they want to always run to the right that's just to much. Even reseting everything to force a recalibration of the controller didn't fix it. Every now and then, for some unknown reason, the left analog joystick would just think it needed to be registering me pushing it right. Even when the knob was perfectly centered. This is something I can only attribute to cheap parts, or a defective analog joystick module. Eitherway I don't care....I just couldn't barely stand to play with this damn thing, and almost took a hammer to it the other day. It's basically a worthless turd if it doesn't control the damn character right.

So basically I've got one fried dual shock controller, and one good for nothing piece of shit Madcatz controller. Even though I'm planning on investing in a Logitech Wireless controller here soon...having a backup is still preferred, and of course necessary for 2 player games. So it occured to me...what are the odds that the analog joysticks are built with the same physical specs for each controller? Maybe I could take the analog joysticks ouf of the playstation one (shock destroyed the IC, but probably not the controls) and put it into the Madcatz.

Turns out you can....just a simple matter of soldering. So let's take a look at the comparisons of the circuit boards:

So as we already know, everything matches up perfectly. But the two joysticks were obviously made by different companies. So the only real next step is to remove the parts out of the Sony controller using a solder sucker and copper braid, and then put it in the Madcatz....pretty straight forward:

And the finished product, a Madcatz Dual Force 2 with the analog joysticks from a Sony Dual-Shock:

ya can't even hardly tell....and it works like a charm. Anyone need some dual shock parts?

Posted by Dennis Judd at February 22, 2006 07:12 AM