A Look Into The Guts of a DC Controller.

[Shurikane]

Yesterday, I realized the analog stick of my Dreamcast controller no longer returned to the center by itself. Well... it did, but only if I pushed the pad to the limit and releasing. It turns out I had a new deadzone that was half the size of the pad itself. Unfortunately, you can't really notify your Dreamcast of such things.



So what went wrong inside? Did a spring break? Was it easy to replace? Or would I have to buy a new controller? Figuring out I had nothing to lose, I decided to crack the thing open.

First of all, the tool:



All you need is a very small Phillips screwdriver, long enough to reach into the two holes on the handles of the controller. You have to take out six screws in order to be able to pull the back cover away. Two screws are on each side of the VMU slots, two more beside the cable, and the last two inside the handles. They're easy to spot.





Now that the back cover's out, turns out I haven't really moved in my problem. The analog pad's hidden away behind the circuitboard. If I want to get to the pad, I'll need to undo four more screws. Two silver-colored ones are to the right, close to the trigger. The other two are black and hold the VMU slots in place. You'll have to unscrew all four if you want to move the board, as you'll notice that there are notches on each side of the VMU piece that help hold the board in place.

With those screws out, I'm ready to have some fun:



The DC controller is really interesting. Turns out the start button's actual button is a snap-on rubber with a piece that connects to the board to generate the signal. Also check out the buttons:



Notches have been placed so that it's impossible to put a button in the wrong spot.

Wheeee, holding our beloved A button!



Carefully pull at the analog pad's platform to pop it out. It's held in place by two simple mounds, at the tip of the red arrows.

Furthermore, the platform itself can be split in half. The blue arrows point to the stoppers that hold the two pieces in place. The cover piece hides away what I want to get at.



Lookie! Some pieces of the analog pad have fallen off.



The stick itself is composed of two parts: the dome part is composed of the pad/hat itself and the hemispherical part on the inside, with the supposedly eight protrusions. Another part, this one cylindrical, is around it and serves to apply the pressure thanks to a spring on the inside.

Basically, if you push on the hemisphere, the pad will be stiffer. If you push the ring around it, this'll extend the spring and decrease the strength of the return until the pad actually can move freely with no restrictions. Some of the hemisphere's protrusions had broken off and wedged themselves under the ring-cylinder, preventing it from applying pressure on the rest of the protrusions to get the pad back to center.

I was lucky. The pieces didn't all break off on one side, meaning instead of losing return on a whole side, I simply had weaker return everywhere, which is still better and none at all.

I brushed off whatever gunk remained wedged on the piece, and put everything back together.



Voila! Now my controller is set to do some more gaming. Doesn't totally feel like new, but it ain't broken either!

[Stingdragon]

I ahve never seen a Dreamcast controller. It looks cool.

[Shino]

[Silver Adept]

That's an impressive exercise in repair, Shuri. Congratulations on a successful operation.

[Gekko]

I should have done one of these when I hacked up an Xbox controller (cord only really) to make it work on my PC. But alas, I didn't.