Capacitor values for damaged headset circuit during Wired-CL/CG mod?

[AG-Wolf]

first and foremost, I want to give a HUGE "Thank You" to RDC for his high-res PCB scans
https://www.acidmods.com/forum/index.php/topic,34574.0.html
And labeled/marked traces
https://www.acidmods.com/forum/index.php/topic,34541.msg261328.html
These have been invaluable assets for a project into which I dove almost completely blind...


Anyway, I'll try to keep things concise; I'm cramming a wired 360 pad into the case of a classic Xbox Controller-S pad.  The two analog sticks and the ABXY buttons line-up perfectly with the holes on the classic pad, so everything else has just been a matter of physical/mechanical logistics.

I'm basically 90% complete, but when I was testing everything, I noticed a problem... when using a headset, the in-game (or in-party) voice icon stays permanently on.   The pad isn't transmitting any static or buzzing, I can hear people clearly, and they can hear me, but the console thinks sound is constantly coming from my microphone.

When I was inspecting the board, I noticed the supports in the bottom half of the controller shell scraped two surface-mount capacitors off of the back side of the board.  If possible, I'd like to replace them, but I have no idea what value they are, or what other caps I could source from a donor/scrap controller.  I have half a dozen damaged pads I've acquired over the years, but they're all older revisions, so I can't see a clear route to what parts I could salvage.

Can anyone offer any insight or suggestions?  Any useful info would be much appreciated; thanks in advance

[RDC]

Welcome. Look forward to seeing that when it's done. I had that idea way back when because most things lined up, but gave that up for cutting the board down to the 2in x 1in size and then wiring it to a stripped down S-controller board instead.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f320/RDCXBG/Custom%20Controllers/3Six0Proto002.jpg

Both of those Capacitors are part of the OSC circuit. On the older Wired and Wireless Matrix style controllers it would be C1 and C2 that are those Caps. That may or may not fix the problem though.

Check both sides of the board at the Headset connector, mainly the top, because there are a pile of tiny parts that make up the filters and such for that connector, and pretty much any of them missing will mess something up for sure.

[AG-Wolf]

ah-ha, I have one old matrix style board, and I see them...  I'll definitely give those a try.   Would they also be caps C41 and C37 on the older-style common-ground boards?

I would have loved to do something as simple as your approach, but I wasn't sure just how much of the board I could trim... plus, there wouldn't be a head-set port anymore without a lot more shenanigans that I wasn't willing to mess around with :P

All the parts on the top of the board look okay; I made sure to inspect the whole thing three times to make certain I hadn't overlooked anything else.

Here's a WIP shot of both sides of the board at least.  I really wish the traces didn't lift off the board so easily; maybe my iron is too hot, but the stupid ROHS solder they use doesn't melt at lower temps :I


I know it looks ugly as sin here, but once it's all put together, you can't even tell it's not a stock Controller-S unless you look in the memory card slots.  I even got the cord to line-up nice and tight in its little exit hole



[EDIT: Well I guess I was a little over-confident.  I replaced the caps, and the problem persists.  I assume surface-mount caps aren't polarized, so I'm not gonna bother reseating them.  Are there any other common solutions to headset problems on 360 pads?  I know I've had a couple in the past (stock, unmodded) where sometimes the headset port would just fail for no reason, and I've had similar situations where the speaking icon stays activated but NO sound gets transmitted...  I guess it's not technically a big deal, but I just wanted the whole thing to work properly]

[RDC]

C44 and C46 are the Crystal caps on the Wireless CG and CG2 boards.

The Caps are not polarized, so either way they work the same.

If no other parts are missing or damaged, and the connector is good, then all that's left is the MCU.

If you're lifting traces you're using far too much heat. Lead Free solder's melting point isn't anywhere near that high. Use a little bit of flux or just flow some new solder on there. Biggest thing though is to keep the soldeirng iron tip clean.


Cutting the board down doesn't cut off the headset port.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f320/RDCXBG/3PS60/360CLWiredBoardBottomCUTS.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f320/RDCXBG/3PS60/360CLWiredBoardBottomREBUILD.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f320/RDCXBG/3PS60/CLCutandRebuilt.jpg

[AG-Wolf]

As far as lifting traces goes, I'm just using a simple 30watt iron.  I almost never lift traces when I'm working on stuff, yet I've lifted more traces and contacts from the 360 pads I've worked on than all my other projects combined for the last decade and a half.  I'm relatively well experienced with the whole soldering process, I think Microsoft just cut as many corners as possible for production costs on these boards.  I'm also working within the limitations of the tools and [lack of] funds I have available; nothing "professional" at my disposal, unfortunately... don't even have a magnifying glass.

I've just kinda accepted that trying to repair the headset circuit is more trouble than it's worth.   The only reason this project exists is because a friend asked if I could build it as a gift for a friend of his... allegedly the recipient used to play Halo 2 competitively, and has a fondness for the Controller-S, but he doesn't actively talk over the headset.

Though, I do also like the Controller-S myself, so I might take what I've learned from this and make a cleaner/sturdier one for myself (may throw a powerless mini-USB hub inside the case, too, so I can plug my flash drive with my profile and etc into the pad and still have two USB slots available on the console).  I glanced too quickly at your link earlier and didn't realize what portion of the 360 board you cropped; cutting the board down and just running leads to all respective points might be a bit cleaner and obviously avoid alignment issues, but with my track-record of uncooperative 360 controllers, it might ironically be more difficult.


After skimming through your gallery, I'm literally amazed at the projects you've done.  Do you have access to stuff that lets you actually design your own PCBs and things like that?  Those mini boards are especially amazing, you should set-up an online shop or something :P  I bet my friend would buy one for his fantasy, dual stick Saturn 3D xbox 360 controller he seems to think I can make for him lol

[RDC]

I use a 60W Hakko 926, that's not even made anymore, and don't lift traces on them.

I use DipTrace to make my schematics and design my PCBs, and then I get them made at places like OSHPark, SeedStudio and the like, depends on what kind of service the PCB requires. The free version of DipTrace can do up to 300 pins, which is more than enough for most small/medium sized projects. The miniCL board was 229 pins. A lot of people use Eagle, which also has a free version.

The S-controller is one board that I actually started to duplicate up like the blank 36X board I made, then lost interest in it pretty much right after starting it and had other things to work on and never went back to it. If I were going to get back into that thing, I'd design it around the CG2 board. Make the top slot the headset from a hacked up headset adapter or Memory card, then the bottom slot the battery pack, 2 x AAA will fit in there, or could even go with a LiPo instead. I finished up a Wired Duke CL for the 360, but never had any made to test it out, once that cord gets cut it's hard to go back.

So your friend is after a Virtual On stick for the 360 made from an old Saturn one? or do you mean the Nights 3D controller with another Stick added? The former would be fairly easy, plenty of room to work with there in that Virtual On case, while the latter would be a mess. You'd need to either gut 2 of those things for the Stick from the other one, then deal with all of that Hall Sensor and Op-Amp mess, or retro fit it with 360 sticks, which would most likely look like butt without a ton of bondo, sanding and paint, then they would never feel like the Hall Sensor Stick the 3D controller originally had. That sounds like a real MF, I might have to look into that some more.

[AG-Wolf]

I'm serious when I say I just apparently have some kinda horrible luck with these 360 pads :P  Hell, I've repaired a gamecube controller board that was completely snapped in two with no issues at all, using the same tools I have at my disposal now.

the slots on the S-pad aren't of much concern to me, personally.  I prefer the headset port on the bottom of the pad, because i use the model with the volume and mute controls that are built into the plug; that way I don't have to take my hand off the controller while I'm playing (I had one where the controls dangled off the earpiece and I could never find it quickly)... though, the only online game I play is Blur, and I doubt the servers will really be active for too much longer since the game is nearly 4 years old.  And I'm not really concerned about wireless capability; shoehorning a power source might be too much of a logistics nightmare for me, and a wired pad with USB hub would alleviate any port real-estate problems.

I just think it would be neat to have a core piece that you could use to adapt any controller to the 360, rather than having to chop up a regular pad or use some kind of breakout box (like, I ran leads from a wired pad to a DB25 connector all inside a RadioShack project box, then took a 25pin scsi cable and wired up all the contacts on a western Saturn pad, so I had a good digital controller for the arcade stuff I play on the xbox... it would be a heck of a lot cleaner to just use something like you've done here:
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f320/RDCXBG/360miniCL/360miniCL002.jpg
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f320/RDCXBG/360miniCG2/360miniCG2008.jpg
and just slap it into whatever strikes a person's fancy.  These are easily marketable things, or maybe they would have been more-so a few years ago before the XB1/PS4 launched.


No, he doesn't care about the VO stick (though I wouldn't mind getting one myself eventually... the Saturn VO is the only one in the series I actually liked).  He basically wants a Saturn 3D pad with an additional analog stick added as a right stick.

I know basically squat about how to reinterpret the Hal sensors to the pots the 360 pad uses (which is shameful because i've had enough analog and digital electronics education in the past that I should be able to build and understand the basic circuits involved with all this crap), so I would most likely attempt using the regular mechanical sticks from the 360 pad... he at least wants the thumb cap from the 3D pad, and I don't even know how the hell that could happen since both designs limit maximum throw/tilt in completely different ways.  I also have no experience with the whole bondo/acrylic plastic building shenanigans... seems exceptionally complicated.

[RDC]

They're only easily marketable after they're made, but after they're made a whole lot of work has gone into them, so they're not cheap at that point, and very, very few people out there like to pay for someone else's hard work, let alone understand what went into making it.


The Hall and Op-Amp combo ends up being the same thing as the 10k POT style stick when it's all said and done with. The Hall sensors change current thru them depending on where the Magnet is at, then the Op-Amp changes that current change to a voltage, and then they go to the MCU, so it ends up being a complicated voltage divider in the same way that the 10k POT style Sticks are. There would need to be some redesigning there to deal with the lower Analog voltage the 360 controllers use.

The DreamCast controller uses the same setup, Halls and Magnets for the Sticks and Triggers, and I tinkered with the Triggers on it awhile back, over 4 years awhile back now that I'm looking at it again. http://s50.photobucket.com/user/RDCXBG/library/DCL360?sort=3&page=1