nesdev.org

How much would it cost to make reproduction paddle controllers for use with Arkanoid, Chase HQ, and future homebrew games? I'm guessing it would involve a pot, a trimpot, a push button, a 555 timer, an oscillator, some counters, and a PCB, case, cord, and plug. Or would a microcontroller be cheaper than the 555 + oscillator + counters nowadays?

Board shots

We have made one ourselves, I'll get the schematic later from his computer and post it. It was made of protoboard by my father and put into a palm-sized case, using cat5e as the controller wire. Do you know by chance any NES connectors could be obtained? That's the hardest thing to track down for us, we ended up killing a controller for it.

And thanks for the link, saved, as we didn't have anything when we made it and made it to the wiki specs, except it returns 62-F2 because of calibration. If anyone has a real paddle and would test something for me with an NROM-128 test rom, please mail me. I believe 62-f2 is right though, especially since FCEUX and either Nintendulator or nestopia returns that.

The smallest PIC with an ADC seems to be the PIC10F220, should be under 50 cents (no external oscillator needed). Assuming 2 ADC channels, 4 I/Os, and 16 bytes of RAM is enough, otherwise there is a huge number of other MCUs above that price. Or maybe 16F720 for an SPI port, so it can use the NES controller bus directly.

For NES controller cables I've been able to find them for $4 ea (as an NES extension cable, but I have a use for both ends - and they have all 7 wires). There seem to be a lot of people selling them, I've looked around a little bit for a wholesale supply for it but haven't found it.

I had Arkanoid with it's controller, a long time ago. It would be cool to have a new paddle controller.

I've never really played around with an arkonoid paddle. But coincidentally (and unintentionally) I've got one showing up in a few days from a junk controller lot I bought off ebay the other day. Assuming the controller works I could test something out if you needed 3gengames. If there's interest, I can trace out the board and draw up the original schematic.

Due to the nature of my business I also tend to have more NES controller cords on my hands than I know what to do with. I generally just resell them on ebay for $1 each. I just sold a TON to some bloak down under but I've got a couple dozen at the moment. But yes the other option is use of extension cords, keep in mind you'll only get 6ft from an extension when NES cords are 8ft.

The end price would really depend on quantity and how you got came up with the plastics for the case and buttons. If you just wanted to hack one together with a case, protoboard, and switches from radioshack you could make one under $10-20. It looks like they go for around $30 on ebay. If you wanted to make a fair amount of them more professionally the electronics and PCB would only be a couple bucks. It's the plastics that KILL you, if you want injection molding you're going to need to be ready to cough up a couple grand to make the first one.