SNES Asciipad

[Waterbury]

I have a broken SNES asciipad that I bought from a flea market. I ordered a new one off of ebay, but I decided to go back and possibly see what is going on with the broken one. From what I could gather, it appears that it is ignoring the clock line, causing all the buttons to register with the press of the b button.

Now here is my question to those whom would know such things. How could the controller have fried?

With SNES clones such as the retroduo, is the controller timing the same as the SNES? I mean is the data latch pulsing at 60hz like the SNES would or is it faster? Also does anyone know if the clock line is pulsed at the same rate as well?

The reason why I'm concerned is I'm programming a PIC to de-mux the SNES controller data and I'm thinking maybe the asciipad uses the latch as a oscillator? The controller has turbo button options and it has to be timed somehow. I opened the broken controller and could find no crystal, just a bunch of capacitors which could be used for the oscillation. Ascii definitely uses a custom IC in the controller, I'm afraid that it is sensitive to non-spec SNES controller communication.

Should I force the code to execute at only 60hz to not fry the controller? Seems like a shame to throw in a 16.67ms delay for every code loop. I like optimization. 

[NFG]

The first thing I'd suspect is the cable.  It may not have obvious injuries (kinks, nicks) but could still have internal shorts or cuts.  Try flexing the cable and see if that helps.  Test it with a multimetre if you've got one.

I just opened mine up.  There's one crystal (the orange box) and a few caps, as well as what is almost certainly a microcontroller with functions we can only guess at.  I doubt the polling speed is your problem, I'd first suspect the cable, then either the crystal or the chip.

[Waterbury]

  Ockham's Razor is always the best. The kink was where the wire crimps to hold it in place in the controller. Re-soldered the thing and it works with my microcontroller. Thanx!