mission stick reported to work ;)

[ulao]

Ok so I have a guy that tested my usb saturn adapter on the following.

mission stick - working
3d - working
normal controller - working
eclipse - working
3 button - working
hi freq 6 button - working

Now about the mission stick... so it has a tilt sensor, how do you activate it? Should it go off when the controller is tilted, hit, or moved?

[Waterbury]

I think it was mentioned in another thread that the tilt sensor was a false rumor. 

Also...there is a 3 button Saturn controller?

[ulao]

The rumor was for the 3d stick. But I here the mission stick does something with the extra data I see. I just dont know what...

all that really matters, is that its fully usable.

saw this..

The Sega Mission Stick is an analog stick, with the usual Sega Saturn buttons (which can be flipped to the left or the right of the stick), as well as trigger buttons on the stick. Interestingly enough, there's an expansion connector on the bottom of the stick, as well as support for mounting something else on the opposite side of the stick from the button panel, so there's a possibility that an expansion for the controller was planned. As far as anyone knows, no expansion accessory was ever developed for the Mission Stick. It was also one of the more expensive Saturn control peripherals.

Because of design differences from the regular digital control pad, not all games will recognize the Mission Stick. Furthermore, certain games, such as Solar Eclipse will ignore custom button configurations.

As with most Sega accessories, a white version was released in Japan.

also there is this

The Sega Saturn Mission Stick controller is perfect for any shooting and flying games. It features analog technology, x, y, and z axis, 8 action buttons and 2 Left and Right shift buttons.

what is z? That may be the extra analog I'm not reading, but whats it for? Maybe some sort of throttle

Also...there is a 3 button Saturn controller?

- It wa reports to me as a 3 button saturn, will confirm for you. He said he took pictures of every controller he tried.

[l_oliveira]

Mission stick has a extra analog axis (the throttle button) and from what I saw inside when I opened mine, the connector for the "SUB controller" has the same pinout as the main one.
So it could be meant to add an extra set of three analog axis.

[NFG]

The mission stick has the ability to put the stick on either side of the button pad, and you CAN add a second stick to use the second plug port, though I think the number of games that actually used this twin-stick configuration is something isn't far above zero.

[kendrick]

Panzer Dragoon Zwei can use the second stick. The primary stick is used to move, and the secondary stick is used to aim in this configuration. It's not a documented feature, probably because not enough Mission Stick units were sold to justify drawing attention to the feature.

[ulao]

hmm, well I see provision in the protocol for the throttle. its not a very high valued amount. 000-111 I think.  and there is certainly no msg's for the extra  analog.  maybe the protocol inserts this, but I find that hard to believe.  I also dont think I will find this add on, nor will many people actually want it.

[l_oliveira]

The best thing about the mission stick is how it works ...  That also helps to explain why it were so expensive.

This thread bring me attention to the fact that my mission stick were no longer working properly and it was extremely dirty, requiring a complete scrub.

So I took it apart with the intention of repairing and cleaning.  The analog axis is read through optical sensors, the stick is actually just a strong spring and the center piece has 4 white square spots which travel close to four sets of infra-red leds and photo-receivers.  Extremely clever.

Just as clever as the magnetic ones with HAL effect transistors on the Saturn 3D and Dreamcast pads.

Pics:

http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s119/l_oliveira/Misc/PIMG0143.jpg    Optical sensor for the throttle button on the stick.
http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s119/l_oliveira/Misc/PIMG0145.jpg    Close up of the microcontroller
http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s119/l_oliveira/Misc/PIMG0147.jpg   View of the main board.


The defect is that a sponge that was supposed to keep the bottom board (with the main optical sensors) free of dust deteriorated and made the optical sensors dirty so they could no longer detect the distance of the stick making it unusable.  After a through clean up it was working properly once again.



Edit: fixed a phrase for missing sentence.