Nintendo 64 Controller Mod

[simonbelmont2]

How to convert analog stick to digital cross pad? I want to play all the games with digital cross pad not analog stick(broken)? How to do this?

[kendrick]

You want to use your favorite search engine and see how people have adapted other controllers for use on the Vectrex. That particular console only had an analog joystick, and many of the games for the system didn't require precision input of that type. In a nutshell, the Vectrex uses a standard dual potentiometer setup for its analog input and most people just wired a set of resistors to the four D-pad directions to simulate the whole scale of motion.

Doing this for the N64 is a little trickier, as the first-party controller uses an optical accelerometer not unlike what's found in ball-driven mouse devices. If you really want to be able to use a digital pad in place of an analog pad, you're best served by cutting up an Interact controller, which is more likely to have the dual pot setup. Hope this helps you out.

[l_oliveira]

The name for the technology used on the N64 controller analog is "Sine wave encoder" 

Reference here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_encoder

[NFG]

The name for the technology used on the N64 controller analog is "Sine wave encoder" 

Reference here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_encoder

Actually it's a quadrature encoder.  A sine wave encoder has more than one level for the output, where the N64 (I'm pretty sure?) uses a standard mouse-like digital for the two LED sensors.

[simonbelmont2]

I don't want that...  I want just want to play all the games with D-Pad (no extra rotary encoder or something like that... for an example to use the pad like in emulators). Can I do that?

[l_oliveira]

I thought there were only one kind of such movement detection method. Then an "quadrature encoder" output is digital while the "sine wave encoder" is analog ? Is that the difference ?

[kendrick]

I don't want that...  I want just want to play all the games with D-Pad (no extra rotary encoder or something like that... for an example to use the pad like in emulators). Can I do that?

If an individual game supports digital input, great. But not all games are universally coded that way, and some games will require analog input (otherwise Mario is always running or always walking, and you won't be able to switch between them.) Also, if you want to move in a direction besides the cardinal four or the four diagonals, how will you do that with a digital pad?

The function you want is not universally supported on the real N64. You need to build your own controller encoder to interpret digital input and translate it into an analog stick signal that the N64 will accept. There's no halfway hack.