Want to change Virtua Stick console, want to retain turbo features

[airthrow]

Hi guys,

I got a free Saturn Virtua stick.  It has a worn out Seimitsu stick and crap imitation buttons.  I will be replacing the stick and buttons with full seimitsu and redoing the control plate so it is a regular six button instead of the 8 button monstrosity (seriously HATE 8 button layouts).  The stick is like this:  http://www.toptiertronic.com/pics/virtuastick.jpg

That is the easy part.  At the top are a bank of switches to turn autofire off and on, and a speed setting to change the turbofire speed.  I want to retain these functions while switching the system from a saturn pad to a PCB-less DB-15 cable.  Of course I will need to power the PCB to keep the autofire feature, but I am worried about finding the signal turbo'd somewhere on the board without being multiplexed.  I would rather not use an adaptor inside the stick for lag and cost reasons, is there anything I can do to keep the turbofire features while applying the turbo do an unmultiplexed platform independent signal?

[kendrick]

What's the PCB look like in there? If you're very lucky, there's a separate timer chip that does autofire functions before feeding the switch input into the other IC, which means you have button and stick functions separate from the encoder. More likely though, it's a single custom chip that does both the encoding and autofire, in which case you're screwed.

On the other hand, there's nothing to stop you from creating a separate autofire mechanism that just uses the existing on/off and speed sliders. Post a picture of the board when you get a chance?

[airthrow]

No luck, it's only one custom chip.  I figured I was probably screwed because of that.

How would I go about making another turbo circuit using the existing switches? 

[kendrick]

There are a couple of good ones in the distant past of the forum here:

http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2380.0

There are more clever ways to accomplish the same goal, but in general if you want each button to have separate autofire functionality then you need a distinct oscillator for each switch. Hope that gets you started.