controllers break and for some people they break often but just buy a new one
right wrong even without getting all preachy
about e-waste and toxic chemicals landfills yadda yadda controllers can be
expensive difficult to replace or both
so repairing broken ones makes a ton of sense microsoft recently confirmed the
alleged shortage of current generation xbox wireless controllers that's been
driving up prices and the ongoing retro
gaming craze has resulted in skyrocketing demand for older
controllers that simply aren't being manufactured at all
anymore with more and more of them dying each year the good news
is that we have the solution that's
right it's good old right to repair back
to save the day once again in most parts of the world replacement
components for popular game controllers are pretty easy to come by so we asked
our staff to bring in their precious broken hardware for us to take a look at
that's right oh here it is the doctor is in so let's get started oh my god
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today at the link down below depending on the model of the controller and the
particular problem a repair job can be anywhere from dead simple to absolutely
nightmarish and while i suspect that everything we look at today is going to
be on the easier end of the spectrum you never know when you're going to crack
open a wiimote and find that many of the pcb traces have been corroded away by
battery shmu this has no internal battery meaning it should be a relatively easy one we're
going to start here the super nintendo was my childhood so it would warm my
heart to keep david's busted controller out of the landfill his problem is
apparently both a broken start and select button let's get this baby
cracked open
wow that's some 1990s pcb right there
david didn't even say that he had a broken right shoulder button well if
it's not bothering him guess it doesn't bother me
cable replacement seems to be a relatively simple operation this gives
us a really good look at the internals of the controller it's very simple all
membranes just like with the cheap keyboard so it works with this rubber
nipple here that has a conductive material on the bottom of it that just
connects two traces closing a circuit sending a signal to the connected device
there are no joysticks which means we have none of the cost or complexity that
accompany those the main points of failure then are either cracked nipples
which these all seem to be fine or
dirty contact points or dirty nipples which prevent the circuit from being
closed so it's actually likely that a controller of this style can be repaired
simply by cleaning it why don't we start with that obviously
the start and select are the problem and wow this is dirty i don't know
i'm getting a bit of a spill vibe here
you can see whatever it was seeped through the start and select through the
membrane here through the hole and around it and oh
it's kind of oily yeah it's all over the board this is as gross as it is it's
actually good news because it means it's very likely that this fix is as simple
as just you grabbing a q-tip spraying some alcohol
on it and giving this a wipe down yeah
fumigate this thing since we're already in here we're going to use a smooth
motion to clean off the bottoms of these other contact pads we're pretty lucky
the originals are in good condition because while we did prepare by picking
up a whole set of replacement membranes off of morotov games
honestly they just do not feel as good
as the originals even though the originals are over 25 years old at this
point and it gets a lot worse than these
like if you pick up random ones on amazon there's a good chance they're gonna feel pretty awful compared to the
originals let's go ahead and put this back on then
if this shoulder's not bothering david i guess it's not really my place to say that it's a problem right
can i steal one from another controller yeah all right cool
okay perfect so we're in pretty okay shape it's test time
well it still works well start works
all buttons are working david you're welcome your controller is
saved our next victim this gamecube controller comes courtesy of our former
editor taran in it presumably thanks to his spider-man 2-speed run hobby has a
banged-up c-stick nub and a flaccid joystick that we need to get returned to
its proper erect state unfortunately
while the gamecube has great joysticks it's nearly impossible to prepare the
internals of the stick box so when they break they must be replaced
there are three main types of stick boxes that you might find in your
controller and depending on the version you have the job of desoldering them
could be a little more difficult this metal cover here means that ours is
either a first or second generation unit so it means that heat will spread away
faster from the soldering iron the good news is that generations one
and two are interoperable so that gives us a few more options for sourcing a
replacement the bad news is that while there are
lots of new stick boxes available on amazon aliexpress and ebay they will
likely make your precious first-party controller feel like an off-brand like
circa or old school and those can be had for about 10 brand new so the easiest
way to obtain a good replacement is by salvaging one from another gamecube
controller or a wii accessory like the nunchuck though it should be noted i'm
using the term easiest rather loosely here the gamecube
controller is a much more involved teardown than the snes controller
starting with nintendo's trademark tri-wing screws you will need an ifixit
kit or similar in order to get these puppies out and ending with the
desoldering that we're going to have to do to get our donor joystick and c-stick
out of this bad boy
off comes the joystick cover on the c-stick we're going to hold on to that
for taren's controller for later now to get the c-stick out on some versions
this is soldered but conveniently on ours it's a socketed plug so we can just
pop this off and out comes the soldering iron
that's it for our donor controller for now but we're going to hold on to it for when we inevitably need that second
joystick down the road our second operation here is to replace the stick
covers and here again we could just purchase new ones online but again many
of the cheap options online don't quite measure up to the originals and our
customer is particular
thankfully our broken controller happens to have all the right working parts to
fill in the less working parts of terence now to open up teren's
controller and this time we need to go deeper into our disassembly of the
rumble pack by fully desoldering it this is going to give us the access we need
to the back of the stick box
and once again it looks like this controller has been spilled down
check this out we've got the stick box out and this thing looks freaking rusty
what is even going on here ultimately that's probably not what made
it loose like this but it certainly didn't help
taran's c-stick box is in acceptable condition so all we need to do is put
the new cover on top of it reassemble and it's time to test
and woohoo not brand new type but
hey it didn't come from a brand new controller so
what do you want gamecube controllers particularly the
joysticks are a rabbit hole and a half to go down so in the interest of time i
would suggest that instead of listening to me talk about it you check out places
like ssb wiki gc controller library or
pretty much anywhere that smash bros players tend to congregate
let's do something a little easier next where'd it go ah here it is
this playstation 3 controller is from our cameraman andy hi andy
it still works perfectly fine except
whoops the built-in lithium battery is
toast one solution that i pitched to him would be to switch over to xbox like a proper
chad no but andy didn't have any of that so
i guess we'll replace his battery for him
replacing a battery is mostly painless when the controller is easy to open and
this one is just unscrew the back phillips head screws
thank you sony and lift forward toward the trigger buttons if your l2 and r2
fall out put them back on right away and make sure the little spring is on the
inside of the trigger otherwise you're gonna have a pretty sloppy trigger
now it's time to unplug the battery it might be a little tight but if you use a
pointy plastic tool like this you'll be able to get a little bit more leverage
and you should be able to push it out if you keep trying now one of the challenges when it comes
to replacing batteries well in any device not just a ps3 controller is that
due to a lack of right to repair legislation official first party
replacements either do not exist or
they're not sold for very long and it's a long way down the road that
usually is when we need these things purchasing third-party batteries is
absolutely an option but it can be a gamble since shady sellers can claim
that a battery holds far more charge than it actually does and in an even
worse case they might make mistakes in the production of the product for
example it's pretty common with the ps3 to have the polarity flipped on the
battery so make sure that the black wire
is actually going to ground to avoid frying your controller or potentially
turning the battery pack into a pretty spicy pillow when you insert the battery
make sure the black and red wires are on the same side of the connector groove
we'd recommend taping down the battery at this stage
then once you've got the shell back together you're going to want to make sure that your triggers and your
shoulder buttons are working correctly before you screw it back together
so andy your controller is restored to
battery life wow i can't play gta 5 here you go
next up we've got what i'm going to call the little brother special it's a rock
candy controller from pdp for the xbox 360. i have
no idea why this holds such a special place in alex's heart but
it does and given that xbox 360 controllers have been getting much more
difficult to come by lately i feel it would be a service to the gaming
community overall to fix this one up for him so that he doesn't have to go buy up
one of the proper first party ones that the rest of us would rather use from
talking to alex we know that the problem with this controller is that it will intermittently disconnect which can be
anything from corrosion on the contacts inside the usb-a connector to a partial
break in the cable to some kind of loosening of the connection even here
inside the controller now because it would take us a long time
to diagnose which of those particular problems this is what we're going to do
is we're just going to strip down the controller and solder on a completely
fresh usb cable we start by unscrewing the shell and
lifting up the back avoiding the triggers just like the ps3
then looking closer at the pcb there's what seems to be an oscillator here
that's either glued down which would be fine or has some kind of schmoo or
leaking thing coming out of it which could be causing our connectivity
problem we think it's more likely to be the usb cable so we're going to go
straight to that fix we'll need to take the board out and remove the joystick
covers just like we did on the gamecube and at this stage we need to note the
order of our usb wires if the board is labeled black is ground red is voltage
green is negative data white is positive data and this will all be relevant later
we can desolder the wires from the board with a soldering iron or heat gun
however it works for you then it's time to put the controller
aside for a minute and find a donor cable i'm feeling more like a classic
black yeah now we strip it tin it and solder
it remembering the order what you're looking at now is us doing
it backwards whoops so we'll need to do that again
if your original cable had some kind of strain reliever or rubber grommet to
hold it in place make sure you dissect that wrap it around your new cable and
reinstall it it can be the difference between years of trouble-free operation
or it just immediately breaking again if you had better foresight than us by the
way you could put some heat shrink around your cable and that would probably help it stay in place a bit
better now we reassemble and return
and no dropping in and out hey alex get your crappy controller back
thank you i can finally play rocket league while i can we got pretty lucky
on that one not every third party controller is easy to fix they often use
different pcb layouts and or components that make finding replacement parts much
more difficult also because they're less common the online resources for
repairing them can be few and far between this ps2 controller from david is a
perfect example we honestly had a hard
time even getting the thing open let alone working on it without risking any
additional damage so his makeshift solution to the dead
spring in the right trigger might be the best that he can do for now
bringing us finally to something a little bit more modern i've actually got
a couple of broken xbox one controllers so
let's see i'd say the broken micro usb charging
part on this one is pretty minor and too similar to something that we've already
done so why don't we do the one that
doesn't power on at all i think this one ended up with some kind
of coating all over the pcb as part of a previous video i actually
don't remember all the details though step one is to
pry up the handles hard got to get those off to get at the screw
holes then there are five screws two on either
side and one under the battery cover
now pop off the front plate and it's time to unscrew all these tiny screws
there's not actually a ton of them but don't miss any the rumble got
disconnected at some point we're not sure what happened there and this conformal coating ah yes this
was from bathtub gaming it's clearly coming off
but the weird thing is we're getting continuity on it and yet it simply
doesn't work i don't know how much additional time we're going to be
investing into this one especially when we've got more important things to talk
about we actually didn't get any modern controllers with dead joysticks but
given how common stick drift is i feel like it's at least worth talking about
there are a handful of joystick technologies that have made their way into consumer controllers the sega
dreamcast used hall effect sensors essentially magnetic joysticks and the
notorious n64 joystick actually used an optical sensor so despite
flopping around due to a defect in the mechanical design the accuracy almost
never degraded it's one of the few stick boxes by the way that can actually be
repaired by disassembling and refurbishing it the writer for this
video is on probation so he didn't make it into the youtube video this is his
controller that he wanted to get fixed but maybe we'll have him do it as a
Floatplane exclusive when we're done sign up on Floatplane.com
unfortunately no modern joystick uses
either an optical or hall effect sensor nintendo sony microsoft and even media
darling valve all use potentiometer joysticks which
well are inherently fragile a potentiometer is a variable resistor
that restricts the flow of electricity each joystick then has two
potentiometers one for up and down one for left and right so moving it around
changes the voltage values that are being reported to the console on both of
those axes a spring returns the stick to center the issue with potentiometers is
that they involve two pieces of conductive material rubbing together if
those two pieces start to wear out warp or they get dirty well
it's possible that they will output a value that corresponds to this
rather than to this causing the input from the stick to
drift a little even if physically it's in the right position
potentiometers are used because they are cheap and really for very few other
reasons it's kind of wild that in 2002
we have more expensive controllers that use worse technology than what we had
back in 1999. some companies though like bully kit are
working on aftermarket hall effect sensors for the steam deck and switch
and maybe other controllers in the future to finally solve a problem that
shouldn't have existed in the first place the script says until we have
hands on we can't speak to the quality of their solution but i actually tried
the steam deck one today right before i came over here and it is better
especially with the steam deck where you can configure the dead zones no dead
zones oh so fine anyway this was a lot of fun so if
you're looking to get more mileage out of a controller you already own or if
you want to score a deal on a controller by fixing it up yourself or maybe you
even want to start a new hobby or side business fixing and flipping old
controllers i'd say it's worth giving it a try just be careful where you get your
controllers from japan is a good source and is actually where this pile of super
famicom controllers came from they belong to the writer who worked on this
project if you run into export woes though there
are lots of as-is controllers on sites like ebay
just be careful because if they're coming from other refurbishers as this
one likely is i mean who else would strip off the battery covers then you
have no way of knowing if earnest efforts have already been made to fix
them they could be just irreparably broken this one on the other hand looks a lot
more like someone decluttering their garage and could be a prime candidate
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if you guys want to see us do more videos like this let us know down below
and these controllers pair great with a mr multi system so go check out
Anthony's video on ShortCircuit about that