Having Trouble Upgrading PS3 Madcatz TE Round 2 for PS4

Tech Talk
#1

Hey guys, sorry to ask but I am in need of advice. A friend asked me to help him mod his Madcatz TE round 2 fightstick for PS4 use via a Hori Fight Commander 4. I had recently dual modded one with the PS360+ I had so I didn’t think it would be a problem. We were able to get it to work briefly but after what seemed like a successful run through, we unplugged the stick, screwed the cover shut and found that it no longer worked when connected to the PS4. Tried doing some tests on a PS3 as well to verify if it was an issue with the home button but it seems like there is no power going to the HFC4. (or I fear I might have burnt out the PCB somehow)

I’m not sure if this helps but my wiring is thus:

  1. Buttons are connected to a strip inside the fightstick. We didn’t have a wire stripper small enough to strip the ribbon containing all the button signals so I ended up soldering wires to the bottom and connected to their respective locations on the HCF4
  2. Stripped the USB cable and soldered the wires to the back side of the HCF4 PCB.
  3. left the joystick wires connected to the original fighstick PCB (the one with the Turbo/home button) and soldered the opposite end to the HCF4 PCB
  4. Soldered the Home Button node on the bottom of the original PCB to the HCF4 PCB

So yeah not sure what has caused the stick to not work anymore. Is there anything that sounds too crazy from my set up? or is there any clarifications that might help? I’m really stumped. I thought that maybe the issue was that I needed the VCC and GND connected to the original PCB as well as the HCF4 PCB but that didn’t seem to make a difference either.

#2

Vcc and gnd should always be connected to all boards in the dual mod. Pics of it all would help though.

#3

Photos by popular demand.
https://goo.gl/photos/W59LR6NuAjwbVNMC7
https://goo.gl/photos/NG46pdacikuEv1Sy7
https://goo.gl/photos/KVHZBMmMpyoZMZZj9
https://goo.gl/photos/pfAbqa1ZTaSmAKRz6

#4

hi, not to offend but by the pictures it looks like you have done a bad soldering job. the spliced wires joined together at the usb cord should be insulated with electrical tape if the vcc touches the D+ or D- wires you could fry your board very easily. they may have shorted at the splice point or on the pcb itself since the solder joints look a little thick. also did you go with an imp v2 setup or dpdt switch to dual mod? i dont see either in the picture

#5

I’m not surprised to hear the soldering job wasn’t that great. I had originally had the usb wires wrapped in electracal tape but removed it when I was having issues getting the stick to work. Wasn’t sure if i’d have to redo the wiring. I feel like the wires may have shorted like Coffeejuice suggested cause the stick had been working twice before it stopped responding completely. Is that something that just requires to solder a new wire or has this done permanent damage to the pcb? if i just need a new wire i might just strip the old wires that were attached to the original pcb that i had cut and solder that to the new wires.

I don’t actually have an imp or dpdt switch cause when i talked to my friend, he settled on the idea of just using in exclusively for ps4 and it appears the HFC4 works fine for PS3 as well. I honestly just needed the original PCB because i wanted to use the home button from it

#6

my advice would be to remove the fc4 pcb completely from the stick and solder a single usb wire back onto it. plug that into a computer and see if you can pull anything up on joy.cpl

if you don’t get any kind of reading then it is probably dead. you could do further probing with the multimeter just to make sure but if the 5v and data lines really crossed then youre out of luck, unfortunately. if you still have the pad parts maybe you could put it back together and request a refund from amazon or wherever you bought it from

#7

I doubt in it’s altered state you can get a refund.

#8

:)))))). depends on how well you put it back together. god bless the wal-mart return service employees who glazed over my returned ps3 controllers. soldering takes practice like anything else, you can practice on thrifted VCRs and old motherboards (for your health please keep a fan nearby). RGOnaut in the future you should consider wiring up a dedicated home button in the cable compartment. a modder here overhauled alot of TEs that way

#9

is there such a thing as a joy.cpl for a mac?

#10

That not the same. Walmart does not check shit. I bough Games at Walmart in the past and “Return” the game box with a AOL Trial disc in place of the game disc.
They employees are “Lazy” as they are paid less than McDonalds employees, because at McDonalds you atleast get a 20 cents raise after 6 months.

Amazon and Best Buy and other more respectable retailers do check to see if the product is in tact and if not you get no refund.
Also if you get caught with Amazon sending back a item in the mail for refund and its obvious you damaged it, you can be charged with Mail Fraud.

#11

Hey guys, so i wanted to say thanks for all your advice. I was able to locate the problem: I guess the VCC wire had gotten too close to the soldering iron and melted slightly on one side! Long story short, switching out the wire fixed the issue! The only problem I’m having now is I’d like to use the home button from the original pcb. Is there a way to just simply wire that to the HCF4 and call it a day? If its a big hassle, i’ll probably just put in an NPN transistor switch or something and turn the Select+Start buttons into a pseudo home button

#12

Its possible, just locate the Home button contacts, find the signal side of the contact and follow the trace till you find a nice point to solder.
For the ground side you can use one of the PCBs ground terminals. The one from the old USB connector should work fine.

#13

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1570228/turbo%20panel.PNG

#14

^^I always remove that screw near the Home button solder point. It gets in the way.