Fooxxed Joystick Diagonals Solution

[toxibunny]

one frequent problem GP32 owners have is the fact that it's very difficult to get the joystick to register diagonals.

I had this problem. top-left was impossible for me.

one fix is to pull the joystick out a bit. this works, but I found that if i was playing an intense game of llamatron i'd push it back in because i was trying to hard, and had to pause it every few levels to pull it out again. not ideal.

another fix suggested was take the back off your gp32 and put a little wad of paper behind the stick microswitches. well I didn't fancy *that*. (search for "ghetto joystick fix" or something to read the thread.)

my solution: it's a bit like the 'pull out the joystick' thing but with a couple of extras.

I completely pulled *off* my joystick, put a little bit of bluetac inside the shaft, and a tiny bit of paper, so a: it wouldn't travel back down, and b: it wouldn't stick.

but this still wan't satisfactory, so I *also* got a sharp blade and pared away the outside of the joystick shavt, so it had more travel. i shaved away the plastic evenly on all sides, but thinking about it now, maybe if i'd made the shaft an octaqonal shape it would have been better.

anyway, sorted! it's now a hell of a lot easier to find diagonals straight away, rather than having to look for them or not getting them at all.


beware of taking too much plastic off and weakening the stick too much, so if you do this it's at your own risk. but I took quite a bit off and it still seems solid.


i'm happy with my gp32 joystick now.

 

[Miner49er]

Hah! It's funny how people come up with the same ideas simultaneosly (how the f do you spell that!).

Yeah, I thought this would be a good idea, after I pulled the stick off competely and just prodded the bit that was left with my finger and I could get diagonals straight away!. so I figured that if I wittled the stick away (I used a file) the problem would go away. however, I have been a tad scared to overdo it, so i jsut did a little last night and maybe do some more tonight and see if the improvement is there.

The alternative to this of course, would be to open up the hole that the stick points out of, then there would be no risk of the stick breaking....

 

[Talyz]

There's instructions on how to mod your joystick, by putting a piece of paper behind it, somewhere in this forum. I've tried it, and it works great :lol: ! Had a problem with the upper-left too...
Just open up the GP32 by removing the back, then put a piece of paper sized as a peanut in the "hole" (you'll know what I mean) and fasten the back again. Easy, huh?

//Talyz Prower

 

[yaustar]

Can you post any pictures?

 

[Talyz]

I haven't got any but I found the original thread here (I think there's some pictures there)...

//Talyz Prower

 

[Racemaniac]

i think i'm just gonna enlarge the hole for the joystick a bit... that's the main problem...
paper behind the stick won't work, your solution might work, just making the hole a bit larger should also work
don't know how i'm gonna do it yet

 

[Miner49er]

Right, here goes....

I JUST TRIED THE PAPER TRICK AND IT DOES WORK!!!!!

...to a degree anway.

I was absolutly amazed it worked as I just couldn't see how, but it did...to a degree anway.

The problem is, as I probably stated before, that there is not enough room for the joystick to move so why the paper trick works (to a degree) I'm still not sure about. I THINK it's because it's pushing the entire board closer to the top part of the casing, thereby giving the joystick a bit of extra room for movement.

Anyway, I tried it, first with a small amount, then with too much then with just about the right amount and the stick no longer wobbles in that horrible way it used to. TOP TIP: Use a small amount a blu-tac to hold it in place to the bottom part of teh case.

However, it was not perfect, it all worked fine except Up/Right, it's very noticable how little space there is in that direction compared to the rest. So I shaved a small amount of the side of the joystick with my file. It now works _perfectly_.

Still, it's a dangerous operation , filling your GP joystick, So I would do that as a last resort. It would be better making the hold bigger, but that would mean taking the board away from the top half of the case to do it properly.

The paper trick is definatly worth doing though, it makes my GP just feel a whole lot better!!!

This is like having a speccy again, with little bit's of paper and blu-tac keeping it all together! FANTASTIC STUFF!!!!!!!!

I apolgise for shouting....

Miner

 

[Ringo]

paper behind the stick won't work, your solution might work, just making the hole a bit larger should also work
don't know how i'm gonna do it yet

​

The paper-trick works perfectly for me... And I've had that fix ever since it was surggested first time around...

Don't really see anything "ghetto" about it

That solution doesn't work on my parents GP32 though - I'm puzling with the idea of replacing stick entirely with a traditional pad of some sort, for that one...

As it is now, their Gamepark is completely useless...

 

[Talyz]

Oh, remember to use some paper form a shoe-box or someting. NOT from a newspaper!
I guess the efficiency (spelling?) of the "mod" depends on how damaged the GP32 was...


//Talyz Prower

 

[jmetal88]

I see more people have found my joystick fix.... hmm... I hadn't though of those other ways, though. Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, my wad of paper was notebook paper. And also, the GP32 I used it on was so damaged, that the only direction I could push was up, and that was all (that was my first, not lit GP32 that I got from ebay). I had to put in so much paper before it would work that I could barely screw my case shut. By all means, don't ever use that much, if possible.

 

[frolik]

I did the paper trick when it was discovered and worked good to start with but now it's not working so good again, I've tried putting new paper in and the back of the case, on the sphere sticking out, has cracked from the stress....

Strangely enough, yesterday I started filing down the underside of my D-pad, before I even read this thread :huh: but all that I got is the direction I filed now has a kind of "dead" area that doesn't move up or left... bollocks

 

[DemonStar55]

I think I'll try taht I guess or jsut put somethign in the part the shaft goes on in the joy stick

my meathod was using Tac it because and doing the ghetto meathod it worked but it doesn't work too well need to make it a bit bigger everytime

 

[Reesy]

I had a problem with the joystick on my NLU. I used the paper method and cracked my case as well. In the end I found another good way to fix it.

The joystick problem is caused by the white joystick housing not being connected to the main board correctly. The paper method fixes this by forcing the white joystick housing hard against the main board but there is another way to achieve this.

In order to fix it you will to full dismantle your gp32 ( which I think is a problem on the FLU ) because you need to see the other side of the mainboard and not just the back. If you look at how the joystick housing in connected to the main board you will notice it has 4 legs that are inserted though the main board, these legs are then melted the other side of the main board to keep them in place.

I fixed my joystick problem by getting a hot soldering iron, and while pushing really hard on the joystick housing on the other side of the main board I gently re-melted the ends of the joystick housing legs. This held the joystick housing tighter to the main board and fixed my joystick diagonals problems.

Reesy

 

[0-bake]

yes, i tried to discribe that in another topic as well.
but m prob was that the white box was correctly placed on the board, so i had to take it off and lower the distance from the stick to the microswitches.

it's really hard to discribe, i wish, i had made photos of it, but it was in the first days, i owned my gp32 and i couldn't imagine that more people had those problems.

if someone can't solve the problem with the method reesy mentioned, you have to take off the white box and then you'll se the controller stick with a cross at the end. the endings of the cross supposed to turn against the microswitches backwards.
so ou have to stick something on those cross-endings. i used a plastic layer from a file. i think, you have to try, how thick the layer has to be.

at first, i used nail varnish from my girlfriend, because i thought that i can increase thickness step by step, but the varnish went off and i had to find something else....


i really don't know, why the gp32 hasn't have an ordinry dpad, like the gba has. nobody would have had any problems and it was cheaper as well...

 

[Blah]

It makes me so mad when people dis the d-stick! :angry: