Showing posts with label Cynthcart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cynthcart. Show all posts

Saturday, April 12, 2014

DIY Commodore 64 (C64) Paddle for Cynthcart

If you have Cynthcart, you may not know that a `paddle` enables you to control filter cutoff and assign another control on two knobs.  There are a number of tutorials on this, but most of them are very convoluted with errors. So, here we go:

You Need:
  • 2 x 240k LOGARHYTHMIC potentiometers*
  • 9-Pin cable (female connector)**
  • Enclosure
  • Wires
  • Soldering Iron/Solder
  • Multimeter

First identify the wires that are connected to the female connector. You can do this using a multimeter and a wire placed in the relevent holes. The holes you need to hook up are: Pot1, Pot2 and +5v.



This site explains the pinouts http://old.pinouts.ru/Inputs/ControlPortC64_pinout.shtml

Now, solder the wires to the potentiometers making sure there with be enough slack to fit them into the enclosure. Both get Pot1/2 and the +5v.





Once they`re soldered, get the enclosure drilled with two holes. I used an old joystick base for my enclosure (It looks like a robots face!)



Attach the pots to the enclosure, close it and put the caps on. Test it, then you`re done!




*with 480k I found they only have an effect for 50% of rotation.
**make sure you have a connector that features the correct pins - the one in the picture is from a C64 joystick and doesn`t have pins for the paddle controls.