Hardware & Technical X52 Woes (technical)

Howe

Howe
Hello, in the apparent absence of a tech forum (please move me on if I'm wrong), I've come here seeking assistance.

The long and short of it is that the joystick component of my X52 keeps disconnecting from the throttle. Blinking off and recentring itself it whatever random position it comes back on in, necessitating yanking the cable out to reset it. I've had a look and the cable seems to be a fairly standard 6 pin mini-DIN. I've tried two other cables in the port; cable number 1 lit the joystick up nice and steadily but the joystick was dead, no control at all; cable number 2 behaved the same way as the original, blinking on and off, PLUS had no control.

I want a Warthog. I've wanted one for two years now, but I can't face spending nigh on 300 quid on a joystick a month before Christmas, so, I'm looking for options. As far as I can see it I've got three potential causes for my problem 1) three bad cables one after the other 2) Saitek use some kind of crossover in their cable rendering shop-bought ones useless 3) bad port on the joystick.

I can't be bothered trying to RMA the stick, I hear bad things about Saitek's customer service and I don't see any point in getting another joystick with equally shoddy components. So I'm going to do it myself. As it happens, I work in an AV company, so I have access to electronic testing equipment, soldering equipment, all the rest of it. I can take care of problems 1 and 2 myself, by belling out the cables, should there be a crossover I can re-terminate the cable to a better connector. However, this'll be for nothing if the port on the joystick's a pile of pony.

So, my question to you guys is; does anybody know if the connector port on the joystick is known to fail?
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Howe said:
Hello, in the apparent absence of a tech forum (please move me on if I'm wrong), I've come here seeking assistance.
Click to expand...

Click the "Forum" part of the breadcrumbs, and all the way at the bottom you will find The Hardware Forum.

The long and short of it is that the joystick component of my X52 keeps disconnecting from the throttle. Blinking off and recentring itself it whatever random position it comes back on in, necessitating yanking the cable out to reset it. I've had a look and the cable seems to be a fairly standard 6 pin mini-DIN. I've tried two other cables in the port; cable number 1 lit the joystick up nice and steadily but the joystick was dead, no control at all; cable number 2 behaved the same way as the original, blinking on and off, PLUS had no control.
Click to expand...
Sounds like the sockets are dud, possibly a broken solder joint. Since you have access to all the necessary tools, you can just open stick and throttle and try reflowing the joints on both sides, IIRC it's all readily accessible through-hole parts. A better connector wouldn't hurt though, those mini-DIN things are dank.

It's also faintly possible that you are running into the usual power supply issues or the fact that the stick hates USB3 ports with a fiery passion, those can make the whole thing blink like a broken cable.
 

Howe

Howe
Shadowdancer said:
Click the "Forum" part of the breadcrumbs, and all the way at the bottom you will find The Hardware Forum.
Click to expand...

Annoyingly, I found it almost as soon as I'd posted the thread. Typical, really.


Sounds like the sockets are dud, possibly a broken solder joint. Since you have access to all the necessary tools, you can just open stick and throttle and try reflowing the joints on both sides, IIRC it's all readily accessible through-hole parts. A better connector wouldn't hurt though, those mini-DIN things are dank.

It's also faintly possible that you are running into the usual power supply issues or the fact that the stick hates USB3 ports with a fiery passion, those can make the whole thing blink like a broken cable.
Click to expand...

It does rather, doesn't it? I don't think I've got the USB3 problem as it's only started doing this recently. For a while, with the same PC and using the same USB slot, it worked perfectly. God knows why they used mini-DIN, there's a USB on the end of the throttle cable, for goodness' sake, it's not like they didn't know they existed!
 

Turranius

Turranius
I can only pitch in with that the cable is a straight cable. I broke my cable but had a Male to Male keyboard cable (6 port) that I plugged in. It works fine.
 

Howe

Howe
Turranius said:
I can only pitch in with that the cable is a straight cable. I broke my cable but had a Male to Male keyboard cable (6 port) that I plugged in. It works fine.
Click to expand...

OK, guess I've got a bad connector, then. I was rather hoping for a crossover. Balls.
 

Kneejo

Kneejo
Howe said:
OK, guess I've got a bad connector, then. I was rather hoping for a crossover. Balls.
Click to expand...

RMA it. My x52 is 15 years old, and still works like a charm. Now this was before Mad Catz took Saitek over, so I got it when it was still quality, or so I hear. If you can find a second hand one from the era you'll probably find that the owner doesn't want to part with it :D
 

Howe

Howe
So last night I went home from work via Maplins to pick up an iron, for the benefit of those that haven't had one of these open before, I've taken a couple of pictures. After getting the joystick open, I had a look at the mini-DIN connector, below

20161107_170436.jpg

You'll see there's seven small wires heading off to the brown board at the top of the picture. Unscrewed and flipped over (the terminations are underneath) it looks like this:

20161107_170836.jpg

Green. The seven terminations are in the upper right of the board.

On both boards you can pretty clearly see the difference in soldering between the boards' manufacturers and whoever connected the wire. What you may not be able to see is pretty heavy solder corrosion (matte, fluffy looking stuff instead of nice, smooth, shiny solder, for the uninitiated) at the mini-DIN end. You might expect a bit of harmless dusting, but these looked like they had a fungal infection. Coupled with the obviously shoddy joints and it's pretty clear where the issue is. Re-soldering these connections has completely solved my problem. Played all last night without a single flicker or any other issue, the stick's like new.

It also looks like Saitek got footloose and fancy-free with the flux on my stick, there was brown all over the joints and board. Shouldn't cause too many problems but is indicative of sloppy work.

I wouldn't directly recommend anybody to do this if you're in your warranty period but, if you're out of it or don't care and you're halfway familiar with an iron, it's really not very difficult.
 
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Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
The wires are hand-soldered while the socket would be wave-soldered, that would explain the mass of flux on the wire joints. Matte joints used to indicate cold joints, but in the age of lead-free crap, who can really tell :( That silver stuff all looks like it was done by a child with a poker.

Glad you managed to fix your issue :)
 

Howe

Howe
Shadowdancer said:
The wires are hand-soldered while the socket would be wave-soldered, that would explain the mass of flux on the wire joints. Matte joints used to indicate cold joints, but in the age of lead-free crap, who can really tell :( That silver stuff all looks like it was done by a child with a poker.

Glad you managed to fix your issue :)
Click to expand...

Cheers, once I got it open the question stopped being "why isn't it working?" and quickly became "how the hell did this work in the first place?" I've seen better joints from week-old apprentices.
 
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