Controllers... lots of them.

[level42]

...which showed how bad it was

What failed on mine was the white inside of the stick, the ring at the bottom. Apparantly, Atari made an improved version of it later (pretty late apparantly):

http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/joystick.htm#Atari%20CX40%20Joystick%20Users!

This company is THE source for any Atari home products parts. I remember they were already around in the 80's.

Also fun to see they also sell improved PCB's for the dome contacts.

Yes the rubber cover also tore, but I didn't care because that didn't influence game play. I never knew those repair kits were around then. Or I simply had had it with the original Atari stick.

It was not the greatest BUT there were MUCH MUCH worse sticks around. I remember playing this POS:


Maybe this was another reason why I steered away from Commodore. If you EVER tried it for a few seconds you know how terrible it is.
The triangular stick was already completely wrong in the hands. But then, when you tried to actually move it, it seemed like it was welded down to the base. OK I like short throw, but this was impossible to move at all. Well almost A nightmare. And the button....it was very hard to reach, the shape was all wrong and again impossible to operate with human hands.

I wonder what kind of person was responsible for creating some crap like that.....did they actually ever try it ?!?!

[Etienne MacGyver]

It was not the greatest BUT there were MUCH MUCH worse sticks around. I remember playing this POS:

Looks like a commodore joystick to me that they sometimes sold with the C64 IRC..

EDIT:
forget what i said, i did not read under the picture of your post andre..  

And yes, it is a piece of crap

[Etienne MacGyver]

Funny to see though that there was indeed a stick with "autofire"



Click the pic for the source.

[Laschek]

I actually liked the original Atari CX40 joystick very much, it's still my favourite joystick of all times. Maybe just because it was my first, who knows. As everyone I managed to break mine too, and I think I even bought one of those repair kits.
When I bought my first C64 I also got me one of the original leafswitch Competition Pro's which I still have and of course it still works perfectly.  

[level42]

HAHA !!!

During my "attic evacuation" I just found back my micro-switch Suzo joystick:


(Sorry no time to clean it).

I think it's safe enough to say that the one's with the black handle and two buttons are the extremely rare all-leaf one's and the one's with the red handles are the one's with micro-switches for the handle and leafs for the buttons.


Now, as you may remember I was a bit surprised about Etienne's version of it. Something in my mind said that that was not what I remembered from a Suzo Microswitch joystick. In all honesty, it looked.....mmmm, not the Suzo quality I was used to. So I even suspected it of being a bootleg....

Now, I saw one like Etienne's at the retro computer fair last sunday, and noticed that there are three small screws on the bottom. That's different because both versions I have have four larger screws:


(if you watch closely, you can find out where I spend the first 20 years of my life !!! . This is funny, I am 100% positive that this is the underside of my all-leaf stick. I transplanted it because of the missing rubber foot).

So, I of course had to open it up to see if I was getting really old already, or that my memory was still fine:


YES ! THAT is the micro-switch Suzo I've always remembered. Like a proper arcade stick. Look at those micro-switches, SWISS MADE ! Nothing but quality here. And of course still the leaf buttons exactly like the one's on the all-leaf version.

I'm pretty sure that these two versions were produced in Rotterdam.

And then.....I guess that then happened to what seems to happen with all great products. They follow the path that leads to darkness !

Very likely some f-ing management dodo figured out they could:
a) earn more money or
b) lower the selling price to "beat" the competition

by reducing the quality and coming up with the PCB version, with the el-cheapo (looking) micro-switches and "fake" leafs).
I'm also pretty sure they moved production to the far-east by then...

ORRRRRRRR......it's not a real Suzo. I still leave this option open...we all know how it works in China.... but the S.T.C. Rotterdam is pretty much a watermark, it is also used on the professional joysticks....

I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad stick, but I do have the feeling (and it actually also feels like) the least of the series....

So, apart from this two button version, there is of course also the single button version. AFAIK this has the same set-up as the red-top micro-switch version. They do differ in button set-up though. Some have leafs, some micro-switches.


Ahhhhhhh, now I can rest


(Etienne, you MUST try the one's I have when you drop off the samples   )

[level42]

FLASH...and suddenly I realise:



SOOOO, because I changed the bottoms of the sticks, that little date sticker is NOT correct for the leaf stick !!! I already thought we had the 2600 much earlier than 1984 !!!

Hahaha....mmm, now I have to open the other one again to see if that has any date mark...

[level42]

....nope nothing.....My estimate would be 1981/1982 something like that...


By the way, I thought up a great name for the all-black, al-leaf Suzo Competition Pro.

For it is fierce. It is relentless. It is bold. It scares it's enemies. It demands respect. It is deadly precise and has no scruples for it's victims: it is:

the Suzo DARTH VADER !


(Also matches nicely with a 2600 Darth Vader )


But.....I hear you ask.....does the saga end here ? Is this all  there is ......well.....let's say that (another analogy with SW): They tried once more, many many years later. With new technology. And although it looked the same....it really wasn't......

[level42]

....because many, many years later, it was already the next millenium, a daring company had a great idea:

How about releasing a Suzo joystick that can connect to a computer ?



This way we can play MAME, and all those other great emulators in the way they were meant to be played !


Excellent idea !

However......between idea and final product, somethings went wrong....

Here are the original and the re-release:






Uh-oh, made in China....well OK, there's plenty of good stuff coming from there......but not this


They look very much alike. Of course we see the obvious extra buttons. But the trained eye sees the flatter large buttons. It sees the structured ball-handle which was smooth (what else do you want in your hands?) on the original. It also sees that they didn't use the old molds. Some dimensions are JUST off.

The buttons: they look alike enough....the new one slightly flatter, not an improvement, but that's not the biggest issue:


Original: when you push on the side. It only slightly tilts and it actives the switch.


Repro: when you push on the side, the button tilts greatly but the worst thing is that it DOESN'T activate the micro-switch ! You have to press EXACTLY in the middle to use it....it feels worse than it looks...


The whole button seems to "float" on the small micro-switch top...ugh... it is by far the worst part about this stick.

But it doesn't stop there...

[level42]

So, let's see what's inside:


Hooray, we have the "old" micro-swtich set-up back. Of course I would have prefered leafs, but OK, a good micro-switch is OK too.



But that's where it fails again. Cheap, clunky feeling, noisy micro-switches, never heard of that brand (LEMA in Dutch it sounds like LAME-a ):


Also note that they saved a screw. They actually mounted it with one screw !

But it's not only the switches...there is something else that makes it feel very bad....but I never understood what it was until now: They forgot to put in a rubber !!!! On the original, the motion is dampened with a rubber collar somewhere up the shaft. They forgot about it on the new one !!! This makes it feel VERY clunky. The only response you feel is from the (high resistance) microswitch, and then it hits the micro-switch casing very hard ! "DONK"...ugghhh...



Anyway, I made a little video to show the differences:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1vGjgoscsU

If you take what you see and triple it you know how it feels....

The only good thing about this stick is indeed the USB connection. The best idea: take it out and move it to a real Suzo !!!

[Etienne MacGyver]

Well, i enjoyed reading all of it, and i need to say, now i see the inside of your stick, i agree with the statement that "my" Suzo is the worst in rank

the cost saving theory is the winner i think, it is defenetly constructed cheap.
Now i maybe understand why i liked the speedking sometimes better than the suzo.
But it was still a very playable stick imho

and i need to say that the "button" with the microswich (found in the one that chris describes) felt way better than my (shitty fake) leaf buttons

[level42]

You're going to love the all-leaf

[Q*ris]

I just found out that there's a USB adapter on the market:

I should try to get that to bring my good ol' back to life...

Thanks a lot for all the info by the way guys.  

[level42]

Wahahaha.....well I'm still surprised that there's not _that_ mutch info about the Suzo's on the net.

I think that's mainly because these sticks never were very popular in the US or maybe not even sold there ?

It's about the same for arcade sticks, when I was still heavy into the MAME "scene" I noticed that the Suzo's weren't very much loved over there. Thought my local brand deserved a little more attention.

But these small details really make or break a control IMHO...

That's a nice interface. I could take out that tiny PCB of that Speedlink stick and make a box like that...mmmm not a bad idea The RS-232 plug is not really ideal for the rubbery Atari connectors though but I can imagine that it's pretty hard to find the "real" connectors for it....

[Etienne MacGyver]

i do know that its model is famous enough that they used it as housing for the C64 DVT..



dont have time to open it up now, so some  pics from the net need to do it for now:

http://www.google.nl/images?hl=nl&xhr=t&q=c64+dtv&cp=5&wrapid=tljp129956333821308&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1362&bih=562

and after reading this :

http://jledger.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=dtvhacking&action=display&thread=1645

I feel the need to start modding again 

[Belike]

Here is a pic from my collection, please let me know, if you want me to open some of them