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The CD-i controller

Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2010 10:08 pm
by bacteria
I had played some Mario Hotel on my newly acquired Philips CD-i yesterday and was having fun on it, despite the lousy supplied controller. Then, the up on the d-pad seemed to stop working for no reason, so, thinking it might be a bit of grit or whatever, decided to open up the only CD-i controller I have; gingerly. The controller only has 4 screws however they are small hex type ones with a very small surface area, these are truly the screws from Hell! Used my Dremel to cut grooves into the two screws close to the surface to remove them with a normal flat screwdriver, but the other two were deep inside, so cut through thin and small pieces so could see what was inside, until managed to not only clear the screw area but the long plastic struts supporting them, to finally get to the controller board.

It isn't surprising it's too easy to press the wrong direction on the d-pad, the distance on the d-pad contacts are too large, so it's very easy for a different direction to be pressed. One other thing I noticed, was that the d-pad on the front of the controller indicates 8 way, in fact, it's only 4 way.

Ok, this confirms it, the CD-i will be my next console system i'll be modding! Judging by the size of the board potentially, it'll have to sit on top of a different CD system (like did with the GameCube and Amiga CD32); probably a DreamCast, not sure yet.

So, pics of the CD-i controller I was referring to:

Image

Image

Any idea, apart from dirt, why the controller would suddenly stop working on the "up" on the d-pad?

Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 7:40 am
by bacteria
Nope, seems fine. Am in the process of modding the CD-i, although in practice, doesn't seem much you can mod on the CD-i.

Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 8:18 am
by proxy10
oh,good luck ,dude

Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 10:06 am
by bacteria
Actually, made great progress. It is working and installed into a section for my Alpha Omega system - 17 original hardware console systems in one unit with one power cable, one controller for all and one SCART for video and audio output.

http://moddedbybacteria.freeforums.org/ ... tml#p23807

Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 8:58 am
by proxy10
ahh,good job,cheers

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 9:58 am
by proxy10
hmmm,few new vistors here
cheers