These are the joysticks of my childhood! Even if newer ones are cheap, I’d like to re-use those. Just because… (Besides, otherwise, what’s the point of having kept them in a box for 40 years! :)

I have 2 of them. One is basically working (as I already took parts from the other one to keep that one in condition – did that when I was a teenager). The other one is in poor condition:

Problem 1: flaky contacts

Sometimes, the directional control does not seem to work…

As you can see, the contacts are a bit dirty…

TODO: Clean with alcohol first. If not sufficient, try contact spray.

Problem 2: fire buttons don’t fire at all

First, the contact system SVI used for fire buttons is even worse than for the directions:

There are little metals caps affixed with plastic tape. I already removed one cap on the photo. The photo is a bity blurry (sorry) but those contacts are also slightly oxydized and will also be cleaned.

But there’s more:

Good triggers (bottom left) vs broken triggers '(top right)

Here you can see the red trigger buttons from the working joystick (left) next to the ones from the faulty one (right).

See any difference?

It’s very tiny…

There are very small pins that are there to press on the metal contacts. They are barely over a millimeter long and wide. In the non functioning joystick, both of those broke off.

These look like stress concentrators that were deliberately designed to break after some time… :/

Potential solution: 3D print fire button extensions to replace the broken pins.

So I took measurements: