I've got a couple of 90's-vintage gameport HOTAS setups moldering away in the box where they've been sitting for the past 10+ years since I stopped playing flight sims, and I'm starting to toy with the idea of rebuilding them using one of the Bodnar boards for easy USB compatibility. One is the old Suncom F-15 Talon, and the other is the venerable TM F22 stick and F16 TQS system.

I'm no electrician, but I figure (perhaps foolishly) that it might not be that tough to just clip the wires coming off of the buttons and pots, and re-route them to a Bodnar board that then plugs into the PC via USB. I know that I would lose the fancy programming (really enjoyed the Stickworks digital upgrade chip and the James Hallows programming software back in the day), but I figure that there must be some sort of 3rd-party generic joystick/macro re-mapping software out there.

Is this project worth doing, or is there more to it than meets the eye? I always loved the feel of the Suncom and TM stuff, and just can't bring myself to buy one of the alien-looking Saitek options. And, after all of the expensive quality issues that I heard about with the Cougar, I'm very hesitant to drop several hundred dollars on the new A-10 HOTAS (especially if I can save that money by re-wiring my existing sticks).

Any thoughts or ideas? I've seen a few posts here and on other boards pointing to an X-Plane thread with a guy who completely re-engineered the Suncom stuff, and while that seems very cool, it's also much further than I'm willing to go for now. I'm just looking to spend a few bucks and a couple of hours to essentially replace the existing circuits with the Bodnar stuff, unless someone tells me I'm crazy to even try. Thanks for any help!

Perfectly easy to do (although it might take more than a few hours; I've never done it). Conceptually the process is simple, as you've described. You do lose your programming.

Given the impending release of the HOTAS Warthog, it may be best to just wait for the flood of information that is sure to come as people get them in their hands. Although I have never seen the inside of one, I suspect that the work quality is a step up from the Cougar.

Wiring an old joystick really is easy using the LeoBodnar boards (I have two BU836X boards in my simpit). If you have the old resisor style pots you may need to swap them out for three contact (positive, negitive and wiper) types but most of them had the newer pots anyway. There are several threads in the Simpit area that deal with this exact project. You might check them out.

Here is a thread on an update and hall sensor modification of the F-15 Suncom in the pit builders area:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2706511/Suncom_F15_BU0836_HALL_Sensor.html#Post2706511

Great, thanks for the info! It probably does make sense to wait for the TM A-10 stick and see how the reviews are, but I think this might be a fun project to take on just for tinkering to see how it goes. It sure would be nice to be able to breathe some new life into that old hardware that I enjoyed using back in the day.

I'm really impressed with what some of the guys in the Simpit area have come up with. I just finished the first 'draft' of my racing pit, built on the same control-relationship dimensions as my 944 racecar, and might have to put some thought into making it flight-sim usable as well, based on some of the ideas I've seen in that area.