For BOP_Boris and anyone else who is interested here are instructions. Because I can't take pictures of it the instructions are quite long and thorough and probably make it sound more complex than it really is.
First a repeat of the obligatory warning. These instructions are for information only and carry no guarantee. If you are rash enough to follow them you do so entirely at your own risk. If in the process you wreck your joystick and/or pedals it is your fault not mine. Needless to say following these instructions will void any warranty you may still have with
Saitek and whoever made your pedals.
I am not very knowledge about electronics so this may not be the only or best way of doing this. It is just the method that seemed simplest to me and offered the greatest chance of success and it does indeed work. If you know better please feel free to experiment and comment.
It is unfortunate that I don't have a digital camera as pictures would be much clearer than just discription. Hence if you are not already familiar with the internals of your joystick you will have to take it apart to make sense of what I am saying. Obviously if you are not willing to do this then it is pointless you reading any further anyway.
You will need at least one length of cable with at least three wires in it. I used cable that had eight wires of 1mm diameter. Two lengths of cable and a socket will enable you to disconnect the pedals from the throttle.
The inside of the throttle is full of wires and connections so be gentle and take your time. If you are an electronics wizz then you may be able to do this quickly, otherwise choose a time when you have a few hours spare. Also you have to take apart every bit of the throttle which involves removing a lot of screws. Put them somewhere safe in groups as you remove them as this will make it easier when you reassemble it.
Throughout the instructions when I say handle I mean the bit you hold with the buttons and rotaries on it, the base is the square box that sits on your desk and the lever is the bit that joins the handle to the base.
Firstly, how to dissasemble the throttle. Start by undoing the four allen-key headed screws in each corner, then turn it upside down and remove the four recessesed screws. The bottom half of the base should now lift off. Inside you will see the axle of the lever, a lot of wires and a circuit board. Note that a lot of the wires go through a hole in the axle. These lead up the lever into the handle. You need to poke a wire through here later.
Next look at the outside of the lever where you will see lots of screws in a plastic panel. The two at the bottom simply hold the panel on. The five in a circle at the top hold the handle on to the lever. Remove all of the screws starting with the two at the bottom. The handle should now fall away from the lever although it will still be attached via a bundle of wires. Poke your finger through the hole on the inside of the lever where the wires from the handle go and push off the plastic panel. You should see the wires from the handle running down inside the lever and going through the axle and out the hole you noted earlier into the base.
Now turn the handle over and you will see six screws that hold the two halves of the handle together. Undo all of these fully and remove. The two halves of the handle should now come apart. On my x45 this took a bit of wiggling and force. Proceed bearing in mind my warning at the beginning.
Saitek employees are keen on their glue guns and you may find that the two halves of the handle do not come apart very far. Be careful that you don't pull any wires trying manipulte the two halves.
Assuming that your handle is in two parts, look into the bottom half. You should see a circuit board with the end of the rocker switch poking through it and connecting to a slider pot. Rock the rocker to see how it works. You need to see and access the connections to the slider pot underneath the circuit board. Therefore undo all the screws holding it down and gently lift it up. Mine only moved about 2cm or less than an inch. You should see a set of solder joints in the following pattern.
lever *.....*.....* rotaries
end_ *...*..*...* end
The two pairs of solder blobs at each end just hold the slider pot onto the board, ignore these. The three in the middle are the connections to the pot. The connection closest to the rotaries is the 5v connection. You have to solder a wire onto to this connection. The one at the lever end is the 0v line and the one in the middle is the connection to the sliding part of the pot.
The 0v and slider connections are soldered to tracks that lead along the board to the lever end where they join two wires that lead to the base. You need to identify these two wires in the base as these are the two that need to be cut and recconnected to your pedals pot.
To follow these down, note what colour they are and also note which is which. IIRC the slider connection is the wire that comes off the very corner of the board and the 0v one is the wire next to it. Follow the tracks from the blobs of solder under the slider pot to check if possible.
Then look for wires of the same colour coming out of the axle in the base, there will be several of each colour. I then pulled gently on the each wire at the handle end while holding each correspondingly coloured wire in the base. When you have the right one you should feel and see it moving in the base as you pull on the other end. Through a process of trial and error you should be able to identify each wire.
As you will be cutting these wires later it is obviously essential that you are 100% certain that you have identified the right ones so check and recheck until you are sure. Once you have done so, mark them in some way, I did this by looping a twisty freezer bag wire clip around them.
As an additional check follow the wires to where they contect to the circuit board in the base. If you can see past the glue covering the board the 0v wire connection should be labelled P11 and the slider connection P4.
Now we can move on to the scary soldering and wire cutting stage.
Estimate how much of the cable sheaf you need to strip by holding the end at the rocker pot and running the cable along the route of the wires down the lever and into the base. You obviously don't have to poke it through the holes just do it roughly and then add on 3-4 inches to give yourself some slack.
Once you have stripped the cable decide which wires you are going to use for the 5v 0v and slider connections and cut off any extra wires.
Then take the wire you are going to attach to the 5v conncection and feed it up into the handle from the base. That is, poke it through the hole in the axle so that it cames out the bottom of the lever, then poke it through the hole in the top of the lever into the handle and underneath the rocker switch circuit board. Now you can estimate the length more accurately cut off the excess leaving enough slack to manipulate it when soldering and to accomodate movement.
You now need to strip the end of this wire and solder it to the 5v connection. This is the blob of solder closest to the rotaries (see diagram above).
I cannot reccomend strongly enough that you practise this with the soldering iron off before you do it for real especcially if you are not very experienced at soldering like me. I did it on a low table pressing the handle against my knees. My left hand had to hold the handle steady, pull the circuit board away from the handle, and hold the wire in place while my right hand had to manouver the soldering iron past several other wires and connections without burning them. This is the part of the mod which is most difficult and offers the greatest oppotunity for damaging your joystick so remember the six Ps and practice first.
Assuming that you have successfully done this then it is all downhill from here.
Next go back to the two wires in the base. Cut these midway between where they come out of the axle and where they connect to the circuit board in the base. This will make it easy to reconnect them if you want to reverse the mod. The ends that lead to the circuit board in the base should now be soldered to the other two wires in your cable. Obviously trim the cable wires to length first. The ends of the cut wires that lead up into the handle shoud remain unconnected. Cover the two joins with tabs of insulation tape.
You have now made all the alterations needed in the throttle circuit. To recap, what you should now see is one wire from your cable going up the lever and connected to the 5v connection on the rocker switch circuit board and two other wires from the cable connected to the ends of the cut wires that lead to the circuit board in the base. The ends of the cut wires coming from the rocker slider are not connected to anything and hence the rocker pot has been disconnected from the joystick circuit.
Now all you need to do is connect the other end of your cable to the pot in your pedals.
At first I thought that I could wire a fifteen pin connctor to the end of the cable and plug in the Elite pedals with the cable that was on them. However, when I opened them up up there is only the 5v and slider connections wired. I assume that the 0v connection is made in the joystick passthrough cable. Therefore I removed the original cable altogether.
To test the mod you don't need to solder the cable to the rudder pot. Just stip 1.5cm/.5inch of the wire ends and twist through the holes in the rudder pot connections. Make sure that the slider wire is connected to the middle connector of the pot and just connect the 0v and 5v wires to the pins each side; if they are the wrong way round the rudder input will be reversed, just swap them before you solder into place.
Now comes the moment of truth. Plug your joystick in and open up control panel. When you push the pedals your should see the rudder indicator move. You may need to recalibrate to get full movement and if the action is reversed just swap the 0v and 5v connections over at the rudder pot.
Assuming it works as it should you now just need to tidy it up and reassemble your throttle.
I cut a small hole in the edge of the top half of the throttle base about an inch away from the
Saitek cable for the cable to fit into. To prevent the cable being pulled out I used a cable tie pulled very tight around the cable on the inside of the box. I wired a seperate cable into the pedals and the two cables are joined by a 15 pin socket so that I can disconnect the pedals from my throttle. Obviously you don't need to use a 15 pin socket, anything with 3 pins or more will do.
To reassemble your throttle just reverse what you did to take it apart.
If anyone is desperate enough to try this I hope these instructions help. If you do go ahead please post how it goes.
good luck
bailout
[This message has been edited by bailout (edited 12-17-2002).]
[This message has been edited by bailout (edited 12-17-2002).]
[This message has been edited by bailout (edited 12-17-2002).]
I needed to recalibrate them but after that I get full rudder movement. The x45 doesn't know anything has changed and thinks that my pedals are the rocker switch. Hence my computer now sees the x45 + pedals as one unit.
