Chaos Control

Let me start by saying I was entertained by the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy film. I do hope that it doesn't become more well-known than the books, because to be fair it does cut out a lot of parts of it unnecessarily - some lines are recognisable at first, then give up before they reach the end. However, I think it's safe to say that I think the fact that it's unlike the books will be common knowledge, and hopefully this will even increase their popularity.

I played DDR for the first time in ages last night after meeting at the cinema. The trouble is that since the last time I was in the Union, Andy and one of his friends "Nade" have got on to the high scores ahead of me. Apparently Nade is in the DDR UK team, of which I wasn't actually aware. I'm fairly certain that Andy's own scores were just put in in his name - nevertheless, the gauntlet has been thrown down. Or maybe some sort of iron boot, in this case.

On coming back to my room this morning I decided to do something about my USB adaptor - I noticed something was up with it yesterday, when one of the buttons was being detected as continually held down. By this afternoon, the infection had spread to two other buttons as well, and it was definitely a controller problem rather than the adaptor because my dance pad other controller still worked fine. So being adventurous and foolish, I decided to open it up and have a look.

I think that too many people are scared of opening things up to see inside them - I found the layout of the controller fairly simple to understand, and as long as you can put everything back together without parts left over when you're finished I think there's little chance of causing irreparable damage.

The buttons are held in place on the inside of the casing, and have rubber pads to cushion them against the inner case. I was rather intrigued that the three central buttons (Start, Select, Analog) are in fact one large piece of moulded rubber. These rubber pads also have hard plastic discs on them to press against what I can only assume is the pressure sensitive film on the white inside of the controller.

It seems to me that this film is the problem - I was hoping that it was something physical like the buttons being stuck down, but they kept registering even when the case was off. (Yes, I did unplug it while working on it.) Interestingly, the remaining working button would only register through pressing against the rubber pads placed on top of the film, and not through pushing anything else on the film itself. I can't see anything else obvious that's keeping the three buttons held down, so unfortunately it looks like it's probably time to buy a new controller unless anyone has any other suggestions.

Now for putting it back together...

Note 1: I found that when reassembling it, it's easier to hold it flat or even upside down so that the shoulder buttons stay out of the way - it's quite awkward to slide the pads and film back in to the shoulders in two places at once otherwise. It's also easier to lay the white frame on the back of the controller then put the front on top of it rather than put the buttons through the front first and try and put the back on behind them. You can even leave the shoulder buttons until last and pop them through the case afterwards, but I don't think that did them much good.

Note 2: Come to think of it, it's probably easier not to do any of this at all.