How I Repaired My Faulty MS Wired Controllers

[xman]

I have miles of faulty MS controllers and had a marathon controller repair day last weekend and all but one was able to be repaired exactly as shown here. They all but one had a faulty lead right at the back of the controller itself shown here where the bend is in the cable..

I took the controller cover off like this..

Cut this piece out of the cable, the faulty part of the wiring..

Stripped the insulation off the remaining controller's wiring harness..

Stripped the insulation off the cable..

Undo the wire mess surrounding the inner wires and twist it together to form one..

Shove the cable through the game port like this..

And solder all the matching coloured wires up and cover with heatshrink so it looks like this.

(Note: the yellow wire isn't connected). I left it unconnected because it isn't needed and I want to use it for another button I add to the controllers at a later stage so I can have a switch on the controller to turn the machine itself on and off, I just don't have the suitable switches yet but will come back to that when I do.
The finished controller after the wiring repair. The ferrite's lump in the cable is a perfect size to wedge into the unused game save port. It squeezes in nicely and won't fall out so it is now holding the cables from being ripped out of the controller.

You could quite easily hotglue this in place but I doubt this is really necessary plus I want to go back in the controllers and hook up that On OFF switch when they arrive.
I hope this is helpful to someone to keep there original and best MS controllers alive.

[fxmech]

100% of dead Xbox controllers I have are the same, undoubtedly from people wrapping the cord behind the controller. My personal controllers never fail just by wrapping the cable over the front of the controller first, putting way less stress on the boot where the cable meets the controller.

[blighty]

I always wrap mine around the front too as it seems to do no harm to them. I always chop the white connector apart with side cutters and unsolder all the parts then re-solder the wires into the holes

Way more of my pads have cracked circuit boards then broken wires, had a couple with collapsed thumb sticks too.

[hawsey]

Different xbox I know but hopefully someone can help .
I was called on tonight by an elderly neighbour who has her great grandson living with her .
She was in a state as his xbox 360 had stopped working completely with a red light on the power brick .
I traced the fault to I think a short on the charger cable to the wireless controller so I fixed that by cutting back and crimping the wires together and making good ( not pretty but it works)

My question is that the wireless controllers had normal AA or LR6 batteries in not rechargeables which I thought they would have !! Is this right ? A rumage around a box of misc stuff they had and I also found what looks like a sealed rechargeable pack for the same controllers .
Any ideas
Cheers

[asbo]

yes they should be rechargeable as I'm fairly sure it won't know the difference and try to charge non-rechargables, and that will likely make a mess!
I expect someone took the battery pack out as it had died or they didn't realise it just needed recharging and bunged in whatever batteries they had laying around.

[hawsey]

Thanks , no there are two packs a one that two AA batteries fit in to and another that is a self contained rechargeable battery , I think rechargeables should be in that too but not sure ...

[asbo]

If the controller is being plugged in the batteries should be rechargeable. You can use non-rechargeables if you're not plugging it in but the batteries will leak and other unpleasant things might happen if you plug the controller in. I'm fairly sure a controller will work without batteries if its plugged in so it'd be better to do that if no rechargeable batteries are available.

If a mod could move this little discussion into a new thread that'd be great as I think we're ruining xmans tutorial!

[hawsey]

Sorry you are right i should have started a new thread .Cheers that is what I thought there was a box of partially leaking batteries which I made them throw out , thanks .

[hawsey]

So back to xmans thread , I have two controllers that I do this with !! So should I be wrapping them over the top towards myself rather than underneath to minimise damage ?