I was given a QuickShot 2 joystick (or Quickshot II, as they were called) from a guy off Facebook (hi, Steve). It needed a bit of attention and a little TLC, for sure. Nothing majorly wrong, apart from that it was in bits and the trigger wires had been snagged whilst re-assembling by the looks of it, resulting in them being chopped off in their prime.
I’d fixed a similar stick only months before and found that distinctly satisfying, as it had been sold as “not working” and was nice to get it back into play, all cleaned-up and responsive!
Surveying the Damage to the Quickshot 2 Joystick
So – what to do first? I think the usual: a good bath! As the stick was almost fully-dismantled anyway, it was just a case of removing the PCB from the bottom half to complete the work needed. Once I had all the plastic pieces, it was just a case of a bit soap and water and an old nailbrush I got one year from a Christmas cracker. After that, a final wipe-down with surgical spirit to make the pieces seem like new. Luckily none of the parts had been damaged, so they all came up nice.
Re-wiring the Quickshot 2 Joystick
Onwards to the wiring. Here I had a couple of problems: the cropped trigger wires and the wiring between the top and side trigger button PCBs. Whilst I could re-solder the connecting wires between triggers, I thought it best to replace them too. The wire used back then was pretty thin – most likely a cost-cutting exercise – and so easily prone to snapping if you exerted any sort of stress upon the board.
I had some 4-core stranded wire cable that I was going to use for the Atari composite mod boards originally before deciding to use solid core wire. The individual wires would be suitably flexible to allow me to work easily in the stick yet thicker than the original wires to provide a bit more robustness should I need it.
I cropped a length of cable, reserving the outer sleeving to use as cable tie material for my Atari Pico boards elsewhere. Luckily the wiring comes in four colours, two of which can be used as pretty much direct replacements for those within the stick. Ok, so the orange wire becomes red, but it works for me!
I was lucky in that the wires between the two trigger switches could be re-soldered onto their pads without me having to use new wire. The new wires were fed through the main board, up through the stick and soldered into place.
I had a bit of slack wire in my estimation, but decided not to crop it, but to simply wrap it inside of the stick.
Re-assembling the Quickshot 2 Joystick
Now came the tricky part: I had to wrangle the wires so that they did not impinge on the posts that poke through the stick handles for the screws. A little bit of fiddly work, assisted by the use of a bladed screwdriver to gently coerce the wires either side of the post as it was positioned on the main stick shaft.
All that remained was to fit the triggers together with the rod and spring and insert them into place at the top before adding the other half of the pistol grip.
An there it is! A nicely-working stick that can be repurposed now. Most likely bundled with one of my Atari Junior consoles to be sold on eBay!
