The Wico Boss joystick was one of many higher designs of the Eighties. Yours really had one, and put it by way of many brutal hours of Amiga-based gameplay. [Drygol] was just lately requested if he might alter a few of these sticks to be even clickier than inventory, and jumped at the change to do some modding.
[Drygol]’s thought was to swap out the unique microswitches within the sticks for keyboard switches as a substitute. Particularly, the thought was to make use of the Cherry MX Blues which have a very good click on to them. However this wasn’t simply going to be a straight swap. As a substitute, because the {hardware} was retro and preservation was desired, the modification needed to be reversible.
The outcome was a drop-in 3D-printed bracket that holds 4 Cherry switches across the joystick’s central bauble. Thus, when the stick is moved, it actuates the keyboard switches with a satisfying click on. A 12mm tactile swap was additionally put in within the base to be activated by the fireplace button. Then, it was a easy matter of tidying up a number of the sticks throughout reassembly and wiring up the unique cables to the brand new switches.
It’s a neat solution to give an old style digital joystick a brand new lease on life. This could be a very nice mod for tired sticks with worn out microswitches, too. Hilarious archaic advertising and marketing video after the break. They are surely whacko for Wico.
