How To Turn Old Car Parts Into an Atari Controller

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By John Edgar Park
Posted 2012/06/21 @ 5:30 pm
Category Electronics, Home

Friend of Make: Jason Torchinsky hacked a vintage Oldsmobile seat control to work as an Atari joystick. He explains how to raid the junk yard and build your own using any of a variety of switches and buttons found in old cars.

As Jason says:

The idea came to me while adjusting the mirrors in a car, and realizing that the little mirror-control joystick was better than many video game joysticks I used. I then had a waking dream of the grand possibilities of playing old videogames with control pads sourced from cars. The dream was a beautiful, fantastical vision of a world we could all achieve. I woke up hours later behind a CVS, and headed straight to a junkyard to make this dream real.

Check out his Car Hacks post on Jalopnik for more info and a sweet video of Jason using it to play Ms. Pac Man.

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4 Responses to How To Turn Old Car Parts Into an Atari Controller

Pingback: Oldsmobile seat control can actually work as an Atari joystick | 1v8.net
Daniel on June 22nd, 2012 at 11:19 am said:

When doing this I would suggest taking the wiring harness with it, and then if you go to most parts stores they have Mitchell’s that can tell you what each wire does.

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cheap car shipping companies on July 1st, 2012 at 10:53 am said:

thanks for the information. After seeing this and reading this i can solve my car’s few problem my self.

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Paint and Body Repair Simi Valley on August 25th, 2012 at 12:03 am said:

Actually intelligent and hard working people are definitely done any difficult or impossible works, that’s why this particular mechanic is creating this new thing. Really lazy people are not imagine is that defecting old parts are uses other works or that’s repaired, but my thinking is always think positive and do positive then all works are definite run positive.

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