CreepingNet's World

Creating a Gamepad for the Tandy 1000

One controller I love to use with my vintage PCs is a gamepad. I particularly like it for games like schmups, side scrollers, and RPGs with a menu-driven system. I also see these older Tandy's as an excellent platform for possibly porting over some NES, Sega, and other games over to it, or making new games in that kind of style (I think a Dragon Quest style RPG on the 1000 would kick ass! Even if it was just a port of the original Dragon Warrior for the NES).

So in 2023, I started down the path of designing a PCB and a game controller for the Tandy 1000 that's a regular, digital gamepad, in similar style to the 8-bit NES. My idea is a 2-button gamepad stylized to match the Tandy 1000 in style, particularly the very early models.

Design Mockup

My basic idea is a 2 button 4 axis gamepad based loosely on the NES Game controller design, but with some ergonomics built in. instead, I'm copying the rounded "bezeled" look a lot of the Tandy Products of the time had. This makes the controller look more like a Tandy 1000 related accessory, than like someone's attempt to convert a NES gamepad to a Tandy 1000. This is also pretty easily doable.

Schematic

The Schematic basically takes the X/Y axis and converts it into on/off pulses for each side of the pot using a CD4066 CMOS 4-Switch module (something I already have around). The idea is to make it more like an actual game console controller, which is something a lot of games on Tandy might benefit from, such as Zeliard or Thexder.

PCB Design