 Controllers break and for some people they break often, but just buy a new one, right? Wrong! Even without getting all preachy about e-waste and toxic chemicals, landfills, yada, yada, yada. Controllers can be expensive, difficult to replace or both. So repairing broken ones makes a ton of sense. Microsoft recently confirmed the alleged shortage of current generation Xbox wireless controllers that's been driving up prices and the ongoing retro gaming craze has resulted in skyrocketing demand for older controllers that simply aren't being manufactured at all anymore, with more and more of them dying each year. The good news is that we have the solution. That's right, it's good old right to repair, back to save the day once again. In most parts of the world, replacement components for popular game controllers are pretty easy to come by. So we asked our staff to bring in their precious broken hardware for us to take a look at. That's right, whoop, here it is. The doctor is in! So let's get started. Oh my god! I'm gonna need some help. From our sponsor, AMD. If you're looking to upgrade or build a new gaming PC, the Game on AMD sales event is on now until August 5th, where you can get the best deals on AMD Ryzen and Radeon products. Learn more today at the link down below. Depending on the model of the controller and the particular problem, a repair job can be anywhere from dead simple to absolutely nightmarish. And while I suspect that everything we look at today is going to be on the easier end of the spectrum, you never know when you're going to crack open a Wiimote and find that many of the PCB traces have been corroded away by battery shmoo. This has no internal battery, meaning it should be a relatively easy one. We're gonna start here. The Super Nintendo was my childhood, so it would warm my heart to keep David's busted controller out of the landfill. His problem is apparently both a broken start and select button. Let's get this baby cracked open. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. Wow, that's some 1990s PCB right there. David didn't even say that he had a broken right shoulder button. Well, if it's not bothering him, guess it doesn't bother me. Cable replacement seems to be a relatively simple operation. This gives us a really good look at the internals of the controller. It's very simple. All membranes, just like with the cheap keyboard. So it works with this rubber nipple here that has a conductive material on the bottom of it that just connects two traces closing a circuit, sending a signal to the connected device. There are no joysticks, which means we have none of the cost or complexity that accompany those. The main points of failure then are either cracked nipples, which these all seem to be fine, or dirty contact points or dirty nipples, which prevent the circuit from being closed. So it's actually likely that a controller of this style can be repaired simply by cleaning it. Why don't we start with that? Obviously, the start and select are the problem and wow, this is dirty. I don't know. Oh, I'm getting a bit of a spill vibe here. You can see whatever it was seeped through the start and select, through the membrane here, through the hole and around it and oh, that's kind of oily. Yeah, it's all over the board. This is as gross as it is. It's actually good news because it means it's very likely that this fixes as simple as just, eww, grabbing a Q-tip, spraying some alcohol on it and giving this a wipe down. Blech, blech, blech. Fumigate this thing. Since we're already in here, we're going to use a smooth motion to clean off the bottoms of these other contact pads. We're pretty lucky the originals are in good condition because while we did prepare by picking up a whole set of replacement membranes off of MORTAUF games, honestly, they just do not feel as good as the originals even though the originals are over 25 years old at this point. And it gets a lot worse than these. Like if you pick up random ones on Amazon, there's a good chance they're going to feel pretty awful compared to the originals. Let's go ahead and put this back on then. If the shoulder's not bothering David, I guess it's not really my place to say that it's a problem, right? Can I steal one from another controller? Yeah, absolutely. All right, cool. Okay, perfect. So we're in pretty okay shape. It's test time. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Well, it still works. Well, start works. All buttons are working. David, you're welcome. Your controller is saved. Our next victim, this GameCube controller, comes courtesy of our former editor, Taron, in it. Presumably, thanks to his Spider-Man 2 speedrun hobby, has a banged up C-stick nub and a flaccid joystick that we need to get returns to its proper erect state. Unfortunately, while the GameCube has great joysticks, it's nearly impossible to repair the internals of the stick box. So when they break, they must be replaced. There are three main types of stick boxes that you might find in your controller. And depending on the version you have, the job of desoldering them could be a little more difficult. This metal cover here means that ours is either a first or second generation unit. So it means that heat will spread away faster from the soldering iron. The good news is that generations one and two are interoperable. So that gives us a few more options for sourcing or replacement. The bad news is that while there are lots of new stick boxes available on Amazon, AliExpress and eBay, they will likely make your precious first party controller feel like an off-brand like Circa or Old School. And those can be had for about $10 brand new. So the easiest way to obtain a good replacement is by salvaging one from another GameCube controller or a Wii accessory like the Nunchuck. Though it should be noted I'm using the term easiest rather loosely here. The GameCube controller is a much more involved teardown than the SNES controller, starting with Nintendo's trademark tri-wing screws. You will need an iFixit kit or similar in order to get these puppies out. And ending with the desoldering that we're going to have to do to get our donor joystick and C-stick out of this bad boy. Off comes the joystick cover on the C-stick. We're going to hold on to that for Taron's controller for later. Now to get the C-stick out. On some versions this is soldered, but conveniently on ours it's a socketed plug so we can just pop this off. And out comes the soldering iron. That's it for our donor controller for now, but we're going to hold on to it for when we inevitably need that second joystick down the road. Our second operation here is to replace the stick covers. And here again we could just purchase new ones online. But again many of the cheap options online don't quite measure up to the originals. And our customer is particular. Thankfully our broken controller happens to have all the right working parts to fill in the less working parts of Taron's. Now to open up Taron's controller. And this time we need to go deeper into our disassembly of the rumble pack by fully desoldering it. This is going to give us the access we need to the back of the stick box. And once again it looks like this controller has been spilled down. Check this out. We've got the stick box out and this thing looks freaking rusty. What is even going on here? Ultimately that's probably not what made it loose like this, but it certainly didn't help. Taron's C-stick box is in acceptable condition so all we need to do is put the new cover on top of it, reassemble, and it's time to test. And woohoo! It's not brand new type but hey it didn't come from a brand new controller so what do you want? Gamecube controllers, particularly the joysticks, are a rabbit hole and a half to go down. So in the interest of time I would suggest that instead of listening to me talk about it you check out places like SSBWiki, GC Controller Library, or pretty much anywhere that Smash Bros players tend to congregate. Let's do something a little easier next. Where'd it go? Ah here it is. This PlayStation 3 controller is from our cameraman Andy. Hi Andy. It still works perfectly fine except... Whoops. The built-in lithium battery is toast. One solution that I pitched to him would be to switch over to Xbox like a proper Chad. But Andy didn't have any of that so I guess we'll replace this battery for him. Replacing a battery is mostly painless when the controller is easy to open and this one is. Just unscrew the back, Phillips head screws, huh thank you Sony, and lift forward toward the trigger buttons. If your L2 and R2 fall out put them back on right away and make sure the little spring is on the inside of the trigger. Otherwise you're gonna have a pretty sloppy trigger. Now it's time to unplug the battery. It might be a little tight but if you use a pointy plastic tool like this you'll be able to get a little bit more leverage and you should be able to push it out if you keep trying. Now one of the challenges when it comes to replacing batteries, well in any device not just a PS3 controller, is that due to a lack of right to repair legislation, official first-party replacements either do not exist or they're not sold for very long. And it's a long way down the road that usually is when we need these things. Purchasing third-party batteries is absolutely an option but it can be a gamble since shady sellers can claim that a battery holds far more charge than it actually does. And in an even worse case they might make mistakes in the production of the product. For example it's pretty common with the PS3 to have the polarity flipped on the battery. So make sure that the black wire is actually going to ground to avoid frying your controller or potentially turning the battery pack into a pretty spicy pillow. When you insert the battery make sure the black and red wires are on the same side of the connector groove. We'd recommend taping down the battery at this stage. Then once you've got the shell back together you're going to want to make sure that your triggers and your shoulder buttons are working correctly before you screw it back together. So Andy your controller is restored to battery life. Wow I can play GTA 5. Here you go. Next up we've got what I'm going to call the little brother special. It's a rock candy controller from PDP for the Xbox 360. I have no idea why this holds such a special place in Alex's heart but it does. And given that Xbox 360 controllers have been getting much more difficult to come by lately. I feel it would be a service to the gaming community overall to fix this one up for him. So that he doesn't have to go buy up one of the proper first party ones that the rest of us would rather use. From talking to Alex we know that the problem with this controller is that it will intermittently disconnect. Which can be anything from corrosion on the contacts inside the USB-A connector to a partial break in the cable. To some kind of loosening of the connection even here inside the controller. Now because it would take us a long time to diagnose which of those particular problems this is. What we're going to do is we're just going to strip down the controller and solder on a completely fresh USB cable. We start by unscrewing the shell and lifting up the back avoiding the triggers just like the PS3. Then looking closer at the PCB there's what seems to be an oscillator here that's either glued down. Which would be fine or has some kind of schmoo or leaking thing coming out of it. Which could be causing our connectivity problem. We think it's more likely to be the USB cable so we're going to go straight to that fix. We'll need to take the board out and remove the joystick covers just like we did on the Gamecube. And at this stage we need to note the order of our USB wires. If the board is labeled black is ground, red is voltage, green is negative data, white is positive data. And this will all be relevant later. We can desolder the wires from the board with a soldering iron or heat gun however it works for you. Then it's time to put the controller aside for a minute and find a donor cable. I'm feeling more like a classic black. Yeah. Now we strip it, tin it and solder it remembering the order. What you're looking at now is us doing it backwards. Whoops. So we'll need to do that again. If your original cable had some kind of string reliever or rubber grommet to hold it in place. Make sure you dissect that, wrap it around your new cable and reinstall it. It can be the difference between years of trouble-free operation or it just immediately breaking again. If you had better foresight than us by the way you could put some heat shrink around your cable and that would probably help it stay in place a bit better. Now we reassemble and return. Perfect. And no dropping in and out. Hey Alex, your crappy controller back. Thank you. I can finally play Rocket League while we can. We got pretty lucky on that one. Not every third party controller is easy to fix. They often use different PCB layouts and or components that make finding replacement parts much more difficult. Also because they're less common the online resources for repairing them can be few and far between. This PS2 controller from David is a perfect example. We honestly had a hard time even getting the thing open. Let alone working on it without risking any additional damage. So his makeshift solution to the dead spring in the right trigger might be the best that he can do for now. Bringing us finally to something a little bit more modern. I've actually got a couple of broken Xbox One controllers. So let's see. I'd say the broken micro USB charging port on this one is pretty minor and too similar to something that we've already done. So why don't we do the one that doesn't power on at all? I think this one ended up with some kind of coating all over the PCB as part of a previous video. I actually don't remember all the details though. Step one is to pry up the handles hard. Gotta get those off to get at the screw holes. Then there are five screws. Two on either side and one under the battery cover. Now pop off the front plate and it's time to unscrew all these tiny screws. There's not actually a ton of them but don't miss any. The rumble got disconnected at some point. We're not sure what happened there. And this conformal coating. Ah yes, this was from Bathtub Gaming. It's clearly coming off but the weird thing is we're getting continuity on it and yet it simply doesn't work. I don't know how much additional time we're going to be investing into this one. Especially when we've got more important things to talk about. We actually didn't get any modern controllers with dead joysticks but given how common stick drift is, I feel like it's at least worth talking about. There are a handful of joystick technologies that have made their way into consumer controllers. The Sega Dreamcast used Hall effect sensors, essentially magnetic joysticks, and the notorious N64 joystick actually used an optical sensor. So despite flopping around due to a defect in the mechanical design, the accuracy almost never degraded. It's one of the few stick boxes by the way that can actually be repaired by disassembling and refurbishing it. The writer for this video is on probation so he didn't make it into the YouTube video. This is his controller that he wanted to get fixed. But maybe we'll have him do it as a Floatplane exclusive when we're done. Sign up on Floatplane.com. Unfortunately, no modern joystick uses either an optical or Hall effect sensor. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and even media darling Valve all use potentiometer joysticks which, well, are inherently fragile. A potentiometer is a variable resistor that restricts the flow of electricity. Each joystick then has two potentiometers, one for up and down, one for left and right. So moving it around changes the voltage values that are being reported to the console on both of those axes. A spring returns the stick to center. The issue with potentiometers is that they involve two pieces of conductive material rubbing together. If those two pieces start to wear out, warp, or they get dirty, well, it's possible that they will output a value that corresponds to this rather than to this, causing the input from the stick to drift a little even if physically it's in the right position. Potentiometers are used because they are cheap and really for very few other reasons. It's kind of wild that in 2002 we have more expensive controllers that use worse technology than what we had back in 1999. Some companies though, like GuliKit, are working on aftermarket hall effect sensors for the Steam Deck and Switch and maybe other controllers in the future to finally solve a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place. The script says until we have hands-on we can't speak to the quality of their solution, but I actually tried the Steam Deck one today right before I came over here and it is better. Especially with the Steam Deck where you can configure the dead zones. No dead zones. Oh, it drills so fine. Anyway, this was a lot of fun, so if you're looking to get more mileage out of a controller you already own, or if you want to score a deal on a controller by fixing it up yourself, or maybe you even want to start a new hobby or side business fixing and flipping old controllers, I'd say it's worth giving it a try. Just be careful where you get your controllers from. Japan is a good source and is actually where this pile of Super Famicom controllers came from. They belong to the writer who worked on this project. If you run into export woes though, there are lots of as-is controllers on sites like eBay. Just be careful because if they're coming from other refurbishers, as this one likely is, I mean, who else would strip off the battery covers, then you have no way of knowing if earnest efforts have already been made to fix them. They could be just irreparably broken. This one on the other hand looks a lot more like someone decluttering their garage and could be a prime candidate for some fixing. Do you know who's a prime candidate to sponsor this video though? FreshBooks. When you're building a business you're passionate about, it's easy to feel like there aren't enough hours in the day. And if you're doing all the invoicing and accounting on your own, you're probably spending time on work you don't love. FreshBooks is built for business owners like you. It's the all-in-one accounting software that saves entrepreneurs and freelancers up to 11 hours a week. That's 11 hours you can spend nailing a client pitch, serving your customers, or honing your craft. From building, sending, and following up on invoices to tracking and managing expenses, to processing online payments, FreshBooks automates and simplifies all the tough and annoying parts of running your own business. It's also super easy to get up and running, and the award-winning FreshBooks support team is always available to answer questions. So try FreshBooks free for 30 days, no credit card required, by going to freshbooks.com slash Linus, and get more time back to build the business you love. If you guys want to see us do more videos like this, let us know down below. And these controllers pair great with a Mr. Multi-System. So go check out Anthony's video on ShortCircuit about that.