Not long a go I got ahold of a used Commodore 64C which came with a box of extra stuff. One of those things happened to be a Competition PRO joystick!

This was/is considered one of the best joysticks ever made, so I was stoked to get this in the bargain. There was one problem however, one of the buttons was totally broken.

So, inspired by my Commodore 64 buddy Arne over at Refurbished I set out to fix it.

For reference, this is what the other working button looked like

The two long thin metal plates work as both a spring and button

The other button was totally broken and the plastic and metal plates were nowhere to be found. So this required a bit more than just some cleaning and soldering. I found a small spring in my stuff that luckily fit perfectly inside of the button. This will make the button "bounce back" after pressed down. It's a pretty good hack and worked pretty much like the orginal.

I just knew I would find a usage for that spring one day

Then I had to come up with some replacement for the metal plates button. After digging through some trash i found some thin metal that I cut into a couple of strips. Then I had to bend them to fit along the broken plastic and lastly super-glue them on. Turned out really nice, I was very happy with this McGyver solution!

Don't press the red button!

Now that the button was done I had to attach it and solder on some new wires. Both buttons use the same wires so this was pretty easy.

Follow the arrows

And that's how I ended up with a fully working Competition PRO joystick!

Done! One badass working joystick!