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A colorful plug teardown

A project log for Joy Boy

Jump into the action with this awesome joystick for your Game Boy®. Now you're playing with power. Stick power.

sven-dahlstrandSven Dahlstrand 08/10/2019 at 08:550 Comments

After a good nights sleep and breakfast, I reached for my wire cutter and cut off the NES connector from the joystick cable. There are five wires inside the cable, color-coded as black, white, blue, green and brown. I had no idea what color corresponded to wich signal. What I do know is the NES controller port pinout, thanks to the hard-working Nesdev community. With that information, I pried open the plug to figure out the relationships between wires and pins.

So, without further ado, I'll present to you my findings. Be careful though: I can't guarantee all Zinger joysticks are wired the same way or using the same colors as mine.

The Zinger plug pinout

Name

Wire color
GNDBrown
CLKBlue
OUTWhite
D0Green
+5VBlack
D3Not present
D4Not present

Black for +5V and brown for GND? Not the most obvious choices of color if you ask me.

The plug seems happy enough, even after my brutal treatment.

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