THIS IS A LONGER POST, SO SCROLL DOWN TO THE LAST 4 PARAGRAPHS TO GET THE POINT.
I've been a fan of the NES since I can remember. When my original one grew old, I tried to revive it with a new 72 pin, but it ended up working worse than the original. I bought from a poor company.
ANYWAY... back to the topic...pinouts
I bought a famiclone (for regular use, not anythign to do with portables). It was something like "family fun machine" and it's basically the standard famiclone you can get on ebay for $50. (yes, I know that's too much...now!)
So, me being the athletic gamer (oxymoron, I know) I wanted to hook up my running pad (powerpad) to the famiclone. It didn't dawn on me that it might just not work until I had everything ordered and sitting in front of me.
So I spent the day with an old full 9 pin atari cable, my ripped apart original nes (so I could get a controller port), a continuity tester, and tons of patience. After an hour, I got a standard controller to work under 3 different configurations. I discovered the ground and the power cables with a delicate instrument called a tounge. I felt a small shock, and when the ground touched the power, the system resetted.
I digress....so I found 3 configs, and wrote them down. On to the lightgun. I found out a suitable config for that in another hour. (remember, many configs were suitable, but left the screen distorted slightly from an unnecessary short, delivering a little too much power back into the video.
SO FINALLY...on to the powerpad. After testing for another 2-3 hours I found ONLY one config. It worked for the powerpad, gun AND the controller. SWEET....
So I brought the system to my dorm at school, and let my grades slip and slip. (It was sweet). THen one day, I just picked it up to play, and my adapter wasn't working. I shrugged it off as I knew this occasionally happened as I am poor at soldering (I only soldered wires in this case, no pcbs..), and I can be sloppy. After a shake of the cord, the paddle would work.
This was not the case.
I tried the famiclone controller, and it didn't work either. It hasn't worked since. I can see the title screen, music plays well...no problems, except controller 1 does not work.
I checked the inside of the famiclone for loose connections, faulty factory soldering, anything. I found nothing, not even the smell of burning circuitboard (mind you, the new smell of the plastic stayed, and it was hard to detect anything but that. My guess is that the frying occurred subtly).
I'm thinking that in making the adapter, one of the pins that would normally work well on a full board NES is not used on a NOAC, but exists. Therefore, the slight voltage difference might be tolerated on an NES, but not the famiclone's NOAC. So Be careful when deciding on pinouts for portables. If by any chance you can build a portable with the original controllers, just with their buttons arranged in original NES style, do it. If you can spare the light gun (or use the included one) do it. Running pad may just be something you have to do without. (yes, it's kinda dumb on a portable ot have a running pad, unless of course you hook it up to a TV. Maybe a resistor on a certain pin would remedy this...I dunno.
I then Got one of those Powerjoy IIIs from the P&C ($10
) and it works GREAT, only i hate holding it, ESP> when there's a cartridge inside. I'm gonna build a portable with a NOAC like that I think, maybe even one that doesn't take cartridges...at least to start.