Measuring the pin-out of a Commodore 64 joystick.

Let's say your old C64 joysticks are worse for wear and you neither want to buy a brand new, over-priced Competition Pro, nor any second hand joystick. Then one option is to build a new one, but to do that, you need to know the pin-out of the Commodore DSUB9 joystick port.

Of course, this information is readily available on the Internet - just google it. However, isn't it more fun to measure it oneself?

Apart from a (preferably) working joystick (I'm using my beloved Slik Stik, the TAC-2's little sibling from the same company, Suncom - you can see that it is held together with duct tape, the screw holes gave up after all the times I've opened it to clean the conductive plates...). you need a multi-meter (although a battery, small light-bulb and some wire will also work) and either probes small enough to fit the holes of the joystick's female contact or, like I have, a lose male contact. With this one, it was easy to attach the joystick and test the pins even with my chubby multi-meter probes. Then the only thing you need is some patience as you systematically test the pins, two at a time, while sequentially engaging the stick in each direction and the fire buton (or you  do like me and just verify a pin-out pulled from the net to save some time). 

So I can add my own Commodore (Atari too, by the way) joystick DSUB9 pin-out to the Internet (and vouch for the authenticity of the others):

Up  Down  Left  Right   n/a

 1        2        3       4        5

      9        8        7       6

    n/a  Ground  n/a    Fire