Omega Race Adapter


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Omega Race came with a special controller attachment called the booster grip that added two more button lines. Without this, you cannot play the normal cart with a normal joystick, but several workarounds exist:

1. There is an excellent ROM hack of Omega Race at Atari Age Hacks. It was done by Thomas Jentzsch and supports both standard sticks and the driving controller.

2. You can plug in a colecovision controller, but it won't let you fire and thrust at the same time.

3. Some people use 2600 paddles, I never really checked into that.

4. The hardware hack below.

Deathskull Labs Archive has a fairly good discussion of the Omega controller. It took me awhile to figure out that the normal joystick fire button and the booster top button both act as thrust.

 
Parts List:
1 7404 inverter ic (or equivalent)
1 resistor (1k to 10k fine)
1 diode (any type but led)
1 male dsub9 connector
1 cutoff genesis controller cable 
1 project board


2600 joystick              2600 controller port 
-------------              --------------------
pin 1-----------------------------pin 6
pin 3-----------------------------pin 3
pin 4-----------------------------pin 4
pin 8-----------------------------pin 8 (gnd)
pin 5---------------------+
pin 7---------------------+
                          |
pin 6-------+--/\/\/------+-------pin 7 (5v) 
            |  ,------->|---------pin 5                             
         5V |  |
        _|__|__|_____________
       |14 13 12 11 10  9  8 |
       |>        7404        |
       |_1__2__3__4__5__6__7_|
                           |
                          gnd

How It Works:
 Pins 3 and 4 (turn right and left) kept the same
 Joystick pin 1 (north) now controls console pin 6 (thrust)
 Joystick pin 6 (fire button) is pulled up and inverted to send
 5v to pin 5 when button is pushed
 When the fire button is not pushed, the blocking diode
 lets console pin 5 float, just like the booster does  

 Connecting the joystick pins 5 and 7 to 5v is not needed
 for a 2600 stick, but is needed to use a genesis controller

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