MAKE CIRRUS PEDALS WORK WITH MICROSOFT SIMS
by Daniel Linton Jr.
(Warning: Making this change may void your warranty)
The Cirrus Pedals from Precision Flight Controls were such a great addition to my flight simulator that I had to get the brakes working with Microsoft products. It turns out that it was very simple and inexpensive.
After a close examination of the wiring of the switches on the toe
brakes to the game port connector, it was soon evident what I needed
to do. Two red wires are connected from each toe brake switch to pin
14 and pin 10 on the game port connector. With the addition of
another toggle switch (Radio Shack Cat No. 275-614) for the cost of
only $3.49, you can switch these two wires from pin 14 and pin 10 on
the game port to pin 2 on the game port connector through the switch.
This allows the brakes to work with both Flight Simulator 5.1 and
Flight Simulator for Windows.
Because this change requires drilling a hole in the metal plate on the back of the pedals and because it requires re-soldering wires on the game port, don't expect PFC to honor your warranty. If this is a big concern to you then before making any changes, call and talk to PFC about getting your pedals upgraded to work with Microsoft Flight Simulator.
In a recent phone call with the people at PFC I told them about the change I made to the pedals. PFC said they would try and put it in the next batch of pedals being built. Another option might be an upgrade from what you have now, to one that has the new modification. According to the PFC web page, they offer their web customers a trade in allowance for your old flight controls and pedals when you purchase their high quality Cirrus yoke and pedals. Maybe they will allow an upgrade to the pedals with the new modification.
Another option would be to build a cable that connects pin 14 & 10 to pin 2 on the game port. With the toggle switch that is already there switched to the low signal side, your brakes will work. I will explain the following modification because it is cheaper for people use and it only uses 1 toggle switch rather than two game port connectors.
The modifications will take place in basically four steps and use the following wording:
1) Drilling a hole and adding the toggle switch (SW2)
2) Unsoldering two red wires from the DB-15 connector.
3) Re-soldering red wires to SW2.
4) Adding 3 new wires from SW2 to the DB-15 connector.
I will refer to the toggle switch that is already installed on the back panel as SW1. The toggle switch that we add between SW1 and the DB-15 connector will be referred to as SW2. No wires will be added to or removed from SW1.
1) After removing the metal plate on the back of the rudder pedals,
which contains the connectors and toggle switch, you have two options.
Continue to remove the DB-15 connector and toggle switch so you can
drill the plate on a drill press as I did or leave them connected and
try to drill the hole by putting a block of wood under the plate to
support it.2) Drill a mounting hole BETWEEN the toggle switch that is already there and the DB-15 connector. You will see that I made the mistake of trying to locate it above the existing toggle switch and found it would not work because the mounting for the slider resistor inside gets in the way of the new toggle switch. You can't put the panel back on with it mounted in that position. So drill the new hole between the existing toggle switch (SW1) and the DB-15.
3) Mount the new toggle switch (SW2) in the hole and position the 6
posts with the same orientation as the existing switch (SW1). See
photos.
4) Using diagram 1, remove the red wire from pin 10 on the DB-15
connector and solder it to pin 2 on SW2. Then remove the red wire from
pin 14 on the DB-15 connector and solder it to pin 5 on SW2.
5) Add a wire to pin 3 on SW2 and solder the other end to pin 10 on the DB-15 connector. Then add a wire to pin 4 on SW2 and solder the other end to pin 14 on the DB-15 connector.
6) Now solder a wire from pin 2 on the DB-15 connector to pins 1 & 6
on SW2. Make sure it connects with both pins 1 & 6. This just means
striping the end of the wire a little longer and soldering it across
both posts. It also means that either brake pedal will apply both
brakes. Differential braking will not be possible with this
modification.
When SW2 is toggled to the modified position, SW1 needs to be in the
ground position. If you don't know which position that is, then just try
either side until the brake works. It will not hurt anything
electronically to do this. The Microsoft flight simulator programs look
for a low signal on pin 2 of the game port to give you brakes.
Using the photo of my modified unit you can then label the back of your
rudder pedals. Not that you will need to switch them that often, but you
may forget in the future when you do want to try another Flight
Simulator that looks at the other set of signals.
Some of you will ask about differential braking. Because Microsoft uses F11 & F12 keys for differential braking we will have to write a small driver to poll the game port and fool the program into thinking it just got a key hit from either F11 or F12. This also means we will have to tie pin 1 & 6 to separate unused pins on the DB-15 because pin 10 & 14 are used as button 1 joystick 2 and button 2 joystick 2 respectively. Guess what I will be looking into next...
Dan Linton dll@tiac.net