Shut Down

[Luciano U. Werner]

Shape, is your "pain in the ass-ness" an inherited trait or you got this way by practicing?

[James S]

There's a big button on my keyboard that says "Power." I push it and Windows shuts down and my computer turns off automatically...

[RICoder]

[TechMage]

Buttons wearing out, give me a break. I have NES controllers from 1986 that use the same input method as the PPC buttons, and they still are not wore out. Have you guys ever opened up a PPC or a regular gamepad? Below the buttons sit little soft plastic cones, and when preasure is applied to the buttons they push down on the cones, which are above round circuits on a chip board. The little soft plastic cones either close the circuit or open it depending if the button is pressed or not. So there is really no way of wearing out a button. Oh and joysticks and directional pads work the same, except there are lots of round circuts and plastic cones next to each other, but only one can be pushed at a time depending on which direction you are holding down on the joystick/directional pad.

[TechMage]

After I read my post above, I thought, "thats not totally right." I thought about how the controllers at stores always seem wore out. Like when they have displays out for gaming consoles, the buttons and directional pads always seem like you have to apply alot of preasure to them, to get them to work. I think its because dirt, skin cells, hair, etc. block the process of opening/closing the circuit. So I guess if your button wore out on your PPC, you could just open it up and remove the dirt and it would be fine. Are there any Hardware guys here at PM? Am I right about this?

[James S]

[Dan East]

I've wore out plenty of NES and Genesis controllers. That rubber diaphram you're talking about creases each time you press the button. Eventually the area where the crease occurs will wear through, but only after many hundreds of thousands of presses.

Dan East

[David Horn]

[RICoder]

Shit, my Atari 2600 went through so many joysticks...
Intellivision?!?!? Went through a ton of 'em.
I went through 2 or 3 N64 controllers.

[David Horn]

I'll have you know I discreetly kicked a twelve year old VERY hard the other day because he threw a tantrum in Electronics Boutique. I tried telling him that to stop the car from spinning round in circles you have to push the other way on the little joystick, but he wouldn't listen. And he was getting his dirty little fingers all over the X-Box controller.

And ... and this is one of my all time hates - he was wearing a tracksuit. I might be discriminating, but I tend to take an instant dislike to anyone who wears a tracksuit or has piercings. But that's just me.

[Paul]

hmm... you know what its like in england - you kick one little kid and suddenly his parents, no doubt influenced by the americans(!), SUE your ass!

stinkin' legal system.

[David Horn]

They didn't know....

[Luciano U. Werner]

That's the way to do it.

[Robby]

ahh kicking children. that takes me back...

anyway, as for cleaning buttons, i know that for keyboard ones you just slide something like a knife under them and lever up the button - always clean the spacebars at school like this because they are knackered, full of fluff. everyone gets surprised when i magically make it work again.

i dont know how ppc buttons are held down, but with a casio if you open the casing you can see the back of the buttons.

i wore out a megadrive (genesis) 3 button controller, and a saturn one. and an N64 one. i played too many games.

[Fish]

IF you spill beer in a Microsoft natural keyboard... just forget about it. Just a little bit and it's no good for nuttin.