Joystick mods

[Dordai]

Team 1727 has been having problems with our chicklet at chesapeake and we would like to find a more reliable solution to the poor quality white joysticks in the kop. Our problems with the chicklet began when we found that none of our 7.2v batteries for it that we brought would hold a charge. It was probably from most of them being used on previously with the 12v backup batttery charger from IFI that doesn't have any sort of cut off to stop charging them. Not directly the chicklet's fault, but it's another point of failure introduced into the control system that is necessary with the chicklet.
After battery problem was fixed, the chicklet outright died and refuses to recognize any compatable usb joystick we have tried. It stays with the red light on and doesn't switch to orange or green. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to give me some ideas.

So the main reason that I created this thread was to see if any teams have had experience converting a modern USB joystick to a gameport connector. I tried with our logitech attack3 joystick at the competition but it was built so that it gave 127 values in the upper left corner, which would not work. Also, there was a lot of jitter on the signal from the pots. The value that the OI was showing on dashboard jumped around from about 160 to 175 when the stick was centered and no one was touching it.
I have heard a lot about the old CH Flightstick sticks that used to come with the KoP. I saw on their site that they still sell them, but they use a USB interface now. They do sell spare parts and the internal gimbol mechanism and pots look similar to the ones in the white sticks in the current KoP. Has anyone ever tried to modify the new Flightsticks to be able to be plugged straight into the OI? I don't want to spend $90 on one of those sticks and have it not work like the attack3. Logically, to me it seems that these might have a better chance to work because it looks like the design was not drastically changed when these sticks were switched from gameport to usb.