Joystick's down, left and right stopped working

elduderino62

Pi 3 B+
2.5A Power Supply With Switch
Version 4.51
Using an image from RetroPi site

Everything was working on the bartop arcade I built. Hade RetroPi running with plenty of emulators. Then one day I turned it on and my son started pushing all the buttons and joystick while it was loading. It didn't load properly because I am assuming he hit some hotkey. I couldn't load anything so I turned it off and restarted it. When it reloaded ALL the buttons worked, but the joystick I had hooked up only would allow the up axis to work. The down, left and right would no longer work. I purchased buttons and joysticks from Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WAYVR9M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
Things I have tried:
Unpluged the USB from the Pi.
Unplugged the wire from the joystick to the encoder.
Switched controllers (weirdly the second controller is "stuck" in the up positions).
Tried to reconfigure multiple times
Borrowed a sanwa joystick from a buddy and the exact same problem occurs.

Since my buddies joystick also did the same thing I feel like the problem is in the Easyget zero delay encoder. Any thoughts? I don't know whether to buy new joystick...new encoder...or just start from scratch with everything...including the raspberry pi

grant2258

this can happen if the cable to the joystick is plugged in the wrong way

elduderino62

Thank you for the suggestion, but the cable was never changed. It just stopped working. Also the input for the five pin cord can only be inserted in one way. The manufacturer of the encoder (easyget) has it set up that way. I am VERY certain the issue is in the encoder. My SNES controller I set up a long time ago still works and a buddy loaned me his arcade fighting stick and it also worked..including the joystick in all directions. Both of these controllers bypassed the encoder.

grant2258

@elduderino62 did you try set the controller up again?

elduderino62

@grant2258 Yes I have. It is so frustrating! Can you "reset" the memory of an encoder? I feel that would be the best thing.

grant2258

@elduderino62 this is going to perhaps sound odd to you but try plugging it into a windows machine if you have one the press start type set up usb and youll see the link to test it does it work in windows?

Clyde

@elduderino62 You can also check your joystick's buttons and axes with jstest in Retropie. See the Docs on how to use it. You get to the terminal by pressing F4 in Emulation station. From there, you return to ES with the command exit.