First post, by Retrograde_i486
I picked up a Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro from ebay and wanted to give it a clean. Opening it up was fairly easy at first, there are 7 screws total with two screws hidden under rubber feet and one under the serial / hardware info sticker.
Once you get it open I recommend you NOT remove the 4 screws in the middle of the board. This holds together the thrust lever and the left/right roll sensors on the joystick. They were a royal pain to get back together and didn't seem to need cleaning
There are two small screws the hold the pcb on, those are safe to remove and get the board out. There are little white screw icons printed on the board showing you where. Again, don't remove the 4 larger screws unless you want an un-fun puzzle putting this thing back together.
Front of the board:
Back of the board:
All the parts inside this thing, those are 4 metal ball bearings that give it some weight haha:
Happy to report that it's working great in Windows 98 so far, tested Fury3 and Hellbender with Hellbender taking far more advantage of all the buttons (Fury3 only uses 2).
One thing that's eluded me since I was a kid was the 4 digital buttons on the base of the flight stick. I've never gotten them to work, they show up in Windows Game controllers but pressing them doesn't do anything. Anyone ever gotten them to function?