Before You Begin

Verify that you have the following. There is really only a single required tool to do this install. However, having other tools at your disposal is always a good thing.

Requred:

1. Something to cut the USB cable and remove the black sheath. I recommend a pair of wire strippers since they have a nice blade to cut larger cables built in.
2. Tools to open your arcade stick, be it a 3mm hex key or screw driver.

Recommended:

1. Sharpie Marker. Used to mark the ribbon cable connectors.
2. A pair of wire cutters/diagonal cutters. These come in handy when snipping away zip ties.
3. Ruler. to mark out how long to cut things.
4. Zip ties. This will allow you to put the cable securely back into place.

Installation

*Note that this first build lacks some markings on the silk screen, please use the below image as a reference for the 1-6 cable marking and the labels for the X360 IN terminals (the cable that comes from the 360 PCB) and the USB OUT terminals (the cable that goes OUT of the arcade stick).

 

 

Step 1. Open your arcade stick up, and remove the ribbon cables from their original spots. Mark the cables 1 – 6 starting with the bottom left cable and going clockwise. You will see matching markings on the Cerberus board.

Cables Marked in a clockwise fashion from 1 to 6

Cerberus board with markings shown

Step 2. Take a second to verify that the pins inside of the shrouded headers for the ribbon cables you just removed are fairly straight and even. Also removing any remaining glue/goop that they were covered in. If you find one is bent to the side just take a small screwdriver and bend it back.

Example of straightened pins

Step 3. Measure out about 6″ of cable from the 360 PCB and mark it, this is where you will cut the cable. It sometimes makes it easier if you pull more cable through the cable compartment and shimmy the ferrite choke up so that you have a straight length of cable to measure.

The below picture shows why you are measuring out the cable this way, the portion of the cable still attached to the 360 board will run to the X360 IN terminals on the Cerberus.

Example of how we are running the cable and why we cut it this way.

Alternatively, you can opt to run it a shorter length up the front of the PCB, but this gives less room for error. The above described method allows you plenty of cable to make things easy on you.

Example of secondary way to run the cable, not recommended but possible.

Step 4. Cut the USB cable where you marked it, and cut away 3/4″ – 1″ of the sheath on both of the ends you cut. This will give you ample room to get the USB wires all the way into the terminals. You want them as far back as possible.

Step 5.  Open up the black terminals by putting your thumb on the back of them and lifting with your forefinger.

Terminals opened

If you open them too much, don’t worry about it. They can actually retract farther, which is useful if you mis-punch and need to remove the USB wires and try again.

Example of them over-opened, just press them back down to put them into normal range again.

Step 6. Put the USB cables into the terminals following the B, G, W, R markings for the wire color. Verify that you can see the wires in the tiny windows (at least as best you can to verify they’re far enough back) and then use your thumb and forefinger to close the terminals. Make SURE they are all the way down, below includes an example of “looks like it’s closed all the way, but it’s not.”

The little windows, you can see the green and white wires clearly all the way back.

All are completely punched down except the terminal with the white and red wire on the outbound cable. Make sure ALL are completely closed.

Step 7. Move the cable going to the Xbox 360 PCB and then align the Cerberus PCB, pressing it down with even pressure until you feel it stop and bottom out.

Cerberus in place

Step 8. Put the ribbon cables back into place, following your markings to make it easy. Optionally, you can zip tie the USB cable down to ensure no movement during play/transport and to make it look nice.

Fightstick PRO Install

For the MadCatz Fightstick PRO style of arcade stick, a few extra steps must be taken. Overall the install is identical, the mounting is just slightly different since there’s very little room.

Step 1. Open the stick and remove the original PCB from it’s mounting (still marking the cables and such while doing so as described in the normal install).

Step 2. Break/cut/dremel the 4 plastic standoffs that the board was originally mounted to. Simply breaking them is just fine, it doesn’t take much effort but a pair of diagonal cutters to cut the 4 spokes, then wiggling the standoff to break it off is the easiest method.

 

Standoffs broken to clear space

Showing where the board was originally placed, but now sits without the standoffs.

Step 3. Mount the original board to the case with adhesive anchors and zip ties. Then proceed to continue with the install as normal. You may wish to put the USB cables in place before mounting the board to make it easier on you.

Forgive the blurry picture, but this is everything mounted together. The original 360 PCB is mounted via standard adhesive anchors and zip ties.

Side shot of the installed setup.

Soul Calibur V Stick Install

The Soul Calibur V stick can be installed to in the identical way as the normal install. There is only one slight difference, and that’s because of the adjusted placement of the joystick on this model.

Step 1. Before closing your stick up for good/testing, you MUST remove the bottom right corner screw of the JLF mounting plate. If you don’t it hits the cabling and makes it hard to close the stick back up.

Photos courtesy of TRiXWoN

 

The screw you should remove to make the install fit nicely.

A picture of why you should do this. the screw hits the JLF wiring harness if you do not.

Install Verification

You will want to close up your arcade stick temporarily until you complete this so you know everything is good to go. Do this verification with a PC for best results.

 

Step 1. Plug your stick into your PC, give it a few seconds to verify the device/install drivers. It should pop up in the windows “Game Controller” applet as “Cerberus vX.XX” Click on “properties” to bring up the window and verify that all your buttons light up on screen. Switching between LS and RS on the control panel of your arcade stick will show it reporting differently in the modes.

 

 

Step 2. Unplug the USB cable, then hold 1P (X) and plug it back in, you should see the 360 guide ring give a player indicator and show up in the controller applet also. Note that in order to complete this step you MUST have the Xbox 360 controller drivers installed to your system.

 

 

Step 3. Unplug your stick again, and plug it back in with START held down. You will be in Bootloader mode as is indicated by a cycling guide ring. You will NOT see anything pop up in the game controllers applet, but you will hear the enumeration sound. Verify the LEDs are cycling in a clockwise fashion, then unplug your stick a final time.

 

That’s it! You’re done! It takes longer to read all of this and verify steps than it does to install the board. If you do it a second time you can probably get it installed in 15 minutes or less.