Originally posted by: Zelmo3
Those old Atari joystick ports were notorious for losing ping, so we came up with an easy albeit ghetto fix: stick a paper clip in the joystick plug so that it corresponds with the missing pin and makes contact with what's left of it. I suppose you could do the same thing with an IDE connector.
If you're really careful, you could even put some conductive adhesive on the tip of the pin so that it sticks to broken stub for a more permanent fix.