Im building a retro gaming rig D) and thought it would be cool to have some USB retro gaming pads to use! Was wondering if anything liek that has been done before and if I could possibly get a wiring guide somewhere? Cheers Retro
as for old i dont know but i know a xbox controller has been fixed to work with usb http://www.metku.net/index.html?sect=view&n=1&path=mods/xbox_cc/index_eng
Yeh, the Xbox controller has exatcly the same wires as a USB device AFAIK, Im not sure whether it would be possible with the older controllers or not :/
if you were really determined you could dismantle a normal gamepad and hook wires to all the buttons on the controllers pcb, then simply program a game to use the buttons like you would have on a N64 game or whatever.
i looked around on the internet, and theres lots of current gen console controller to usb adapters, if you looked hard enough youcould probably find some japanese N64 or SNES console adapter on ebay or something.
I have caught the retro gaming bug too. Just brought a Mega Drive from a flea market for £8.00. Now starting to collect the games off Ebay. They range from £1.00 upto £5.00 depending on condition and whether the game comes boxed with instructions or not. Sega sadly got too greedy in the mid 90s. Couldn't beleive the new games were retailing at £60. This was sucide for Sega and they still haven't recovered yet.
Well.. I doubt they will ever break out of games dev now. TBH, I always thought thier consoles were a bit rubbish and I knew they couldn't beat Ninty.. of course once Sony hit the scene, a little man started digging.
Argh, looks like the old controllers cant just be 'wired up' to run with USB (duh me) they require extra microchips, and its would just be a pain tohave to spend money on those bits and re wire them all So, does anyone know of any simpler controlers, instead of all these crazy PS2 controller copies? Thats all google ever throws up Im sure Ive seen NES/SNES like controllers before... Gonna have to keep digging...
Yeh but hardly fitting with the 'retro' thing. I just bought a crappy USB controller from ebay, its kinda like a megadrive controller in shape too. I plan to rip the USB controller (the controller inside, not the actual joypad) out and put it in a megadrive gamepad, and wire each button up to it. It SHOULD work, Ill post the mod with pics when I do it
Thanks Shouldn't be too hard to do (fingers crossed), theres pleanty of room in these megadrive controllers, theyre practically empty!
^^ i'd like to see how that turns out. For me, I enjoy just hitting/toying with my old NES to play my retro. Mmmmm... Dragon Warrior... - serial_
Most can be mapped to serial, I know several people that have done that, I've also seen ones wired to a XBOX controller via serial, and then to USB, that worked nicely as well, just get a XBOX controoler and scrap it , put the board in some nice looking box (or in a drive bay, and convert that to USB, and plug other stuff into it first, just map the buttons out correctly
Thats basically what I plan to do, except instead of using an expensive Xbox controller which will take up room, I bought an el cheapo controller from ebay
http://www.retrousb.com/index.html Kind of expensive at $17 for a conversion kit or $26 for a pad. But it's a really nice piece of kit.
about 4 years ago my cusian used to sell game controlers to usb adapter thingys, it had 4 game controler ports and a usb going to the computer, i know that one of the game controlers could be a N64 controler coz we used to play the roms on his computer lol
