I'm working on getting all the little things together that I will need to build my home entertainment PC. One thing it will be used for is running emulators for the older 8 and 16 bit systems. As part of the project, I want to be able to plug all the controllers directly into the system. The problem is that everyone seems to have built interfaces for the parallel port, and seeing as I only have one of those, but three different types of controllers I want to use.... So does anyone know where to find a schematic for this, as well as drivers? I wast to interface controllers from an NES, an SNES, and a genisis for that authentic gaming feel.
you should be able to wire all the controller adaptor ports to one parallel port and only the controllers pluged in will accept any voltage, therefore it wont matter how many you actualy have. if you did want to have all of them pluged in at the same time you would have to write your own joystick drivers (well change the signal pin no's on an old driver), but the basic idea is the same just move one pin of each, in the same way that you can wire up multiple NES controllers (up to seven, i think) using almost the exact same pin no's
oh and as aditional simplification, the NES and SNES controllers use the same interface and only require one port for both, if you know what i mean? you just need to swap controller cables on an SNES controller to plug it into an NES controller port and it will work as expected. (this works not only with the parallel port but with an actual NES)
I'll look into that. I'm also looking at making my own RS-232 interfaces. The controllers are not that big a deal to read from. and getting the raw data on the srerial port. But I have absolutly no idea how to go about creating windoes drivers. Even better would be if I knew enough to build the interface as a USB device.
