So I've been building myself a little emulator PC so I could play a load of homebrew games and such. Now to get the full console experience we're gonna need some controllers right? Now this leaves
me with two choices: buy a PC controller, or a converter so I can plug in a console controller.
The choice was fairly simple, if I'm playing 2D games I want a 2D controller, and the best one ever built was the Sega Saturn controller. There are PC versions of these controllers, but I'm lead to believe that they are not great quality and tend to break. So that leaves me needing a controller converter.
In truth I actually have one already, a nice little Saturn to USB converter. However it presents me with two problems, firstly I would like to have it set up so that I can just plug the controllers into the PC. My existing converter has angled sides and sockets for Dreamcast and PS1/2 controllers. These would not sit flush with PC casing, and even if I made it so the Satu
rn port did then I wouldn't be able to access the other 2 ports. No fun there. The other problem is it's only one port, and really I want two. Gaming is so much more fun with a friend. Buy another one I hear you cry, well no one seems to make them any more, I could only find it in stock on a dodgy looking Chinese website for around £25. A bit much considering I'd have to buy 2. So what to do? Build my own of course.
First I had to decide how I wanted to interact with the PC, serial, PS/2 or USB. The serial option would probably have been easier, but it is a bit of a legacy port ditto on PS/2 ports. I reckon I will probably want this in a different PC at some point, so legacy ports aren't really an option. USB it is then. Now fortunately I have in my possession an Arduino,
and there is a USB circuit and a keyboard sketch. So I could demultiplex the Saturn pad output, and send the relevant key presses to the PC
. Then I could just map the keys on the "keyboard" to the emulators. Except I could not get the USB circuit to work and from what I've read it's a finicky little circuit. The device itself would be picked up by the computer, but it was never recognised. So, a new solution was required and that will be detailed in my next post.