Okay, been a while since the last update. For various reasons the project has stalled a bit, but is starting to move again now. High demand for the Retro Adapter made it worthwhile getting them manufactured in China, but of course even when I’m not doing the soldering myself it takes time to organise and produce documentation.
Anyway, the SUPERPLAY is designed to be much easier to assemble so I can produce them much faster, and hopefully do small production runs to speed things up even more.
I have also take some time out to do a few other projects (this is after all a hobby for me), but the good news is that they are related and I was able to re-use a lot of the code. The SUPERPLAY is now in a state where USB works on both Windows and PS3 (no home button yet, that’s on the back burner for now). Firmware updates over USB work too. Playstation connection is done, Gamecube is done (which also accounts for 50% of the N64 stuff) but does need some more testing as I have heard that there are issues with Smash Bros. on the Wii. I think I will add Wii classic controller support too in the future, and again the code will be shared with a Wii version of the Retro Adapter.
Sega 8/16 bit, Atari/Commodore and NeoGeo/SuperGun are all working too. Saturn code is written but needs testing. I need to write some code for handling button mapping and autofire too. I also need to finalise the way those features are going to work.
I have been thinking about how button mappings and the like are going to work. The UPCB allows button remapping to be done “blind”, i.e. with no display or feedback. I could go that route but I think there may be a better option. Since you can do firmware updates over USB, it follows that you should be able to do button mapping over USB too.
I am thinking of supplying a default set of button mappings which will cover most popular games and also a Windows program which will let you define your own or modify existing ones. You could even trade mappings on these very forums. Having a full GUI will make setting them up easier. You will be able to select a button mapping by pressing a special button on the stick (either a separate button or optionally the start button) and then another button, so that gives you a minimum of 6 available button mappings per console connection. You can then have one for each game you play so you don’t have to bother re-mapping buttons on either the stick or in the game when you just want to play.
The SUPERPLAY supports expansion modules. I am going to do a few myself. I will do a 16x2 character LCD module (useful for debugging aside from anything else, 50% done), an autofire switch bank (like Hori sticks which have one slide switch per button) and probably an LED driver. I want to do a graphic LCD module too, but it will have to wait until more important stuff is done.
With a bit of luck I’ll have the first PCBs manufactured before xmas.
To be there is now a guy in Germany making cables which takes the load off a bit.
