What retail sticks are the best for PCs? That is, extremely little/no lag, and either made with a PC in mind or made *specifically *for a PC? Most sticks, if they are compatible with PCs at all, are only compatible via a convertor used on top of whatever controller the stick is built on top of itself this isnt the optimal arrangement of course. I have only found one stick in my searching made specifically for PCs, but I am not even sure if this is true. Its a MAS stick here (http://www.massystems.com/IBM-PC.html). I dont know much about sticks so I am not sure what the MAS stick actually is on the inside, so I would appreciate any info on this as well.
Secondly, if one were to make a stick *specifically *for a PC, what would be the best way to go about this? What would it be built on top of (so to speak)? What port should it connect to (as in which is fastest)? I am not sure where to begin because I am a novice at stick building, and I couldnt find anything on these forums related to this question nearly everyone wants to use a convertor, and not a custom built stick straight-up *optimized *for a PC. I saw the Universal PCB thread, but I wouldnt know if this would be the best route to go if one were to optimize *specifically *for the PC.
Thanks for the advice. I know that some sticks are USB compatible, but they weren’t made for PCs - they were made for the 360/PS3 and just happen to overlap with PCs, for better or for worse.
I am not sure what these are built on though compared to normal stick that use a console’s controller as the PCB, and if they have increased performance for the PC in any way. I am also looking for a little more variety than these two brands to find out more about how this done.
the original xbox is same as usb so if u get a convertor for an xbox stick [only one i know is sfac] which is just connecting similar wires, no actual conversion, then its an identical solution , aka no lag for pc
I am not familiar with the technology, but I know that USB 2.0 is not the fastest thing on the market. Is is possible a 5-pin DIN connector is faster than a USB 2.0?
Is PS/2 faster than USB 2.0? I heard somewhere that it wasn’t a long time ago…
If you want a custom built stick for the PC look at the thread in my sig. This one connects via USB and I have seen no lag even on a brand new dual core laptop. If you want to learn to roll your own PC stick hang out at arcadecontrols.com. They are a more PC minded bunch.
No, if by ‘5 pin DIN’ you mean PS/2; if you’re computer has some other sort of 5 pin DIN socket, you got a really weird or really old computer. No. Right.
You’re trying to be smarter than you need to be and ignoring what people say. Go with USB.
no offense, but what are you afraid of? i don’t think a joystick is going to use up 480 Mbits of bandwith…
i’m pretty new here as well, but i’m sure there’s no eSATA or firewire 800 arcade sticks
usb=fine, trust the people here
EDIT:btw i’ve used both an arcade stick ex2 for 360 and a modded t5 with a ps3 adapter on my pc and they work swimmingly, cept for the ex2 being a dick with mame
I’m not ignoring what anybody says. I am just trying to gain knowledge on the subject. I’ll probably go with a usb stick, but in the future I will want to make my own stick, and it will probably be made specifically for the PC, since I don’t live anywhere near an arcade.
The MAS site says “5-pin-DIN and with optional PS/2 adapter.” I inferred from this that there is a 5-pin-DIN connection and that it could be converted to PS/2, and so that there were two different connection options here. Are they the same thing?
I am new to this scene, so take it easy. They are just questions.
I agree 480mbits of bandwidth will be fine - all of my mice are USB gaming mice, and they respond very well. However, and sorry if I am getting this wrong, I am worried about the polling rate of USB, which is 1ms. I am just trying to get things perfect here if I build a stick sometime in the future. There are so few made-for-PC sticks out there (they are, like I noted, mostly just compatible with PCs, and therefore have their share of problems, as is evidenced by the many threads on this forum) that I have little to go on. Plus, I am learning about this technology as I go along. My first would be a default purchase (retail or custom), my second would be a custom built to certain specs, either by myself or someone more knowledgable/experienced.
If you have any information to share I’d appreciate it. If you have sources, that would be better. A lot of stuff I read here may be informed , but it may be opinion/anecdotal as well.
USB 1.1 ? 15 Mbps
FireWire (1394a) ? 400 Mbps
USB 2.0 ? 480 Mbps
FireWire 800 (1394b) ? 800 Mpbs
SATA 1.5 ? 1.5 Gbps
SATA 3.0 ? 3.0 Gbps
It didn’t list the “polling rates” for each (probably the wrong terminology here), but I am looking up that info now.
I thought of gutting a MS or Logitech joystick or gamepad and gutting it to see what the internals look like inside of those. Has anybody ever taken up a project like that or has any links on the topic?
I should add one thing that I am definitely concerned about is whether or not I can press buttons at multiple times, as I currently use a radioshack PS2 -> USB converter and it has problems with this.
Don’t look at SATA or IDE, those are for drives. What you have listed there are data transfer rates. Like I posted earlier, if you want to learn more about the PC side of things head over to arcadecontrols.com. The forums there are geared to the style of stick you are looking for.
I’ll try to boil done things a bit for you as to what is available for PC gaming. There are two connection styles PS/2 and USB. Each has their own idiosyncrasies that I won’t go into detail here. There are also two interface styles available for purchase, keyboard encoder and gamepad (joystick). From this point forward I am going to assume that you will be using MAME on a windows PC.
The default input for MAME is keyboard and mouse via PS/2 or USB. The later versions also look for joystick inputs via USB. The two styles of interfaces are geared for MAME use. They default to the same key codes or button presses as what MAME is looking for so it is basically plug and play. Joystick input is done in 4 directions, Up, Down, Left & Right. The diagonal directions are a combinations of the basic 4. The buttons are basic on/off digital switches.
MAME and the original game boards didn’t care about what was used for input. The machine could take input from 4 buttons instead of a joystick or two joysticks instead of a stick and four buttons. If you want to use real arcade controls on a PC you need to purchase one of the interfaces designed for that purpose. You can find out much more information at arcadecontrols.com The site is also referred to as BYOAC or Build Your Own Arcade Controls.
That is the problem with PS/2 period. that is because of the fact that PS/2 keyboards use a matrix instead of digital signals. The best interfaces are available from GroovyGameGear.com and Ultimarc.com fix this issue.
I think I was a bit unclear - I meant PS2 as in playstation 2 in the post mentioning the radioshack PS2 -> USB converter. Do your comments still apply?