I’ve got mine sitting here - just patiently watching how everyone else implements it. 
I don’t own a PS3, so hanging loose till I decide how to do 360/PS3 support. The USB hub solution might be the best bet.
Sorry if this question is dumb but I couldn’t find a quick answer for it. Can this board be used like some of the I-pac’s and let you hook up more than one player to the PCB? Like for making a 2 player control panel for a MAME machine, would I need 2 boards or could I run both players from a single board? Thanks
Each board supports 4 directions and 11 buttons. If you were running a very low number of buttons, you could wire some of those buttons up to the p2 stick and tell mame that button whatever = p2 up, but it’d probably be more headache than its worth, and you definitely wouldn’t have enough to support two players playing a high button game like street fighter. Just get one for each player on the cab, it’ll be easier to setup and wire.
this is a stupid thing to point out, and more of a general Windows question(haven’t had a working windows machine in months), but when the machine reboots, will it re enumerate the devices in the same fashion as if it was a clean boot or will it randomly decide which one is P1 and which one is P2?
IIRC, the devices get enumerated in a way that includes where they are on the bus; which port of which hub(s) they are connected to. If you have them plugged in, and bounce the system, the order of the controllers should be the same the next time you boot. I know you can specify one to be the ‘primary’ or otherwise set the order in the game pad applet, and that should keep them in place permanently unless you replug them into different spots on your hubs.
Damn, I suck at 'splaining shit. Based on what I expect, plug your stuff in where you want them plugged permanently, then bounce your box. The order that they come up with will always be the same from there on, and you can change which is 1st and which is 2nd in the control panel applet if you don’t like it. Once changed in the applet, it should always be in that order unless you start unplugging shit.
I will say this though; if I’m wrong, and the P1\P2 order starts getting random in the cabinet, get ahold of me. I’ll be happy to reflash one of the chips to a different VID/PID so it won’t possibly happen. But this shouldn’t be neccessary.
Ok just hooked my new Cthulhu board I bought from Lizard… I have a couple questions… First time I plugged it into my pc it came up as a “Virtua Stick High grade” in the control panel. So, I unpluged it and “unjumped” the home and ground then plugged it back in and it came up as the as the correct Cthulhu board. When I hit the Start and Select together it also activates the home(13) even though it is not jumped. So I’m guessing jumping ground with home isn’t neccesary?
In case there ended up being a future problem with the PS3 detection (i.e. Sony changes something), I put in a button combination that forced 100% VSHG mode. I’m guessing you just had those buttons held down when plugged in.
You might want to double check the wiring; start + select should only activate button 13 (home) if the normal home button is grounded. If home isn’t grounded, then start+select should never activate button 13.
Sorry for double posting, but I wanted to let everyone know that I think I finished up the bootloader. It appears to be working fine with the original Cthulhu code, so now I can work on adding consoles. PSX to be first, natch, but I need to tweak a couple of parts of the PS3 code as well and look into getting the PSX support working on converters. Again, no ETA, but betcherass I’m making progress.
Toodles,
Checked the wiring with a fine tooth comb. The wiring is very clean as you can see from the pics. Still when I hit Start and Select Button 13 is activated. Not a big deal but is it possible I have defective board?
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/282/dsc01270ov5.jpg
Wow, that is good wiring, great job.
I grabbed a chip that was programmed in the same batch that one was; the good news is your wiring is perfect; even better news is that based on how you have yours setup, it’ll work awesome; you don’t have the do anything, start+select will activate home. Great news is that those using a home button will also have everything working just fine.
The bad news is that using the ‘home_disable’ or otherwise shorting the home button has the exact opposite affect of what it should.
NOTE FOR ALL RECENT USERS: DO NOT USE THE HOME_DISABLE JUMPER! Whether you are using a Home button or not, everything will work beautifully. If your Home_Disable jumper is shorted, a quick touch of a soldering iron should break the connection easily. If you have a piece of wire connected between Home and Ground to disable the Home button, please remove it.
This should only affect the more recent stock through Lizard Lick (green screw terminals) and will be fixed ASAP. Sorry for the confusion, but even if you have one of these, the board will work 100%, whether you want to use a Home button or not; just don’t try to disable it, the code will enable/disable the Home button automagically. I don’t see how it could possibly be a problem, but if this a problem for you, please PM and I’ll make arrangements to swap chips with you.
Thanks for pointing that out SteveTren.
To check if you have one of these, unplug the stick, plug it back, go to the control panel applet and press start+select without ever hitting the home button. If button 13 lights up, then go ahead and press home (if you have one). Once you press Home, the Home button will activate button 13 and the start+select combo wont. If start+select doesn’t activate button 13 when first plugged in, you don’t have one of these chips.
EDIT: This problem has been resolved. All Cthulhu kits ordered after November 19th 2008 will not display this problem. If you are experiencing this problem with your stick and it’s bugging you, please contact me so we can work out a fix for you.
Marcus, when you use the Start + Select combo to activate button 13, is only button 13 supposed to be triggered or do all three buttons stay triggered? When I test the board (blue screw terminals) in Windows, all three are triggered when I hold Start + Select. I’m just curious how the PS3 interprets this.
All three should be triggered. The PS3 interprets it as Select, Start, and Home all pressed.
Very cool! Thanks for the info… :woot:
hey toodles is there any way i could get a discount rate on a large batch of cthulu’s?
say 10-20
Yup, PM sent.
hey toodles, one quick question do you recommend us to leave the arcade stick plug into the computer at all time? because I my pc is never turned off, and its a hassle to plug in and unplug my arcade stick everything when I wants to play some game …
Not to be to presumptuous, but there’s no components in the Cthulu board that would be “worn” out from being constantly plugged in. I have the predecessor of the Cthulu Toodles made(the UPCB) plugged into my PC for weeks at a time with no problems.
The only thing I can think of you shouldn’t keep plugged in are sanwa flash stick PCBs, since they have a limited lifespan when powered on.
What crackbone said is accurate, there isn’t any need to worry about the Cthulhu lifespan when plugged in; it should outlast your PC’s hardware 
If you have an optical stick like a sanwa flash or perfect 360, you will reduce the lifespan of the optical stick, from like 20+ years to year if left powered constantly, but the Cthulhu will be fine.
Interesting info, as I do leave my Cthulhu board powered TMO custom joystick plugged into my PS3 as it is my primary stick, glad to know it won’t die on me. I’ve been wondering about this for a while, thanks DSlayerZX, for asking that question. :lovin:
On a side note, prior to building my custom, I left my Fighting Stick 3 plugged in all the time and that stick died on me, I wonder if leaving it plugged in was the reason for its premature death. No need to answer this question as I don’t want this thread to go off topic.
Word. For some reason, I thought the Cthulhu magically triggers only HOME when Start + Select is pressed. I guess I thought there might have been some logic gate trickery that would make the button combo only trigger HOME. It’s all good. I added a HOME button to my T5 stick. More Cthulhu-in-a-joystick pictures coming soon.