I took a completely lazy, non-permanent option and just ran the actual ribbon cable out of the stick. It’s in an agetec so there’s a nice flat bit between the VMU holder and the top of the case - holds it in reasonably well. Unless it’s on the floor and someone stands on it while yanking the stick away, I don’t really forsee any problems (touch wood)…
Ya know, there are times when I am a complete unfettered asshole. I apologize; you caught me in one of those moods.
I really don’t have a clear idea what you’re envisioning. If you could describe better what you have in mind, what you would expect to control with what, I can most likely tell you a couple of ways to go about it.
XIM has the bottom line goal of mouse and keyboard on the xbox360; the way they are doing it is very different from how I would (but my way wouldn’t support USB mouse/keyboard, so their way may be better for most) but the main thing to keep is mind is that they need control over the analogs. The way the 360 controllers are piggybacked doesn’t touch the analogs at all. The methods that would have to be used in order to control the analogs (using a PWM line from the PIC and a resistor&capacitor pair to try and create an even analog level; that would require a minimum of 4 PWM pins from the PIC, which I just don’t have available. Or to use a I2C or SPI controlled digital potentiometer, which would require making the I2C or SPI lines available which still would be more than I have available) simply are not available in the UPCB without a complete redesign of the software and hardware.
Having a PC control the UPCB would certainly be possible. The easiest way would be to use parallel type connection (PC printer port, or FTDI245R type chip, and probably some D flipflops) connected to the input pins. That would give full control over the four direction, six play buttons, and start/select, for any supported console. But, knowing how the record/playback will be, it just seems silly; anything fighting game related, such as testing for frame data, will be possible. The only situation where PC control would be needed is when responding to a video feed for botting, like the Bejewelled bot someone else already made, or a Guitar Hero bot.
Let me know what you’re envisioning, and I’ll see how I can help, but I don’t know how much the UPCB itself can help.
Toodles, since you seem open to suggestions, I thought I’d post my thoughts, though they may be getting away from the original idea of the project.
What I’d like to see in the UPCB is support for gamepads, i.e. plugging in an NES or SNES pad into the side of a UPCB stick and having that work as the inputs for whatever console I’m using. It would be similar to the converters for pc, but would work for almost any console.
I’m not sure how feasible it would be, nor how hard to implement. It seems like you’d have to decrypt the signal for most controllers, then re-encrypt the signal for whatever console it was. Seems do-able to me, but what do I know?
At any rate, I’m also interested in the 2x16 lcd support, as I said before, I have a bunch of them not being used, and this’d be a decent use of them.
That’s very doable and already planned. All of the old school controllers would be very easy to implement as input sources. NES, SNES, Genesis, Saturn are all simple, PSX and Gamecube would be slightly more difficult but not too bad. No, there will not be any kind of ability for a USB input. Because the input wires would have to be connected to the input controller, there would not be any piggyback support. Also, the information from the controller would be converter to digital information (directions and buttons), so if you are wanting a perfect 100% conversion of all of the analog stick from one controller to another, this ain’t it. But, for those wanting to use a Saturn pad on PSX/PS3/whatever, it’ll work nice.
I will get to adding it as soon as I can. It might be a bit though; I’m up to my tail in work and the semester will start back up soon.
:woot:Awesome. Sounds like exactly what I’ve been looking for.
I’ll wait patiently for the additions. It’s not like I have a lot of money to be throwing around right this second.
At any rate, its an awesome project. Thanks for spendin your time on it.
I was able to borrow a 60GB PS3 from a friend, but I only have it for tonight, so I gotta bust ass if I’m ever gonna put this PS3 thing behind me.
At any rate, connected everything thing up, loaded up the can and ran it; ran just fine. Home button works to activate the controller for PS2 mode, played a little CvS2 with my old style Neogeo stick, everything works just fucking peachy. I recorded all of the setup packets going to the controller, and the packets are a bit different; that really does tell me that everything including USB gets handed over to a subsystem and completely resets the USB bus and devices. What else is kind of weird is the the very first packet from the PS2 system is a ‘set address’; there’s supposed to be some stuff queried before doing this, such as getting the initial device descriptor, and the PS3 system does that just as it should. The only other minor quirk is the number of bytes requested on one of the requests, but whatever.
Sigh. work continues, but I’m just not seeing what is different between the debugger version and the release version. Cross your fingers.
Sorry to continually give you problems. I swear the last revision wasn’t working for me.
I’ll test tonight. Be using the B version unless there’s a reason not to.
Did you have PS button bound to a single button or Str+Sel?
Also, would you like me to test without the 360 piggyback plugged in?
Okay, problem’s not the firmware, it’s the 360 piggyback.
I upgraded to your test _B hex(which reports the stick as VIRTUA HIGH GRADE in windows). Same problem, stick worked fine in crossbar but failed during PS2 emulation.
Removed my 360 piggyback (ie pulled the cable out of the UPCB IDC connector), and it works perfectly on PS2 BC stuff now.
??? WTF???
I think I’m even more confused now. The only way the 360 would matter is if you had fierce and roundhouse held when it was power cycled (when the PS3 goes into BC mode, it does power cycle the power)
Since you got it working, plug the 360 cable back in. It felt that once the PS3 recognized the UPCB, it would always recognize it, but getting that first recognition was the picky part.
Because of the power cycle when entering BC mode, don’t hold anything at all down; after selecting the PS2 disc, leave the controller be until the game is fully started.
Have you ever peeked at the communication between a Wiimote and an add-on? Say the Classic Controller and the Wiimote? Personally, I think the CC is a great controller and love using it with Glovepie (via a Wiimote -> Bluetooth connection) on my laptiop and I wouldn’t mind using it on some other systems.
I’ve found the pin-out online and it appears to be a serial data stream.
Very good chance actually, but kinda low priority since gamecube works with everything that could possibly use a classic controller. The protocol is I2C, which the PIC supports natively, and I already made sure those pins are available. There may be a problem with encryption, but I wont know more for quite a bit until I can create a sniffer for it. If someone figures out the encryption (more than just the ‘add 17, xor 17’ thing used with the setup code 0x00) then it’ll be added even faster, but I seem to be the only one interested in emulating the CC on the Wii; everyone else it seems is working on getting wiimote and peripherals working on PC over bluetooth, the exact opposite.
So, yes, very possible, but not gonna happen yet for a while.
Great to hear; I still need to figure out what that little trick is to make it recognized, but it really looks like once it is, its smooth sailing. Here’s another one to try before a full release; I put in code to try and determine if the PS3 BC system was the one being connected to, and respond differently if so. So, I can still have ‘Universal PCB vblahblah’ when hooked to PC (that’s not just vanity; having the revision and version number easily viewable is just good practice in my mind.), and have it do the full VSHG emulation when connected to a PS3 in BC mode.
Give 'er a try and let me know how it goes. I’d REALLY like to hear from someone with a 80GB with PS2 emulation; With crackbone’s help, we’ve tried on 20, 40, and 60GB models so far, and that’s the only one left. Feedback from other 20 and 60 gig owner would also be very nice.
Version 2.4 released. Changes:
-PS3 USB code tweaked a little to get PS2 BC working on 20 and 60 gig models. 100% success rate so far, but that’s only on two models tested; feedback on how well this works, good or bad, by others would be very appreciated.
-Tournament mode now also disables all program button functions like turbo or remapping. This is in case the program button is in potential mashing areas; an accidental turbo activation, button remapping or whatever could not only cost a match, but maybe even DQ someone.
I don’t have a prog button actually, but for the Select button I took the reset button from an old PC and wired that in, it’s actually just hanging about in the space where the VMU should be. Pain in the ass to press, but the only time I’ve ever actually used it is for emulated Super Turbo when the version doesn’t allow freeplay (so it’s a coin button).
I don’t really intend for the agetec case to be the final body of the UPCB, so I’m avoiding cutting holes and things in it, hence the very ugly/basic techniques I used for it
I loaned my stick to a friend with a 60GB to test with some PS2 games; he just called and said it worked right from the get go. A couple of more feedbacks and I’ll be ready to call the PS3 done. Just need to hear from some 80Gig’ers.
HolyShit. Toodles, you’re the fucking man. You just had Xbox support not too long ago, and not you’re already kicking the Ps3’s ass? I’m definitely gonna pick up one of your UPCB’s in the future man, this is just incredible.
EDIT: how are you connecting this to the PS3 again? Converters or are you using a USB input? I just started reading from the last page so forgive me.
I think I can field this one. It connects to the ps3 with usb just like any ps3 controller. The nice thing about this device is it allows use on multiple systems without converters. Is that sweet or what?
