Cheap controller interfaces on eBay (UK)

[shrunkenmaster]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230518273358&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:GB:1123

Look good for those who can't/won't stretch to an Ipac or similar. Had a chat with the seller too, very nice chap.

[notroubleclubber]

Buy it now price is nearly the same as an ipac!

[Blanka]

What's that purple plug? Looks like a Apple-Serial-Port I had on my Mac SE  

[Rick]

What's that purple plug? Looks like a Apple-Serial-Port I had on my Mac SE  

Umm, a PS/2 keyboard adapter?  In North America, most of them are purple, and the PS/2 mouse adapters are light green.

[Blanka]

PS/2?


Ancient anyway. My computer has a USB ports for keyboards and controllers since a LONG time.

[Rick]

Ancient anyway. My computer has a USB port

I'm sure you'll find a lot of us are 'ancient' here.  I used to repair systems for a living, and started my life working inside 8086 boxes.  Ah, the good old days.  I can remember the day that MS-DOS 6.00 was released, and everybody was so excited.  Then, we got our first copies in, and started filling the pre-orders.  That's when I got busy...  Installing 3.5" Floppy Drives in most of our Customer's boxes who ONLY had 5.25"!  Good times, good times.

[shrunkenmaster]

Buy it now price is nearly the same as an ipac!

Ipac including VAT & delivery (UK) tops £42. I'm sure some people on a tight budget would appreciate the potential chance to pay £9.49 for one of these.

[RandyT]

PS/2?
Ancient anyway. My computer has a USB ports for keyboards and controllers since a LONG time.

My "off the shelf" Core2 Quad ASUS system with Win7 has a purple PS/2 Keyboard connector, and a bunch of USB ports.  Not "ancient", just better equipped.

RandyT

[bkenobi]

Looks like that's a keyboard hack that someone's done for you.  It's worth around the starting bid price for the controller and a few dollars for the screw in terminals.  I wouldn't pay much more than starting bid + shipping if it were me.  The dedicated controllers that are available now from Ultimarc and GGG are MUCH improved over keyboard controls.  But, the do cost a bit more.

If you can play everything you want with the keyboard and don't have issues with number of buttons you can press at any one time, this might be good enough.

[Rick]

If you can play everything you want with the keyboard and don't have issues with number of buttons you can press at any one time, this might be good enough.

It does say, "The controller is taken from a HP KB-0316, and so it is a top class and modern keyboard encoder with Anti-Ghosting built in" right in the auction, so I'm not certain if it fixes what you're commenting on or not...  I don't have the experience to say for certain.

[bkenobi]

Keyboards used to be designed to take a maximum of 4 button presses simultaneously.  If you press more than that, it did not recognize the input.  Also, you have a repeat rate issues that encoders don't have, but that may be something you can get around.  I didn't see that it had the ghosting issue taken care of, which is a very good thing.

[Blanka]

Not "ancient", just better equipped.

RandyT

I rather have FW instead.