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| PS1 & PS2 light gun interfaces |
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| kilroy:
I didn't say he was slamming me, nor is it meaningless to restate what equipment I am using. Everyone keeps telling me that PS1/2 guns won't work with a VGA monitor, which is something I already know. What thier statements tell me is that they are not really reading what I'm posting and just saying it can be done. So once again I was clarifying that I was using a TV and NOT a VGA. I'm finding I have to sort of constantly remind people of that fact to get it through and then I get a negative response when I do. I don't care that most PS1/2 light guns won't work with a VGA monitor because I'm not using one. Nor do I care that a guncon2 can for the same reason. What I would like is for some suggestions on how to interface the light gun to my PC for use in MAME. What you are probably picking up on in my posts as the progress is not "attitude" of any sort. It's frustration. For the source of my frustration re-read the first paragraph of this post. 75% of the responses to my post have made me want to scream. A few folks have been a little helpful. But, the defeatist attitude that I'm being faced with in regards to this topic are very discouraging. (And yes saying give up and buy some ugly expensive light gun that works is a defeatist attitude) I'm also not hoping for the gun to just "magically" work. I realize that they would need thier own seperate drivers. But if the system detected the gun (which it should) even if it didn't have the proper driver it may detect what kind of device it is designed to emulate (ie mouse or analog joystick). That information may be helpful for someone else who may want to persue this issue. If it for example was detected as a mouse I would imagine it might be easier to use a standard mouse driver as a starting point rather than starting from scratch. Writing a USB driver isn't too far fetched. My company just recently developed a new product that uses a custom USB interface card. Both my boss and out R&D guy still have that stuff fresh in thier heads. I'm sure I could possibly glean enough knowledge from them and the now left over develpment kit to maybe start working something out. I might even be able to convince one of them to actively give me a hand. With my luck by the time I'm done with my cabinet someone might have already made one. |
| kilroy:
I just had another though about what DaveK had previously stated about the possibility of a linux driver. It occured to me that Sony has a linux kit for the PS2. The purpose of the kit is to give people a cost effective game development system for the PS2. I'm wondering if there is a way to export the light gun drivers from the games that use them and bring them into a PC linux environment. Even if they require "tweaking" it might prove to be much easier to do it this way rather than to write one from scratch. Understanding how the linux driver works would probably also help with the development of a windows driver. |
| aredhel:
some questions: 1) Does the video signal go through the gun? If not you shuld give up unless you know some one who is willing to hack on your vieod driver. 2) plug the gun in to a computer and see if its a HID v1.00 device. ( under linux you run dmesg and look for a line that starts "input: USB HID v1.00" ) If it does then it should just work for xmame and in any case writing mame level drivers for it should be simple. 3) if you plug it in and get unknown USB device vender id FOO, then the usb protocol needs to be worked out and a usb device driver writen as well as a mame level driver. I could help out with 2, at least on the linux end of things. 3 is a lot of work, and with any thing else it would be better to change the looks of the actlabs gun. |
| kilroy:
This is how I understand most PS2 light guns work. The video doesn't go thought the gun per say. They have a feed through connector where they sample the video signal. The gun "looks" at the screen and waits for the scan line to pass in front of it. The gun then knows what scan line and where on the scan line it's pointing and hence where you are aiming. Some games (like NES games) actually have a light spot in the center of targets and the gun knows when you hit the target by looking for the light spot. Others flash the targets at a rate too fast for the human eye to percieve. The gun however can and knows that it's pointing at the target by sensing the flashing. Those old VCR light gun games worked like that. I've been meaning to get around to setting up my PC as a dual boot system again. (I made and unfortunate partitioning error and lost everything a few months ago. Windows, linux, everything! About 80G worth of data. Argh!) What distrobution would you recommend? I have Mandrake, Debian, and Red Hat as well as a few other smaller distros (Lycoris, Evil Entity, Gentoo, Ice Pack, Suse, Knoppix, and a few others). |
| aredhel:
--- Quote from: kilroy on December 22, 2003, 11:38:28 pm --- This is how I understand most PS2 light guns work. The video doesn't go thought the gun per say. They have a feed through connector where they sample the video signal. The gun "looks" at the screen and waits for the scan line to pass in front of it. The gun then knows what scan line and where on the scan line it's pointing and hence where you are aiming. --- End quote --- Good it should be sending x,y coordinates back to the computer which means it should be doable. The next step is to see what type of device the computer thinks it is and what type of data it sends. --- Quote from: kilroy on December 22, 2003, 11:38:28 pm --- I've been meaning to get around to setting up my PC as a dual boot system again. (I made and unfortunate partitioning error and lost everything a few months ago. Windows, linux, everything! About 80G worth of data. Argh!) What distrobution would you recommend? I have Mandrake, Debian, and Red Hat as well as a few other smaller distros (Lycoris, Evil Entity, Gentoo, Ice Pack, Suse, Knoppix, and a few others). --- End quote --- In a cab stability is king so Debian stable is the clear leader. For a desktop box where you want to keep up on new programs as they come out you can pick any one. I use Debian testing, but thats just because my servers run Debian. If you don't want to install linux on you hard drive then you have knoppix for desktop work and AdvanceCD http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/cd-download.html for mame. AdvanceCD doesn't work with my monitor, but it's really old and is vary fussy about it's timings. |
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