Grounds

[rhoelsch]

I have a 2-person cab, with a joy and 8 pushbuttons for each side. The entire panel shares one ground. For one side, I hacked a PSX pad to play more modern fighters on (via console, not emu). The control output is switchable between IPAC and console pad via an A/B switch. Works perfectly.

I'd like to add another pad for the 2nd side. Must I reconfigure my ground to be separate for the 2nd side, or can I still share the 1 ground as it exists for both PSX pads? I'm pretty sure the IPAC has a 2nd ground output, so the PC part would be fine, but must I have a unique ground for the 2p side?

If that makes sense... thanks!

[matsadona]

The ground is always the ground... like in a car, everything metal is ground. It doesn't matter where you connect ground since everything is ground.
The PSX pads, I assume the hack is just connecting the control surfaces (direction and buttons) not including any of the serial logic circuitry?

[rhoelsch]

That is correct. So I can leave the entire cp daisy chained together and leave the ground on the 2nd pad alone then?

[PL1]

The ground is always the ground.

Most of the time this is true, but there are a few encoders like the X-Arcade and some gamepads that use isolated grounds.

For example, if you touched an input from one wire group of the X-Arcade  encoder to the ground of another wire group, the encoder would register the input as the corresponding input from the ground-wire's group.

The good news is that if there were isolated grounds on the specific gamepads that Rhoelsch is hacking, problems would have shown up when testing the first gamepad hack.


Scott

[matsadona]

Yeah, I was assuming that the hack was directly to the controls/switches - not via the pad circuitry/logic.

[Thenasty]

the Ground I'm standing on is the same Ground you standing on and so on and so on . . . Hey we're all connected