Creating Controls for Consoles

[MooFrog]

Has anyone tried making a controller that works for multiple consoles and PC? I'm thinking of making a cabinet, and if not I would at least like to make an arcade stick for my dreamcast (have about 15 fighting games, still using the regular controls...), but haven't been able to find anything about them. I have 2 crappy controllers I can pull apart for the connectors, but don't know how anything hooks up or anything like that. My eventual plan is to have a cabinet with MAME, Dreamcast, XBox, and any more consoles I can get my hands on all hooked into the same controllers. Probably have to make some sort of switching box to send the right signals at the right time, but all this is pretty far in the future. Also, if any of you know of any websites that contain any info about the particular console controllers, I'd be much obliged if you'd share it with me.

Oh yeah, I've seen all the DC arcade controllers for sale, and the X-Arcade, but if I'm gonna be spending that much (in Canada so with shipping etc. about the cheapest I'm gonna get one is 50-60 Can$... don't mind spending 100$ to make my own though). In case this doesn't work out, if anyone's used any of the DC arcade sticks for fighting games and has any comments on them, by all means please share them with me.

Thanks a lot.

[Jakobud]

Yes people have different types of consoles in their cabinets.  As far as hacking goes, there have been many Dreamcast controllers hacked.   Shouldn't have a problem finding instructions for that.  PS2 and XBOX controllers....well it's difficult to hack those because of analog controls.  It's been discussed on this board many many times.  I've only heard of one time where someone was able to hack together analog controls for the XBox joystick somehow.  Might be more trouble than it's worth to get analog and jsut stick with digital.  As far as hooking up all the consoles to the same controllers...hmmm...well lets say you have a hacked Dreamcast pad, PS2 Dualshock, and XBox controller.  You can hook all the controls up to arcade joystick(s) and buttons in parallel and then for each controller buy a controller2USB connector adaptor thing.  I know I've seen them for Dreamcast and PS but not sure about XBox.  You could hook all them up to a single USB hub and I think you will be ready to roll.

You should just leave out the XBox since it sucks so bad anyways.

Jakobud