Wanting to Hack a USB Gamepad

[jholman76]

I'm looking for a cheap gamepad to hack for a 1player mobile CP box. ebay has some cheap ones from china:

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-10-KEYS-CONTROLLER-PC-GAME-PAD-New_W0QQitemZ330245308867QQihZ014QQcategoryZ31215QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

looks like a PSX controller... anyone every try these out or have any other cheap suggestions? I'm looking for about 8-10 buttons.
THanks

Joe

[MK3FAN]

I did this exact thing for a Mortal Kombat control panel I wanted to test out...

[jholman76]

Ha, thats pretty funny, I just got done watching that vid on youtube... good work.

I read a tutorial about hacking a gravis game pad pro but they warned of ghosting with the main keys. I was just hoping the cheapie I got on ebay wont do that because I want 8-10 buttons.

[Blanka]

Guess when you make a gamepad as USB gamepad, that no ghosting should occur. USB has a HID standard for gaming pads, so I guess they deal with ghosting well. If the pad is recognised as a keyboard things can be bad, but as a gamepad? Would be very strange.

[severdhed]

i hacked a gravis gamepad pro usb controller the other day for the cabinet i am workign on.  there are ghosting problems with the 4 main buttons, all of the others, plus the dpad work fine.  i didn't need that many buttons, so it worked out OK for me.  it is weird when you hook it up though and test it...if i press up on the dpad, it registers that direction, plus one of the 4 main buttons at the same time.  each direction on the dpad corresponds to one of the four main buttons.  it works ok this way, just when you configure mame, it thinks you are pressing two buttons at once.    this worked fine for me since this is a vertical classics cabinet, and only has a 4 way stick and 3 buttons, plus two coins, two starts, and a pause button.  i used mouse buttons for two of the main buttons, so the gamepad pro was sufficient for what i needed...if you need more inputs, i'd go with something else.

[Turnarcades]

I had a similar problem with a hack on a different pad. I've hacked a few original joypads without trouble but on a couple of generic pads I've found that not only do the buttons have a common ground, from tracing the tracks it appears some buttons share a main connection with others too, and upon connecting them up after hacking they result in what you described; registering two presses at once. Maybe they have some weird architecture that makes then function properly, that fails when it gets hacked.

[northerngames]

a xbox pad will work with the USB mod they can be had for cheap at a pawn shop garage sale ebay etc.

there's plenty of buttons plus analog if needed for something else.

use the XBCD drivers to run it and xpadder to custom map it if needed.

[brock.sampson]

I bought a cheap logitech gamepad at target and it worked with no problems.  Not all of the buttons and none of the dpad connections share a common ground.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=78297.msg816690#msg816690

[jholman76]

Oh, Awesome.. 10 buttons for 10 bucks... I'm on my way to Target right now....

[jholman76]

Ok, so I got 2 of those pads and I picked up a used xbox version 1 (bear claw) controller.

does anyone know if I can use the analog sticks in any mame games (flight, driving, etc) if I can manage to save and re-mount them to my CP?

Joe