PSX Pad Hack - Deadzone Woes

[retrorepair]

I have a PS1 dual analog pad I've hacked for use with some revolution x guns and for the most part it works ok (it's a bit jerky) but I'm having some issues with the deadzone, as in I can't get rid of it.

I have fiddled with the mame analog options which do nothing that I can see and the deadzone setting in the ini which I set to 0.0 and did help a bit but not much.

I'm just hoping someone else found a way round it because right now I'm thinking it's just something that's hard coded in the pad's microcontroller and can't be solved.

It just renders the games unplayable since it jumps over a large portion of the screen.

The guns do work ok with the original game.

Any ideas?

[BadMouth]

Haven't hacked the pots in a gamepad before, but it wouldn't suprise me if it had a deadzone hardcoded because they usually have 5k as center and offer no adjustment in windows or on the console.

Any particular reason that you want to use a gamepad instead of an A-Pac, U-HID, or gameport?

[retrorepair]

Pretty much because I have a PSX pad here and figured it'd be easy (when is it ever?). I don't have a gameport on this machine either.

DXTweak shows the raw input data from the controller is jumping over the deadzone point so it doesn't look like there's a way to do it. I could I suppose resist it further so the mid point is the end of the travel but I'd lose half the resolution which would be even worse.

Guess I'll be grabbing an A-Pac. I have to get a PacDrive anyway.

[BadMouth]

I've tinkered with positional guns a fair amount.
Since you know deadzones cause headaches, it sounds like you've already got got it figured out.
Just in case though, here are the main points to setting up one:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,122423.msg1300333.html#msg1300333

More $$$, but the U-HID can also be configured to have outputs.
With that, MAMEhooker & some other hardware, you could have recoil working. 

[retrorepair]

Ah that's interesting, didn't realize the U-HID could handle outputs too, nifty bit of kit I think an A-Pac and a PacDrive are still a bit cheaper though (about a fiver).

Your post in that thread is what I've been looking for so thanks for pointing it out. I knew most of it but I should have realised that calibrating the gun in windows should only be to the extents of the screen, not the full range of motion.

As for Model 2 emu, that's pretty bad news. I was looking forward to playing Gunblade more than anything. That said I think I might be able to find the real controller input memory location using lua, though don't quote me on that. Howard was looking at it a while ago and I think I followed what he said but it'll probably require more than just a script. I know that's the case for real outputs anyway.

*EDIT* Here's the thread I'm referring to: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,121412.0.html