NES controller not acting quite right

[kcm3]

Hi all,

I need some help with the NES conroller that I just wired into my PC to use with VirtuaNES.

I built the parallel port interface that's documented here: http://www.dreamcliff.com/personal/daniel/jump/mport.htm , and which I assume is the same basic design that has been documented elsewhere.

The problem I'm having is that I can't seem to find a happy medium between getting a long button press recognized, and recognizing multiple simultaneous button presses.

I'm using DirectPad Pro as my driver, although I did some basic testing and seem to have the same issue using SNESKey9x, which makes me think it posibly something about the interface, but I can't figure what that might be, since the signals seem to be getting through.

"jumping" is a good example of my problem. In many games, the length of time you hold the jump button determine the height of your jump. At first I could only make short jumps. I adjusted the "SNES scan delay" in DirectPad Pro to a higher value, and it let me get full jumps. However, then I have problems with multiple button presses. For instance jumping while holding "right" seems to work, but while holing "left" it will only recognize the jump, and go straight up.

A good comprehensive test is playing "Duck Tales". A player needs to be able to jump with "a", then hold "down" and "b" to extend the cane, for pogo-ing. The only way I can even get the cane out is with a low scan delay, like 1. But it won't stay out, so I can't really bounce on enemies with it or anything.

I have seen the mentions of the NES controller's power needs, as I have just drawn power by stringing pins 5-9 on the parallel port together, which people claim will not work, but, it seems to drive the controller for me. Could this weird behavior be caused by not enough power?

If anyone has some experience working with a NES controller through a parallel port, I'd love to hear how yo're doing it.

Thanks

[Bgnome]

do you have diodes on those power pins?  you can draw an extra 5v from the psu, a gameport, or even usb..
unfortunately, i am unfamiliar with NES pad adapters but i have built a couple PSX pad adapters and an N64 adapter and can say that the dpadpro drivers are a nice piece of work if you are still using win98..

[kcm3]

Yep, that's exactly what I've been stringing together tonight. Drawing 5v from the game port makes it work like a charm.

Interestingly, getting 3v from a couple of batteries, like the guy on the site I linked suggests, actually made it worse. It recognized down, left, select, and start, but that's it. Odd.

In any case, more power was indeed the answer. And I agree Dpad pro is quite nice.

[kcm3]

So, adding more powersolved my original problem.

Now, I've got two controllers hooked up, and working quite nicely save one thing: when both controllers are pressing "right", neither character will move right. Other directions do not exhibit this behavior

Could it be that I again neeed more power? I'm already drawing 5v from the joystick port.

If not power, what else might cause something like this?