Amiga/Megadrive controllers

po0k

I want to mod some Playstation/wahtever controllers to work with the Amiga/Megadrive controller port
just need left/right/up/down and a fire button.
Is it just straight microswitches to pins or are there a bit of onboard ICs on the controllers?
Also, are PC serial mice much different to the Amiga ones?

DiscoStu

old amiga/atari st joysticks(excluding the analog ones) were microswitched directly onto the connections of a 9pin serial port. i had a book with the wiring diagrams so ill try dig it up. as for voltge levels and such im not to sure but since im sure no children were ever electrocuted by one of them it couldnt be much more than a couple of volts.

modifying a playstation controller would be a challenge. plug one into a real playstation, open the cover and using an osciliscope measure the signal along each of the pins then design a little logic circuit to take these inputs and output a single logic high or low depending on how the amiga or megadrive worked.

simple in theory but i have a feeling the ps1 controller spits out some fairly complex multiplexed signals when a button is pressed.

po0k

I was going to just resolder a 9-wire (or however many cores) cable into it with a serial connector at the end for hooking into the amiga.
Trying to startup a bit of a retro gaming tourny thing in the college bar and want a controler which people are familiar with and which will stand up to abuse as my current pad (megadrive) is pretty much feck, D-pad is a bit loose and the B/fire button needs to be pressed really hard.

Btw, any way to save .adf files onto a 720KB floppy and use it in the amiga or rip amiga floppies to .adf/whatever?
I've heard of Opus but haven't tried using it yet/dunno if it's the sort of tool I need.
Is there a "RAW read" mode/function available under windows/Linux for floppies?

longword

I'd say it can be done but you'd probably need a microcontroller like a PIC between the Amiga and the PSX controller.

There are one or two open source projects out there that give you the code and circuit diagrams to wire a PSX controller to a USB port. Just hack out the 60% or so that deals with the USB side, replace it with some bit toggling for doing the digital bits, and you're sorted.

For transferring ADF files to an Amiga you may have some options. If you have an A1200 or A600, find yourself the cheapest nastiest PCMCIA 10Mbit network card. With any luck it'll be NE2000 compatible - there's a driver for those available for the Amiga and the PCMCIA slot in those machines. Failing that run PPP over a null model cable to your PC running a PPP server. Once the files are there, an Amiga program is also available to write the .ADF files to floppy. A hard disk on the Amiga for storing the files would be a Good Idea. Otherwise you'll be doing one at a time through RAM:

po0k

Originally posted by longword
I'd say it can be done but you'd probably need a microcontroller like a PIC between the Amiga and the PSX controller.

There are one or two open source projects out there that give you the code and circuit diagrams to wire a PSX controller to a USB port. Just hack out the 60% or so that deals with the USB side, replace it with some bit toggling for doing the digital bits, and you're sorted.

For transferring ADF files to an Amiga you may have some options. If you have an A1200 or A600, find yourself the cheapest nastiest PCMCIA 10Mbit network card. With any luck it'll be NE2000 compatible - there's a driver for those available for the Amiga and the PCMCIA slot in those machines. Failing that run PPP over a null model cable to your PC running a PPP server. Once the files are there, an Amiga program is also available to write the .ADF files to floppy. A hard disk on the Amiga for storing the files would be a Good Idea. Otherwise you'll be doing one at a time through RAM:

Yeah, I've been keeping an eye out for a PCMCIA nic for a while now, but they all seem to be 32-bit cards instead of 16-bit.
As for the hard drive, I'd need to find a 2.5" one smaller than 2 gigs.
Anyone have a dirty old laptop they want to put towards a good cause?

longword

I've got a 3.4GB disk in my A1200 that works OK.

po0k

Cool
Is the whole 3.2gigs addressable by the controller?
What OS are you running?

I've a bog standard A600.

Was hoping to install 68K debian or some sort of cut down linux kernal and run some stuff off it, preferaby over 10BaseT

longword

Originally posted by SyxPak
Cool
Is the whole 3.2gigs addressable by the controller?
What OS are you running?

Regular Amiga OS that shipped with the machine. I haven't booted it in a long time, but I believe the OS could address the whole 3.4GB - or at the very least the first 2GB.

I've a bog standard A600.

Was hoping to install 68K debian or some sort of cut down linux kernal and run some stuff off it, preferaby over 10BaseT

It's not practically possible to run a proper UNIX style OS on an MMU-less 680x0. That includes the weedy 7.14MHz 68000 in your A600, my A1200's 68EC020 at twice that clock rate, and even the 68EC030 in the A4000 I had years ago. You'd need the proper 68030 in an A3000, 68040 in the high end A4000s, or one of the many fine accelerator cards.

po0k

What about something like Contiki?

Anyways, does AmigaOS (Workbench I assume?) have a TCP/IP stack?

longword

Originally posted by SyxPak
What about something like Contiki?

On your own there mate.

Anyways, does AmigaOS (Workbench I assume?) have a TCP/IP stack?

Not natively no. Kickstart is the ROM-resident portion of the Amiga OS (far more than just a BIOS) while Workbench is the extra software that sits on top of that to round out the OS - admin and user tools & applications, additional libraries and fonts, that sort of thing. It's often difficult to see the line separating the two.

Last time I checked there were at least two different TCP/IP stacks available - AmiTCP and Miami. I think AmiTCP works with 'SANA2' standard network drivers - and there's such a driver for NE2000 PCMCIA cards. Not sure what the story is with Miami. Both stacks should do PPP over a null modem cable if you can arrange that.