jdgabbard Posted March 21, 2019 Share Posted March 21, 2019 (edited) I thought that I might share this here, as it is relevant to the forum. I recently designed an interface for vintage PCs with a Gameport (either an analog card or soundcard with Gameport). I had been thinking about the idea for quite some time. But thought that I would sit down and put the idea together. What I came up with is the SNES-2-GP. I've added a write up on my website. Clint Basinger from LGR liked the idea, and I'm sending him one to play around with. If anyone is interested reading about it's development, the link is below. http://retrodepot.net/?page_id=1078 Edited March 21, 2019 by jdgabbard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ave1 Posted April 16, 2019 Share Posted April 16, 2019 Can you get this to work with the SNES mouse? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgabbard Posted April 16, 2019 Author Share Posted April 16, 2019 Possibly. I don't have an SNES mouse to test with. But at the end of the day it would just emulate a joystick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted April 16, 2019 Share Posted April 16, 2019 Is hat mode not using the gameport second analog stick axis. What's the difference? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgabbard Posted April 16, 2019 Author Share Posted April 16, 2019 It is using the second axis. But there is a difference in how those axis work under the two modes. In the traditional mode, it is simply another 2-axis current sensing. However, in HAT mode, it is a 1-axis current sense line. So the two modes are fundamentally different, and require different circuits to operate. I got around this limitation with some clever design implementations, and a bunch of digital to analog circuitry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonGrafx-16 Posted April 16, 2019 Share Posted April 16, 2019 Why would you use an SNES mouse on a vintage PC. My DOS PC has a PS/2 mouse port so I just use that wit a laser mouse. Though even PC serial mice would be better than the SNES mouse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ave1 Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 Why would you use an SNES mouse on a vintage PC. My DOS PC has a PS/2 mouse port so I just use that wit a laser mouse. Though even PC serial mice would be better than the SNES mouse. On PC flight games that have joystick compatibility and not mouse compatibility, it could be interesting... Also, I have an adapter for 15 pin PC controllers to work on the 5200. If the mouse could be made to work in an analog way with the SNES to 15 pin PC adapter and the two adapters were combined, it might make playing some of the analog 5200 games quite cool (Dreadnaught Factor, Tempest, Beamrider, etc...). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgabbard Posted April 17, 2019 Author Share Posted April 17, 2019 To get a true analog feel youd probably need extra circuitry. The way this is design is to provide an analog equivalent of a digital value. So when in the idle state it is mid range. When a button is pressed the value either goes full swing sink or no sink. What you suggest would be possible, but youd need a digital potentiometer. But I dont think they make them that: 1) have the correct value, and 2) the results Ive seen show they are not precise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ave1 Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 Alright- thanks for the answers. Appreciate it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fandenivoldsk Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 I just bought four of these. Thank you for making them! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgabbard Posted April 22, 2019 Author Share Posted April 22, 2019 Yeah, I saw that. It threw me off for a moment, as I got the notification of what it was after being notified of the dollar amount. Thanks for the support though! And Ill try to get them in the post this afternoon. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fandenivoldsk Posted April 22, 2019 Share Posted April 22, 2019 Maybe PlayStation and Sega Saturn versions sometime in the future? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgabbard Posted April 22, 2019 Author Share Posted April 22, 2019 It's possible, I may look into it. If I were to improve this, I think simply adding a method for variable current sinking so that it could emulate true analog values would be a must. Which would go well with Playstation analog sticks. So it's possible I might do something like that in the future. But the cost of bringing a product to market can be high. You don't want to guess what the cost on this project so far has been....not even counting my time... It's definitely a labor of love, fueled by the desire to give back a little of what I have benefited from in the various computing communities on the web. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgabbard Posted May 18, 2019 Author Share Posted May 18, 2019 Finally got my 3d printer back up and working. So I have finished designing the case for the SNES-2-GP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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