cracksolth left a few comments on the page for my Saturn to 360 adapter, as a result I started looking back into it. I contacted the guys from Acid mods (great guys BTW) to see if they were doing anything different that would help me streamline the design. In terms of communicating with the older “Matrix” style 360 controllers I didn’t really learn much that I hadn’t already discovered; however I did learn that the newer Common Ground style controllers are getting easier to find by the day and that most of the new colored controllers all use that style of innards.
They even supplied me with this handy graphic to determine the difference between a Matrix and a CG controller without having to crack it open.
As a result I’ve decided to abandon the Matrix style controllers for the time being and just track down a CG style controller to work with since that will allow me to dramatically reduce the pin count.
I’m going to do some playing around and if I like the results I might re-open this project…
My goals this time is to get it to a point of making a “kit” or perhaps even making it easy enough that I can lower the costs involved as well as the ease of install so that more people can get their hands on this. If this is something you’ve been waiting for then you’ve only got cracksolth to thank.
Shoot me an email or post a comment if you have ideas for features you’d like to see.
I’m really excited about the possiblities here, as I’m not exactly good at putting one together myself. Considering the amount of people paying $100 for Hori EX Turbo controllers (not the stick, the actual gamepad), I think there’s definitely a market for this.
If you could get your costs down and sell it at a good price, I’m willing to bet it could be worth your while financially.
I’m really hoping more comes of it 🙂
well i made a little bit of progress… but I’ve been extremely busy with several other big projects (most of which you could probably glean from the other posts here) but I’m moving forward with what is at least a slightly updated version of the prototype I had in my video demo. I think I’ve got a way to contain it completely within a controller. If I figure it out I’m going to build one or two and throw them on eBay to see how they do then decide where to go from there.
i know you’re busy with other projects but how is this progressing? anything newsworthy yet? 🙂
no newsworthy progress yet. But I do have things mostly planned out and a controller disassembled and waiting to be hacked.
I don’t know how much of a “kit” I’ll be able to make but I am planning on selling this adapter on eBay once I’m done as a one time thing. Even if I get it done sooner it wont sell it until January just because I don’t want it to get lost in all the holiday BS.
might find some geeks with holiday money in their pockets too 🙂 well, i’ll be checking back here for news so don’t be afraid to show a few teasers every once in awhile!
Could one mail you an xbox 360 controller and an original sega saturn 6 button pad and pay you for the labour and shipping via paypal? I’m a fair person so tell me what it would take to make you happy.
Raoul
has there been any update to this project? i’d love to hear the status
no updates sorry, I some major time wasters come up with both my PC and my home theater blowing up, i had several people come to me with their dead PCs, taxes, my work bench still isn’t cleared.
i’ll post an update if an when it happens.
Any progress on the project? I would love to have a saturn/360 adapter that I could plug a pad or twin-stick into. I really don’t want to solder up my twin stick, although honestly I’m never going to play saturn VO, and I can’t find a Total Control 3 converter so…
sorry, no progress. The LS1 motor swap and some web based projects have been taking up most of my time.
I posted a reply over at xbox-scene about costs and cost reductions. Like “Will common ground controllers allow the removal of the analog switches from the design?” for example.
Will this free up resources, so the PIC that you used can handle the start button as well? Will this enable an even cheaper PIC to be used?
Of course, I really like the idea of a converter for SNES & Saturn. I think I prefer Super Nintendo pad for Street Fighter (never played many fighting games on Saturn).
I don’t keep track of the XS thread sorry… the best way to get a hold of me is through PM or email
to answer your question though it has nothing to do with the style of controller you’re using.
The PIC Chip has 18 I/O ports, you need 6 of them to communicate with Saturn Controller which leaves 12 for the Xbox 360’s button… the saturn controller has 13 buttons which means 1 of them has to be left out in the cold. I figured start was the least necessary to have mapped.
The only way to do this would be to use a different chip with more I/O ports and re-write the code. there are other methods too but they all involve re-writing the code, and most of them would introduce lag.
You might want to check out the UPCB project at the shoryuken forums:
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=131230
I posted on page 46 with quotes from the entire thread dealing with console controller input. The UPCB can format controller data into most different console specific formats and output to said console through custom made cables.
UPCB Supports 360 through piggybacking on a common ground 360 controller board.
If someone could program the UPCB to decode controller signals, or create a similar board to decode controller signals into a parallel high/low format and pass this to UPCB, it could be a near universal converter.
I was wondering if this project is completely dead or if it has a chance of resurgence?
I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you…. I intend to get back to it at some point but its way down on my priority list right now.
Too bad – it was a great idea. Thanks for the heads up though.