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First post, by Wacky25

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Hello everyone. I want to use an original PlayStation controller, (or Snes), on my old pc. But I cant find any adaptor to plug the controller in game port, only for parallel port. Does the parallel port have the same compatibility than game port? In windows, I supposed a standard USB adaptor will work, but I am not sure about Dos.

Pc specs:
Windows 98se
Pentium 3 600 mhz
384 mo ram
Voodoo 4 32 mo
Sound Blaster 16

Thank you.

Reply 2 of 6, by Jepael

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Such controllers can be connected to parallel port with a passive adapter, but I bet there are no games to support reading from them through parallel port. I know of one game that supported a DIY converter box that enabled four players to use Atari/Amiga/C64 type joysticks on a PC parallel port.

It is possible to make a converter with some kind of microcontroller inside it that will convert such controllers to regular PC joysticks, but I don't know if anyone has made one. It should be doable by any electronics hobbyist.

I know there are some USB drivers for DOS, but for USB joysticks (the USB to PS converter looks like a USB joystick), I haven't heard of them - as it would be difficult to emulate the standard joystick interface.

Reply 4 of 6, by Wacky25

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Jepael wrote:

Such controllers can be connected to parallel port with a passive adapter, but I bet there are no games to support reading from them through parallel port. I know of one game that supported a DIY converter box that enabled four players to use Atari/Amiga/C64 type joysticks on a PC parallel port.

It is possible to make a converter with some kind of microcontroller inside it that will convert such controllers to regular PC joysticks, but I don't know if anyone has made one. It should be doable by any electronics hobbyist.

I know there are some USB drivers for DOS, but for USB joysticks (the USB to PS converter looks like a USB joystick), I haven't heard of them - as it would be difficult to emulate the standard joystick interface.

Unfortunately, I cant find this kind of adaptor. 🙁 I know Dos have a basic Usb support with specific driver, but I never success with it.

Reply 5 of 6, by Zup

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As I said before (sorry, I was posting with a phone), sneskey is the better way to connect such a thing to a PC. I made an adaptor for a SNES gamepad and almost finished Crusader: No Remorse with that pad (I hit a bug on mission #12 and lost interest). Note that SNES gamepad is fully digital (no analog sticks), so using a mapper than convert button presses into keys is not a problem.

If you use Windows 9x, you can use DirectPad Pro. It works more or less like sneskey, but is a windows native driver.

Wacky25 wrote:

I know Dos version of Zsnes work with Snes controller, but its probably a specific case.

Allegro had native support for parallel port devices, so a number of games supported it. Older versions of MAME for DOS could use it, but you need to edit the mame.ini file. I don't know if newer versions of Allegro still supports it, but older Allegro games will still work.

Also, the Linux kernel had a module that supported parallel port joysticks. I guess they hadn't dropped support, but Linux is an entirely different beast (but you could use DOSBox or Wine to play games with that joystick).

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Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 6 of 6, by GunKneeNeon

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Zup wrote on 2016-02-15, 07:10:

As I said before (sorry, I was posting with a phone), sneskey is the better way to connect such a thing to a PC. I made an adaptor for a SNES gamepad and almost finished Crusader: No Remorse with that pad (I hit a bug on mission #12 and lost interest). Note that SNES gamepad is fully digital (no analog sticks), so using a mapper than convert button presses into keys is not a problem.

If you use Windows 9x, you can use DirectPad Pro. It works more or less like sneskey, but is a windows native driver.

Hi, I have a PS1 controller connecting to my PC via LPT port. In Win98 it works flawlessly with DirectPad Pro, but in DOS it doesn't work with Sneskey. When I run "senskey /x", all buttons flickering rapidly between pressed up and down. If I simply run go.bat, it hangs. How can I solve this issue?

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