Ghetto rigged sega adapter

Finally got around to making this thing. I have a set of wireless sega controllers, and the receiver for them. Unfortunately, Sega and Amiga game port have the +5v line on different pins. (Amiga is on pin 7, Sega on pin 5).
So I bought a generic dbn-9 male-to-female serial cable, and chopped it off so it wasn
t a foot long. Unfortunately, I happen to be soldering-disabled (I've tried, end up making a huge mess and spewing language that my daughter doesnt't need to hear, as well as repeatedly burning myself.) So I got a wire-crimping/stripping kit. In this thing, I found a bunch of connectors that snap together, as well as the crimping end. After stripping all the wires, crimping the connectors, and testing the male end (I'm still looking for a paper clip that isn't made out of plastic), I have 2 dbn-9 connectors that look like they're held together by electric tape.... Going to use it on my old Atari 800 (In case I screwed something up, I don't want to fry the Amiga), then on the Amiga..

@kvasir

Ahh nothing like the smell of solder burning and electrical tape
so how does it work?

@328gts

So far, not very well. Haven't plugged it into the Amiga at all, had the thing since 1994, don't want to blow it up. So, I plugged it into the Atari 800, which my wife just informed me hasn't worked since an unfortunate incident involving a moving van and a loosly packed book. (Something about planes, I think it was my hard-cover Janes Encyclopedia of aircraft) Haven't worked the courage to plug it into the 1200 yet.

@328gts

ITS ALIVE!!!!

Would have posted about an hour ago, but I foolishly decided to test it with super-skidmarks AGA, A game I haven't played in ages. The fact it kept me distracted for that long should be a slight hint as to this rigs functionality.

Anyway, got a pic of what the whole thing looks like, put together:

The thing shipped with 2 controllers, however the other one was in the other room, and I was too lazy to go get it at the time. The Sega plug fits nicely into the DBN-9 male connector, and the controller doesn't plug into anything (of course ).


And the (top part) mess of cables behind my tower:


The black, shiny electric-tape laminated cable is the "adapter", and the DBN=9 fits in there perfectly, too.

After finding out the Atari was reduced to the status of spare parts before I even tested it, I finally got sick of the suspense, and figuring I have 2 other damaged A1200 MOBO's that I could pry CIA chips off of in case one decided to blue-smoke-suicide on me, I killed the power on the 1200T, plugged the thing in, and turned it back on.

First good sign: No smoke pouring out of the case, and after the 1st reboot, the cheesy A1000 boot-up jingle hack I like to use piped over the speakers. System booted normally.

Second good sign: Pressed a button on the controller, and the LED on the receiver turned on.

Third good sign: Skidmarks AGA loaded, and I was able to kick my feet up, recline in the chair, and race about unencumbered by the cables that my other 2 sega controllers use. Finally, quit Skidmarks AGA, and decided to run more specific tests.



Using both Joystick from Aminet, and IR Monitor for my PDA (useful for finding out if a remote is dead, or receiver isn't responding), I set about pushing the various buttons to see if they work. As expected, the 4-directional hat switch worked fine, as did the A and B buttons. The other 4 buttons didn't do much. (Theres at least one other thread in here, or AW.net/A.org that covers why.. I complained about that one before. )
Only bad thing, the "second" button seems to flicker. I'm not sure if this is a setting on the controllers turbo functions, though playing with them didn't help. I'll have to check with a 2-button game to see if its a prob. with the Sega pad, or the testing software. The fact that I can't think of such a game off the top of my head shows how much I really care, though.

The receiver also has another plug, which is currently dangling about the back of my desk (in such a manner as to not attract unwanted attention from my cat), though I'm going to plug it into my joy/mouse switch and see if it works. (Regular sega controllers don't need the +5v line swapped to work, and the receiver responds when I switch the controller to player 2. Thinking it should be happy, now its getting its power from the joystick port. Plus don't want to suck too much juice out of the Mobo.)

OK, got both controllers working now. The second controller didn't need the 5V line swapped over, so I didn't need to cobble another adapter together. I plugged controller #2 into this thing (Mouse/Joystick switch), with the wireless mouse -> usb/ps2 adapter -> Mr. Mysza ps2/Amiga adapter (of all the h/w I have on my Amiga, adapters make a significant portion of it) in its mouse port. Fired up a couple of 2-player games, along with the joystick tester that I used to originally test it.
Second controller works great! A few caveats:

1) I wansn't using the mouse switch originally, because it doesn't seem to pass the mouse wheel input through properly. I've decided to live without it, as nudging the wheel caused more headaches than convenience. (I'm using Freewheel and wheeldriver. If anyone knows a fix for this prob., let me know)

2) The fire button/ left mouse button switches between the joystick and mouse, if I have the controller switched to the wrong side, I disable the mouse. And the switches cord is so short, the LED's that indicate the active device are out of sight. Might be obvious what happened with the mouse not moving, but being wireless, dead batteries could cause some confusion as well.

3) All the wireless stuff I have plugged in sucks power from the mobo. I have a decent (250 watt) PSU, though I'm starting to get worried about mobo drain. (I also have several USB devices plugged in, though the hungry ones are connected to a self-powered hub)

Overall, this has been a wonderful little experiment, and has done wonders clearing my desk of unwanted cable-clutter. Though I have a large amount of desk real-estate dedicated to various wireless recievers. And the wiring behind the computer is still a rats nest.

One of my main concerns was usability with these controllrs, as they rely on infrared to communicate to the receiver. However, the controllers seem to have a very wide transmission, and the receiver is sensative enough to pick up said transmission. Also, this thing was originally designed to control a sega while sitting on a chair/couch/whatever on the other side of the room, and my computer chair is virtually "on-top" of the computer. So no probs there.

As far as interference, I'm running a wireless mouse, and sometimes a wireless keyboard. (Can only get it running via USB right now, looking into how to fix that) Also, I have a playstation DVD remote plugged into a playstation usb adapter. Using Subway+Poseidan as a remote-control task-launcher. As well as having 2 wireless routers, among several laptops that connect that way.

Nothing interferes with anything else. Of all the wireless stuff, the only infrared devices are the 2 controllrs, the playstation DVD remote, and my PalmOS PDA. The rest uses RF for signal, and they all play nicely together. (Even made sure my cordless phone doesn't use 2.5 ghz, as thats a common problem with wireless networking). The only other item that responds to the other IR devices is my PDA, though the only program that does so was designed that way. (for diagnosing remotes, etc... Was useful in verifying funtionality of the controllers, as I did get them second-hand)

Time to log off, and fire up Skidmarks AGA! And let my 3yo daughter have at the second controller!