HELP NEEDED! New "Amiga-daptor" project to support Analogue controllers!

[SunChild]

This is very serious!

Following my buying an _analogue_ Speed King (with a DB9 plug -- or "D-Sub DE9" if you prefer), I then came into contact with Tom (thanks again to Dirkies for pointing me towards this great guy!), who is the developer of the "2600-daptor":

http://home.comcast.net/~tjhafner/2600-daptor.htm

Basically just another DB9 to USB adaptor for retro-controllers, if not for the fact that this particular one supports analogue paddles too (and is the ONLY one on the market to do so!).

So I contacted Tom and told him about my analogue Speed King, to check with him wether it would work alright with his adaptor. We also discussed a new taylor-made adaptor following the Amiga schematics and specific support for joysticks that would support digital AND analogue joysticks (although rather scarce, there ARE a bunch of games supporting analogue input on Amiga -- mostly flight and driving/racing simulators obviously).

To this day there is NO adaptor (Atari-plug to USB) on the market that support analogue joysticks! So that is a great project for anyone (of course they might not be many of them around) that owns an Amiga-compatible ANALOGUE joystick (or finds one to buy somewhere)!

Now the adaptor is ready, but needs testing!
Problem is Tom lives in Portland, Oregon. Living in France myself, shipping my Speed King to the US and have it shipped back to me afterwards would be way too expensive... So we're hoping someone on these boards living closer would be kind enough to lend his controller.

If you happen to be the happy owner of an Amiga-compatible _analogue_ joystick and/or of an _analogue_ version of the Konix Speed King, and if you live close enough that shipping won't cost a small fortune, you would be of great help to lend your controller for some days to Tom so he can properly test his adaptor before making it publicly available.
Needless to say, he's a very serious and great guy that can be trusted.


Please tell me in this thread -- or via PM if you prefer -- in case you're interested to help in the matter and I'll get you in touch with Tom.
Thanks in advance!

[prowler]

I've made this thread sticky for the time being to help you get a response.

[SunChild]

Thank you for that Prowler!
(I actually was thinking it would help -- but just didn't dare to ask, hehe! (*~__~)

[SunChild]

Well, evidently now my request is a bit hopeless... (^__^)


Since posting I could gain confirmation that my analogue Speed King is in fact fully compatible with Amiga (and games specifically supporting analogue obviously) so we'll work the other way around with Tom: I'm gonna receive his adapter, test it with the Speed King and he tells me every possible issue still present would then be easily manageable with firmware patches, so it shouldn't be too much trouble completing the adapter!

As soon as it is officially working and released, I'll post here again to annouce -- alright the absence of reply here rather plainly proves that few to no people own a retro analogue stick and/or are interested by an adapter supporting these, but Tom's adapter is also totally supporting digital (Atari-type) joysticks as well, so it's still a very useful item even though you don't own an analogue one.


Prowler, thanks again for tagging my request to stick on top! Ultimately a failure but it was worth trying! I guess you may just as well remove the sticky status in a couple of days now...

[Jope]

Yeah, let's have it up for a few more days.

You don't own a multimeter yourself? The easiest way to debug this would be to hook it up the the D9 connector, then just look what resistances you get when you move the stick all the way to each direction.

Then Tom can buy a pair of potentiometers of that same max value, hook them up to his adapter and test it at the comfort of his own home..

[SunChild]

Thank you for that suggestion Jope. Yeah, Tom told me about that option already!

Although I'm really short on electronic skills myself, I expect I could've managed that much easily, but I don't have no multimeter. If he didn't assure me already that he would be able to take care of any further problem along the way via firmware updates, I suppose I would have considered investing on one (how much does such item cost anyway?).

[Jope]

One can probably be had for around 2000yen.

[SunChild]

2000¥, ie. around 15€ these days, alright!

Thanks for the info -- and incidentally the currency conversion (^^) but I'm french and don't live in Japan anymore (was locateed in south Sendai so had to leave a couple of years ago following the quake/tunami/nuclear incident)

A good reminder I should really update that status of mine soon though, hehe!

[Jope]

Ok, my guess about the yen rate was a bit off then. Nevertheless, you can get a basic multimeter for 20-30 euro.

[Photon]

I suppose you're going to write your own program or game to use this? Cos maybe 1/10000 games use analog input devices.

Replace the mouse with a joystick perhaps?

Please share.

[Jope]

Thanks for the reminder, unsticking. :-)