saturn controller on comp

anyone know the pinout for it? I looked over at gamesx but they didnt have much, or rather anything clear. also searched through the forum over there an didnt find any helpful info. been thinkin bout splicin up a controller to work with computer. just dont know what pins go where, or a diagram would be even better. ie somthin clean an concise
 
I would also like to know the pinout, as I have wanted to make an adapter to use PSX controlers on saturn for a while. Its fairly easy to find the pinout of PSX contrrolers, but I have yet to find info on saturn ones.

Edit-

Looks like Mal posted a link just a split second before I posted.
 
I don't think it would be particularly easy to hook up a PSX controller to a Saturn.
 
thnx

forgot bout that site, havent been there in months, originaly saw the diagram for psx controller i modded. since then ive turned it an a dc arcade stick into somthin 4 comp. well time 2 give this a try
 
I would also like to know the pinout, as I have wanted to make an adapter to use PSX controlers on saturn for a while. Its fairly easy to find the pinout of PSX contrrolers, but I have yet to find info on saturn ones.

Why would you want to use those god-awful controllers anyways?

Cyber Warrior X
 
they are pretty bad but they work good for arcade sticks. they have a shitload of buttons on the thing. just stick the pcb in a arcade stick box. dppad pro/2kpro or whateva already supports psx shit. and its better than usin a keyboard ic cause from wha i hear you get ghosting somtimes.
 
CyberWarriorX, the reason I want to use the playstation controler on my saturn is (1.) I know several people that wont touch a saturn because they don't like the controler, and I would like to get them to play the system, and (2.) I personaly prefer to PSX controler to the saturn ones, and after I noticed that it had the exact same number of buttons on it as the saturn controler (plus a select button), I decided I wanted to make an adapter. Also, I have an adapter to use PSX controlers on the N64, but the thing is broken, and I figured I could put the parts to good use and make my own adapter, only for the saturn instead of N64.
 
you could do a psx controller for saturn. would take a little work. it'd take alot of work to make an adapter, you'd need to mod the controllers themselves. you'll have to trash a saturn controller for each psx you want to use.

desolder the 24pin ic chip in the saturn controller. but take a pic of the controller up close before you do. put it on comp screen for reference. then solder wires to the pins that went to the traces.

up

down

left

right

a

b

c

x

y

z

ltrigger

rtrigger

start

onces you solder some wires to the pins that used those.

look at the traces to the other pins. saturn connector has 9pins i believe, or is it 10.

cut the cable off of the already mutilated saturn controller.

solder the wires to the ic chip on the pins already noted to be the 'out' pins.

next take the 'in' wires that you soldered onto the chip earler and solder the proper wires to the psx button leads that you want.

dont forget to trace the ground lead an solder the proper wire to that. fold the wires across each other on the saturn ic chip so they cant be just pulled straight out. give em some slack, get electrical tape an tape the chip up.

tape the chip to the back of psx pcb an put controller together. now you've got yourself a workin psx>sat

reason why you dont wanna try to make a adapter box is cause its gonna be more trouble. ic chips compress the # of wires. you'd have to decompress that then recompress it at a converter box. its easiest just to mod the controller itself.
 
any other page to see how can convert step by step a sat controller to a pc controller.

i dont really understand the diagram.

sad.gif
 
It's not just a matter of knowing the pinout, you also need to know the protocol. Almost all systems that don't use the de facto Commodore/Atari one/two-button stick pinout have a protocol of some kind to reduce the number of wires, so you can't just rewire the pad into a new connector and use it on another system (NES to/from SNES notwithstanding). PSX's protocol is one of the more complex ones, as it's designed to be expandable to future controller types as well as for interfacing with memory cards. That's not to say that it's impossible to adapt it to other systems, just that you probably can't do it with a handful of standard logic chips (well, maybe if it was literally a handful...). There is a page floating around with detailed PSX protocol information, and I think Gamestation X has a local mirror of it, so this isn't totally hopeless by any means. Their Saturn controller page, however, contains no Saturn controller information at all - what's there seems to be an overview of the 3DO protocol. I'll dump what I know about the Saturn protocol here.

The Saturn interface uses 9 pins: 2 power pins, 3 control pins, and 4 data pins. The control pins are used to tell the controller which set of data to present at the data pins - it is a multiplexed parallel interface rather than a serial interface. It's essentially an expanded version of the Genesis/Megadrive controller interface. The data pins are called U, D, L, and R, presumably because they present the directional pad by default. The control pins are called TH, TL, and TR. Only two of these (TH and TL I think, but I'm not sure) are used on a standard Saturn pad, so some pinouts label the other one as a second 5v supply. Anyway, two control pins allows addressing 4 sets of data, or 16 buttons. So, to read the Saturn controller, the system cycles through each combination of the two control lines to read all four sets of data. This part of the interface should not be difficult. However, IIRC there is also an identification phase, which might require a little extra effort. Once my PC is set up again, I'll dig into the SMPC manual and see what I can find...
 
what i was sayin tho was to just use the saturns ic chip an bypass the encoding done on the psx controller. solder right to the leads. the ic chip cant tell the difference between a psx button an a saturn button. its all in the multiplexing. you would be limited to the # of buttons saturn has, meaning no select button but it would work.
 
I don't see why that wouldn't work, but it would be a hell of a lot of effort to do it.
 
well thats the fun in it. would be a clean job.

gonna start work on my pc>sat connector today. thinkin about gettin a 6player adapter just to see how it would work. mod a extension cable for the adapter so only have to do it once. that way can hook up more controllers. the diagram off arcade controls ziplabel mirror looks good but i wonder how it would work, and how 2kpad pro or whatever they call it would work with 6saturn controllers hooked up. the multitap just compresses the signal, the real question is will the software be able to recognize it, an furthermore, will the parrallel port be able to supply enuff power for 6controllers. mind you all i want is a couple
 
the multitap just compresses the signal, the real question is will the software be able to recognize it, an furthermore, will the parrallel port be able to supply enuff power for 6controllers.

You'll definitely need an external power supply if you want to hook up a multitap. The parallel port is not designed to supply power at all, and can barely manage to do it for most single controllers with the hack used by most of the DirectPad interfaces.

I'm also fairly certain that the PC drivers won't handle that. I'm not saying that it can't be done, I'm just fairly sure that DirectPad Pro/NTPAD don't know how to do it.
 
you'd need a 5v supply right?

as far as it supporting it, well i only heard it supports 2 but couldnt hurt 2 try more
 
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