I've been on a bit on odyssey lately, starting out with my freakish desire to play Dance Dance Revolution and Street Fighter IV on my PC. Ever since my projector broke down, my best AV equipment has been my PC, and I've started gaming on that instead. Since buying arcade sticks for the x360 is grotesquely expensive and I'm a filthy student, I decided to go budget and buy some old PS2/PSX sticks as well.
So I bought a couple of USB adapters for the GameCube (for the dance mat) and the PS2 (for the arcade sticks). The dance mat technically works, but refuses to accept input from left and right or up and down at the same time, so that was a huge waste of time and money right there. The "digital mode" trick that all these adapters are supposed to support (hold down UP + start + select) doesn't work on the dance mat for some peculiar reason, so I've all but given that up.
Next up, the PS2-to-USB box. I own a Super Dual Box from MayFlash that I got off eBay, and something else that I got from Amazon called a "PSX-USB Adapter". Both came with drivers, which I immediately didn't install because I a) don't trust cheap manufacturers of USB conversion boxes to write software that won't rape the soul of my computer and b) Win7 supports analogue joypads natively, so why bother? The USB adapter should simply be an interface that allows the connected pad to be parsed as a standard PC-compatible USB controller. That semi-worked with regular PS2 pads, which would only work when the analogue mode was enabled. The Street Fighter 15th anniversary stick (produced by Nubytech, with an American-style pear-shaped stick and icky buttons; both Xbox and PS2 inputs from the same lead) didn't work. Not what I wanted.
I installed the drivers, which made the regular pads work perfectly fine, with d-pads mapped to axes (analogue input) by default and everything looking all sweet and dandy. So I hook up the 15th anniversary stick ...
Still doesn't ****ing work. Controllers work fine, even when they are switched off, and they map d-pad input to the axes like good little PS2 controllers should. HOWEVER, when connecting a dance mat or an arcade stick, jack diddly squat happens. If I connect both a PS2 pad AND a digital input-only device like a mat or a stick, the offending input device is somehow detected, because the driver reports that several buttons are being pressed, the Y axis is always maxed out (255), and when I reset the axes, the analogue input thing momentarily jumps to 172, then immediately hops back up to 255 again. I also occasionally get input from the SELECT button of the arcade stick, but that just randomly happens every now and then. I know this because I've used JoyToKey to map letters to every single input on the stick, to make sure I'll know if the adapter suddenly decides to work.
I've installed the hokey Chinese death drivers that came with both adapters, and they have in no way resolved the issue. I've ordered a third and final USB box, and if that doesn't work I'll ... uh ... give up, I suppose, and add another notch to my special computer hate stick that I keep next to my bed and gnaw on when I have no other release for my frustration.
So, bottom line: Is this Win7, the Nubytech dick-stick, or the adapters making trouble? What can I do to fix it?
So I bought a couple of USB adapters for the GameCube (for the dance mat) and the PS2 (for the arcade sticks). The dance mat technically works, but refuses to accept input from left and right or up and down at the same time, so that was a huge waste of time and money right there. The "digital mode" trick that all these adapters are supposed to support (hold down UP + start + select) doesn't work on the dance mat for some peculiar reason, so I've all but given that up.
Next up, the PS2-to-USB box. I own a Super Dual Box from MayFlash that I got off eBay, and something else that I got from Amazon called a "PSX-USB Adapter". Both came with drivers, which I immediately didn't install because I a) don't trust cheap manufacturers of USB conversion boxes to write software that won't rape the soul of my computer and b) Win7 supports analogue joypads natively, so why bother? The USB adapter should simply be an interface that allows the connected pad to be parsed as a standard PC-compatible USB controller. That semi-worked with regular PS2 pads, which would only work when the analogue mode was enabled. The Street Fighter 15th anniversary stick (produced by Nubytech, with an American-style pear-shaped stick and icky buttons; both Xbox and PS2 inputs from the same lead) didn't work. Not what I wanted.
I installed the drivers, which made the regular pads work perfectly fine, with d-pads mapped to axes (analogue input) by default and everything looking all sweet and dandy. So I hook up the 15th anniversary stick ...
Still doesn't ****ing work. Controllers work fine, even when they are switched off, and they map d-pad input to the axes like good little PS2 controllers should. HOWEVER, when connecting a dance mat or an arcade stick, jack diddly squat happens. If I connect both a PS2 pad AND a digital input-only device like a mat or a stick, the offending input device is somehow detected, because the driver reports that several buttons are being pressed, the Y axis is always maxed out (255), and when I reset the axes, the analogue input thing momentarily jumps to 172, then immediately hops back up to 255 again. I also occasionally get input from the SELECT button of the arcade stick, but that just randomly happens every now and then. I know this because I've used JoyToKey to map letters to every single input on the stick, to make sure I'll know if the adapter suddenly decides to work.
I've installed the hokey Chinese death drivers that came with both adapters, and they have in no way resolved the issue. I've ordered a third and final USB box, and if that doesn't work I'll ... uh ... give up, I suppose, and add another notch to my special computer hate stick that I keep next to my bed and gnaw on when I have no other release for my frustration.
So, bottom line: Is this Win7, the Nubytech dick-stick, or the adapters making trouble? What can I do to fix it?
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