The easy Way to get
Playstation Pads
working on the ST
About two years ago I came across a Hong-Kong based company which
produced hardware for oldschool systems, such as NES, SNES, PC
Engine, SEGA Mega-Drive, etc... named ToToTEK. So far they had
built flash-memory based cards and gamepad adapters for those.
http://www.tototek.com/
When I checked their products, I saw they had an adapter for
connecting PlayStation pads to the SEGA MegaDrive and SEGA
MarkIII. For those who are not into Japanese game systems, the
MarkIII is the Japanese version of the SEGA Master-System.
However I guess everyone on Atari knows that MS pads work fine
on ST. ;)
So, basically here was an adapter which would allow me to play
with PSX pads on my MD and most probably on ST. That was enough
information for me to me to order two of them!
When I received them, I instantly tried them on the MD, and what
can I say? They were working like a charm! (that was to be
expected on the MicroMachines 96 extended pad ports that the
game provides on its card)
Then I tried it on ST, crossing my fingers and... well in short:
it failed. Having only one button working. Yeah, like when you
plug a MD pad on ST...
Since the adapter is auto-adaptive to the system it's currently
plugged on, it seems it recognized the ST as a MD and not as a
MS. I checked the MS pad connector pinouts and compared those to
the ST ones. What I saw was that the +5V wasn't on the same pin.
Maybe switching those two would do the trick?
I tried it, building an additional adapter (or rather having my
dad building it for me ;) with those two pins switched. But then
why not put a switch between ST and MS mode? This way I could
use it as an extension cable for ST joysticks and then being
able to stay away from the doomed design of the ST
joystick/mouse ports.
And then why not put switches between some buttons? Having up
direction switched with MS pad B button would make ST
platformers nicer to play. And then this along down direction
switched with MS pad A button would make most ST racing games
play like console ones, sweet, sweet. :)
So I plugged the PlayStation to MD/MK3 adapter on my home-made
MS/ST adapter, plugged a PSX pad at the end, and everything
worked! Not much of a surprise actually, but still ultra cool.
:)
Vroom plays really fine in "console pad racing" mode (both up
and down direction switched with pad buttons).
Starioland can now have the NES control it requires (up
direction switched with pad B button).
(yeah it's a bit raw at the moment, I just need to find a proper
case ;)
So here is the pin switching explanation to build the MS/ST
adapter (the numbers in brackets can be found on the picture
above):
_5_4_3_2_1_
\ o o o o o / Pinouts of the connector
\_o_o_o_o_/ plugged on the ST port (1)
9 8 7 6
_1_2_3_4_5_
\ o o o o o / Pinouts of the connector
\_o_o_o_o_/ to plug the PSX to MD/MK3 adapter on (2)
6 7 8 9
- for MS mode (+5V volt redirect), switch pins 5 and 7.
- for up switched with MS pad B button, switch pins 1 and 9.
- for down switched with MS pad A button, switch pins 2 and 6.
One difficulty is to find a connector which would be slim enough
fit under the ST. What I did myself was ripping a basic ST mouse
(sorry if it hurts, but it wasn't working fine anymore ;) to get
its connector and cable. The pin 5 wasn't present on this cable,
as it's basically unused on ST.
To find the PSX to MD/MK3 adapter on ToToTEK website, browse
"OUR PRODUCTS / HARDWARE" then scroll down to "Classic Joypad
converter for MD+MarkIII". The current price is 15 USD for one.
Dma-Sc for Alive, 2006-07-01
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