Posted by WFH on February 09, 2002 at 14:51:22:
In Reply to: sidewinder to posted by bob on February 08, 2002 at 22:20:00:
You won't get 10 arcade buttons because your controller does not have 10 buttons. You will get at most the same number of buttons that your gamepad has. Some gamepads have 8 buttons, but 4 are regular buttons and the other four are "rapid fire" versions of the other 4 buttons, so you really only have 4 buttons. The old gameport Sidewinder has a "Mode" button that wouldn't work as an arcade button, so you would leave it unconnected.
You will be able to connect to a 8-way arcade stick.
Try searching this site (BYOAC) for examples of controllers and arcade machines that use the same Sidewinder hack as yours.
I've hacked several PC and console gamepads and so far, none of them had the holes that would have made connecting the wires easy. I'm building a MAME cab and decided to use an I-PAC. It's a keyboard encoder that's programmable and has screw terminals, so connecting the wires will be easy. You can find more info on this site (interfaces section) and a link to the I-PAC order site.
You can also try searching the Web. I built a controller using a CompUSA 8-button gamepad hack ($6) and I found a web page from someone that did the exact same thing. I used the driver that he recommended to get it to work as an actual 8-button gamepad. The standard driver treats it as a 4-button gamepad with throttle and rudder.
Good luck and have fun :)
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"We have seen strange things today!"