controller game pad?

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CompMan
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Re: controller game pad?

Post by CompMan »

havok1919 wrote:We sell the RetroDuo at our arcade, so I stole one of those (I'm one of the owners, so I'm allowed to do stuff like that there) ;-) and tore it apart.
Do you know who makes the RetroDuo? Or who your supplier is?

Compman
havok1919
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Re: controller game pad?

Post by havok1919 »

CompMan wrote:Do you know who makes the RetroDuo? Or who your supplier is?
I'm not sure who the ODM is-- we buy from Innex here in the US (http://www.innexinc.com/).

-Clay
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uze6666
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Re: controller game pad?

Post by uze6666 »

Holy shmoltz! Implementing the PSX code, I realized the clock must be between 250-500Khz! That's pathetically slow and somewhat problematic because we can have only 4 timebases in the Uzebox: 30Hz,60Hz,15.7Khz and 28.8Mhz. The only possible option I see is polling during vblank. At a minimum of (5 bytes * 8 bits *2us/bit ) +12us= 92us/byte = 2631 CPU cycles...near two scanlines wasted?!? That's a pity since the venerable NES/SNES interface can be clocked at ~5Mhz. The only way I can see would be to use the SPI port to clock-in bits since we could then fire it at scanline rate. Or we could have an ATtiny on the main board acting as a "speed bridge"? Or...am I missing something? :oops:

Well, I really hope you guys find SNES connectors after all! :)

Uze
havok1919
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Re: controller game pad?

Post by havok1919 »

uze6666 wrote:Holy shmoltz! Implementing the PSX code, I realized the clock must be between 250-500Khz! That's pathetically slow and somewhat problematic because we can have only 4 timebases in the Uzebox: 30Hz,60Hz,15.7Khz and 28.8Mhz. The only possible option I see is polling during vblank.
Ahhh, good point. I forgot about the datarate... Well, I'd say just have it as a #define or whatever for inclusion in the vblank. Games that want to support it just lose that extra bit of CPU. (I'd probably just make do since it is nice for some games that'd be tough to pull off with a SNES controller. (analog gas/brake for driving, analog paddle for breakouts/pongs, analog aim for tail gunner/missile command, etc.)

IIRC, the old 'digital' sticks are pretty dumb and pretty forgiving of the datarate, but the wireless stuff and Dual Shock 2 and the like were finicky about being talked to "as expected".

I've actually warmed up to the SNES pads now. There's enough buttons to be interesting and we can still buy "new" controllers for pretty cheap. Fingers crossed on the connectors. ;-)

We can auto-sense between them all I think, so it'll still be pretty seamless for the users/programmers.

-Clay
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