Yey, my adapter does work!

[per]

Some time ago, I told about my plans for making an adapter to connect a NES-controller pad to the keyboard port of an XT. I know it is 10 times easier to use the parallel port, but I wanted to use the keyboard port because nobody has done that before.

Well, the parts recently arrived, and here is what I've got now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X04lBL0xl0

 

[carlsson]

Nice project. Is it possible to make an adapter that lets you have the keyboard attached as well?

 

[per]

Nice project. Is it possible to make an adapter that lets you have the keyboard attached as well?

Then I have to add a microcontroller to the mix, but I don't have the abillity or tools to program sutch a thing. In addition, microcontrollers are usually too small to fit on a breadboard .

 

[barythrin]

lol, very careful not to speak on the video? Cool that you got it working. So what are the values that keep scanning seemingly even when a key is being held down? I would have expected no input unless a key was being pressed.

What ideas do you have in mind for this? I think the reverse would be interesting. Adding a keyboard to an NES or I'd assume modding an NES controller to serial or USB or something that it'd be usable in any games.

I guess if you modify the values sent to match the number pad you could probably play games, or create a config file and driver to attach to the keyboard interrupt and convert the values to specific keys to make it compatible with different games that have a different key for jump or fire.

Then load up sopwith lol or Pango, fleet sweep or any other fun little dos game.

 

[per]

lol, very careful not to speak on the video? Cool that you got it working. So what are the values that keep scanning seemingly even when a key is being held down? I would have expected no input unless a key was being pressed.

What ideas do you have in mind for this? I think the reverse would be interesting. Adding a keyboard to an NES or I'd assume modding an NES controller to serial or USB or something that it'd be usable in any games.

I guess if you modify the values sent to match the number pad you could probably play games, or create a config file and driver to attach to the keyboard interrupt and convert the values to specific keys to make it compatible with different games that have a different key for jump or fire.

Then load up sopwith lol or Pango, fleet sweep or any other fun little dos game.

Ehh.. I got a kindof norwegianized accent and I'm a little shy...

For the input, the controller doesn't actually feed the computer with data the same way as the keyboard.

The keyboard kind of feeds the interface with data, it proivdes both data (with the start bit included) and the clock signal. Because of this, there will allways be syncronazion, and the computer doesn't really have to care about the input before IRQ 1 goes active.

The NES controller works more like a joystic connected to a game-port. Instead of providing both the data and clock, it expects the clock as input and will send output syncronized with the clock. In addition, it requires a "latch" input to latch the button settings.

Luckily, the clock line in the keyboard port is bidirectional AND open-collector, and can be controlled by both software and hardware (that's why you can block it). In order to provide the clock input, I just toggle the clock line by software. The latch signal and start-bit is provided by a pulse generator based uppon the clock input and an 1-bit shift register.

---------

So all in all, instead of getting the data fed in automaticly, I have to poll it in with a software routine. This routine can't know if a key is pressed in advance, and that's why interrupts keep coming in even if no key is pressed.

 

[JT64]

Some time ago, I told about my plans for making an adapter to connect a NES-controller pad to the keyboard port of an XT. I know it is 10 times easier to use the parallel port, but I wanted to use the keyboard port because nobody has done that before.

Well, the parts recently arrived, and here is what I've got now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X04lBL0xl0

Nice demos of your 5160 and your adapter. Any chance we could get a little demonstration with network adapter and Lynx or Bobcat webbrowser?

Do you have a soundblaster and midiprogram installed, a little sound and midi demo would be nice.
Would also be nice to see the configured autoexec.bat and config.sys for a Microsoft share, i guess the share must use FAT16? Is there a limit to the size of the connected share?

I just started to play around with my XT and ethernet, i can load the packet drivers and get uplink to my D-Link router but that is about it.

I will try Bobcat if sucessful maybe i try post a video.

JT

 

[Raven]

Very cool, and very pretty XT, I envy your setup there.. Now ya just gotta get a NES emulator running on the XT and you're set! lol..

 

[per]

lol, very careful not to speak on the video? Cool that you got it working. So what are the values that keep scanning seemingly even when a key is being held down? I would have expected no input unless a key was being pressed.

What ideas do you have in mind for this? I think the reverse would be interesting. Adding a keyboard to an NES or I'd assume modding an NES controller to serial or USB or something that it'd be usable in any games.

I guess if you modify the values sent to match the number pad you could probably play games, or create a config file and driver to attach to the keyboard interrupt and convert the values to specific keys to make it compatible with different games that have a different key for jump or fire.

Then load up sopwith lol or Pango, fleet sweep or any other fun little dos game.

I've now made a new video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfOzZSU_dO8

This time, you can actually SEE me, and I speak. Sorry for my accent.

What I do is to simply play a small version of "Snake" I made in some sparetime yesterday and today. I can release a "keyboard" version of it if anybody would like it, please PM me if you are interested.