Have you ever sat at your computer playing Phantasy Star with a SMS emulator, thinking to yourself about all the great memories the SMS brought you?? Then realized that using the keyboard was ok but would be even better if you could use your old SMS pad on the PC??? Well I found a solution. A simple no nonsense way to hook your gamepad up to the PC using a little imagination and some drivers.
After some research and digging around this is the diagram I have found to work best for me. As you can see above, there is no need for any diodes or resistors. This is a straight-through connection. All one needs to do is connect the proper pins from the DB 9 to the DB 25 connector. I used an old IDE ribbon cable and some crimp on connectors (see below). That's it. (I used crimp connectors because my soldering skills are somewhat lacking)
Once its all wired then your looking at a matter of drivers. I used
Ppjoy for this. The diagram we are using was originally designed for use on a Linux system. With the use of Ppjoy you can use this diagram on Windows. I have only tested this on Windows XP and it works great. This one diagram worked for my Sega Master System pad, my Sega Genesis pad, and my Atari 2600 pad. Just remember to use the Linux selection in Ppjoy when setting it up.
After this is done, Your imagination is the limit. A lot of people have put these little devices into a plain black box, just something simple. I wanted to something different. Using my dremel tool I modified an empty SMS cart and put this adapter in it.
After I went through all this I decided to just finish it up and go one step farther. I made a insert label for a SMS Cart Box. The cut out the center spindle of a jewel case and glued it where the manual should go on the inside of the box. Made a CD label for my favorite emulator (cough...MEKA) and put it all in there. Makes a nice little package.
If you are interested in doing one of these for yourself please take pictures of your version. I would like to see them and maybe even start a separate page for user adapter mods. The insert and cd labels I made may be used freely and can be downloaded in my cd label section
Here is what I've done now. I took a standard Db9 pin Male connector and installed into the 3 1/2" plate on the front of the PC. I ran the cable out the back of the pc and wired it up to a 25pin connector and plugged it into the parallel port. The LED for now is just pure cosmetic until I can figure out how to make a circuit that will light it up only when a controller is plugged into it.. Now I can use my SMS Game Pad by simply plugging it in to the front of my PC. Everything here is wired up exactly like I described above. (this even works great with my Genesis controller and Gens)
