Converting a controller to work with a pc

[Donut]

I have a bunch of old controllers from my NES, SNES, and N64 that i would love to convert to use with the pc. thats pretty much all i know though. my cousin says i should use a "propeller micro controller" to allow the computer to read the messages from the controller.

i have looked online all over the place for tutorials on this. some places sell them already made, some have kits to allow you to make your own, but i want to construct mine myself. i have read some tutorials about it, but none of them are very clear on how the controller works, and they all use different methods.

does anyone know anything about this or how i would go about doing this? what i would need, how i program it for the computer, etc...

any controller would be fine, but i would prefer a guide for an SNES controller
E: i want it for USB. i saw a tutorial for parallel ports, but im on a laptop that only has USB
E2: plug and play would be kind of epic. like, i plug the thing in and it installs the drivers automatically, like most usb sticks

[Mr Buckshot]

http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/snes_nes_usb/index_en.php

[Donut]

damnit. what did you type in to find that?

[RobertGraham]

damnit. what did you type in to find that?
http://www.google.com/

[Donut]

seriously... :U
i was looking for keywords, you know, so i can type in what he typed in to see what different pages come up. apparently what i typed in made the search a little too narrow.

[Mr Buckshot]

I typed in SNES to usb adapter. Hope that helps ;)

[Donut]

I typed in SNES to usb adapter. Hope that helps ;)
indeed it does help. i got some great ideas for other projects i had in mind too, so double thanks :D

[Mr Buckshot]

Yeah, I used to do the same thing with my old Xbox 1 controllers. Don't have them anymore though, but my X360 gamepad works on my PC without any adapter so that's ok.

There's also one of these for the N64 controller. Try it with Project 64 (I use my 360 gamepad) emulator, haha.

[Cojafoji]

http://edshowtos.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-make-your-own-nes-usb-controller.html

[Donut]

yeah i decided to follow this one ^ because i dont have any E-cash to buy a premade circuit board, and idfk where to get any of the stuff required to build it, nor do i want to fork over $50 for a ISP for the microcontroller.
and if im reading this correctly, it simply completes a circuit on a keybord thing that tells the computer a keyboard key has been pressed, so this will work for any controller. the only issue i can see is making more than 1. i would have to wire them all differently to work with each other. no big deal though lol
... does anyone know how to tell windows which keyboard to get a signal from? :p

[Cojafoji]

yeah i decided to follow this one ^ because i dont have any E-cash to buy a premade circuit board, and idfk where to get any of the stuff required to build it, nor do i want to fork over $50 for a ISP for the microcontroller.
and if im reading this correctly, it simply completes a circuit on a keybord thing that tells the computer a keyboard key has been pressed, so this will work for any controller. the only issue i can see is making more than 1. i would have to wire them all differently to work with each other. no big deal though lol
... does anyone know how to tell windows which keyboard to get a signal from? :p
after you've completed the controller, just go into map the functions on your emulator**, and then when you select the space, just hit the button. easy peasy, japanesey.

[Donut]

well, damn. i went to a surplus store today and bought a PS/2 keyboard, since they didnt have any usb ones. the ps/2 keyboard has 4 wires inside of the insulation, as does the usb. the colors of the wires on the usb are red, white, black, and green. the colors of the wires on the ps/2 keyboard are red, white, brown, and yellow. wiring the device as follows has caused windows to recognize that a usb device is plugged in:

USB......PS/2
red -> white
white -> red
green -> brown
black -> yellow

because colors are :iamafag:
So, the computer sees that a usb device is plugged in, but it has no idea wtf the device is. i have tried making it search for drivers for the "unknown device", but it didnt find anything.

is there something more complicated to converting a PS/2 signal to a USB signal than just crossing some wires?