External Joystick ?!?!?

[Gervy]

Anyone know of an external joystick for the 6700?
Or even a joystick driver for the USB port? (I could build a physical pad if necessary).

I'm loving the new Atari800 and Amiga emulators I installed on the phone (they run great with overclocking). But want to use a joystick/pad instead of the crappy one on the phone.



Gervy

[unitypunk]

i dont think so...

but if you make the drivers, and the hardware it might be possible

[rxb216]

I have heard good things about this (bluetooth)

http://www.smartgamepad.com/

[Gervy]

Originally Posted by rxb216

I have heard good things about this (bluetooth)

http://www.smartgamepad.com/

Good reviews and exactly what I'm looking for.
$70 though. Hmmmm.....
Could be worth it as I'm loading up my phone with tons of old NES/SNES and even Amiga games.

EDIT: Found it for $35 on ebay, but with $15 shipping. Still better.

Thanks for the tip!

Just bought it, so i'll post my review once it's received.





Gervy

[Perasite]

Look forward to the review! One thing I hate is on my SNES emulator, I can't play Street Fighter II because I can't jump forward. It won't do two directions at once (up and forward) It would be VERY cool if this could do it.

[PolloLoco]

I wish I'd seen this thread before - I could have given you a quick review before you committed to buying it.

I bought the same joystick. It works well in general - but really only shines in games you play in portrait mode. Then you can hold the 6700 between the wings of the gamepad.

Playing other emulators, like SNES & Genesis - it's usually preferrable to play in landscape mode to get the most out of the screen. The only way I've done this is by closing up the gamepad and playing independently of the 6700 - IE, my 6700 is sitting on my desk. Otherwise, I'd actually rigged a couple of PDA clamps together to use the joystick as a single unit. Two clamps are glued together, the 6700 is held by one clamp, the joystick in the other. It works ok, but the weight makes the whole assembly unbalanced.

Program wise, there's slight lag in button presses - but most of it goes away when you use the updated drivers you can download online. The joystick requires a program to be running in the background while you play. This causes a minor problem because you now have the 6700 keyboard fix (to allow multipresses), the joystick program, and finally the emulator you're running. RAM gets low quick. With WM5, if your emulator required too many resources (NEO GEO especially), the other programs could get shut down. So all of a sudden the game keeps going but your joystick's not responding until you reinitiate the driver program. I haven't seen this with WM6 yet, but I haven't had enough practice to ensure that.

Finally, the build quality is not great. I had the directional pad slip out, and finally the tabs broke. It'll still work, but occasionally the pad will pop out on it's own.

Overall, I'd say it's worth the $40 total I spent - but not much more. You can find them onsale online every once in a while by searching for "bluetooth gamepad" in froogle.

An ideal gamepad would connect via USB to prevent loss of resources via bluetooth, but I've been told that's impossible because the USB port is client, not host.

[PolloLoco]

By the way - this gamepad won't allow two buttons at once. You map it's buttons to buttons on the 6700.

There's a program out there (I thought it was common knowledge) called Emulamer's Keyboard Fix for the 6700. You can find it using google. That will allow you to do diagonals or press multiple buttons at once. It runs in the background, but is crucial to playing games.

[Perasite]

Now that you mention it I remember reading something about that fix like a year ago, but just forgot about it. I'll go track that down, thanks!

[Gervy]

Originally Posted by PolloLoco

I wish I'd seen this thread before - I could have given you a quick review before you committed to buying it.

I bought the same joystick. It works well in general - but really only shines in games you play in portrait mode. Then you can hold the 6700 between the wings of the gamepad.

Playing other emulators, like SNES & Genesis - it's usually preferrable to play in landscape mode to get the most out of the screen. The only way I've done this is by closing up the gamepad and playing independently of the 6700 - IE, my 6700 is sitting on my desk. Otherwise, I'd actually rigged a couple of PDA clamps together to use the joystick as a single unit. Two clamps are glued together, the 6700 is held by one clamp, the joystick in the other. It works ok, but the weight makes the whole assembly unbalanced.

Program wise, there's slight lag in button presses - but most of it goes away when you use the updated drivers you can download online. The joystick requires a program to be running in the background while you play. This causes a minor problem because you now have the 6700 keyboard fix (to allow multipresses), the joystick program, and finally the emulator you're running. RAM gets low quick. With WM5, if your emulator required too many resources (NEO GEO especially), the other programs could get shut down. So all of a sudden the game keeps going but your joystick's not responding until you reinitiate the driver program. I haven't seen this with WM6 yet, but I haven't had enough practice to ensure that.

Finally, the build quality is not great. I had the directional pad slip out, and finally the tabs broke. It'll still work, but occasionally the pad will pop out on it's own.

Overall, I'd say it's worth the $40 total I spent - but not much more. You can find them onsale online every once in a while by searching for "bluetooth gamepad" in froogle.

An ideal gamepad would connect via USB to prevent loss of resources via bluetooth, but I've been told that's impossible because the USB port is client, not host.

Glad for the review. I guess I jumped the gun a little, but glad I found it for $35 and $7 shipping. It has a lot of decent reviews online, and even with the single-button limitation (sans hack mentioned above) it should still be much better than dealing with the 6700's own buttons.

Though like you, I will have to rig up some sort of something to let me use this in landscape mode.


Thanks,

Gervy

[Gervy]

What we really need is a hack'ed program to let you use a Sony SIXAXIS bluetooth controller.