USB4VC - Using Modern Input Devices on Old PCs
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- Опубліковано 21 лют 2022
- Testing a prototype of the USB4VC by dekuNukem, a Raspberry Pi-based board with modules allowing you to connect new USB devices to retro computers. 15-pin game port, serial, PS/2, ADB, and more (in the future) can all be paired with modern peripherals and controllers. Like PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch, and so on. It even converts to XT keyboard protocols! Neat!
Pertinent links:
github.com/dekuNukem/USB4VC
www.kickstarter.com/projects/...
Looks like tentative pricing is planned to be for the USB4VC Baseboard+Plates+Fasteners kit to cost $30, ADB P-Card $40, and IBM PC P-Card $50 since it has more components and more protocols. Still needs a Pi on top of that though, so here's hoping that whole supply chain gets sorted sometime soonish.
Not bad price, but yeah. Im still trying to get a Pi for a router project and they are either out of stock or extremely expensive.
The D-Pad on playstation controllers have always sucked since the PS3. Try a 8-bitdo SNES clone.
30$? Jesus, he's giving them away. Oh, i'm so diving in his kickstarter. This stuff is awesome!
@@aserta I would not say "giving away" since you still need the P-Card, so it's at least 70 or 80 bucks for dekuNukem. And you need the Pi, so in total you need at least well over hundred credits to have a working conversion system.
Hope he makes a version for the Pi Pico, I'd rather microcontrollers be used for adapters than a full-on Pi. If not then it'd be nice to see some elements from the Pi-KVM project appear, could definitely see this being used to control 2/3 different PCs.
clint, your enthusiasm over older hardware getting newer capabilities is rather infectious. Don't ever stop keeping the long forgotten alive.
Who forgot what, now? Ya gotta speak up, there; Sonny...us over-fortieses, we don't hear so good.
I could listen to Clint get hype about anything really
I can definitely hear the pleasure in your voice that you didn't have to troubleshoot offscreen for days scouring the archives for drivers and compatibilities etc
YES. Having things just work is an immense pleasure.
@@LGRBlerbs Todd Howard reference? :p
That windows 98 startup sound never gets old
the nostalgia, dude 😔
I use WIN95 sound on my WIN10, it makes computing much more enjoyable but hearing Win98 sound on my PIII machine never gets boring.
A protocol-converter that hat 10 times the computing Power than the PC where to play the vintage Games on.... Wow.
Peak LGR going on in this
Nothing new. It's like those emulated SID chips that use ARM CPUs that are fast enough to emulate C64 itself.
Wasn't there a computer system in the early 80's that had a floppy drive that almost got more CPU power than the actual computer itself?
@@andreasklindt7144 Commodore 64 disk drive had a processor that was as powerful as the main computer.
@@andreasklindt7144 the apple laserwriter printer in 1985 had a faster CPU than the macintosh it was meant to be used with (12mhz 68000 vs 8mhz 68000), and the commodore 1541 disk drive had basically a miniaturized 64
You know, this could actually go a long way as an accessibility option for retro enthusiasts with physical handicaps.
I love that nearly every week there are people coming up with ways to further old tech's lifespan and even capabilities.
This would be great to have if you had an old PC on display at a meet up. Watch people's faces when you pass them a PS5 controller!
He he ha ha!
You know what must be done for a blerb now: using a Sony PS2 controller on an IBM PS/2.
OMG YES
Stopped using PS2 controllers once I got a Brook Wingman PS2 converter for my PS2/PS1 and use the PS4 controller on it since I can't get an official PS3 controller online and the off brand ones on Amazon are all garbage and don't work. Mostly other bluetooth or wired controllers will work with it. PS5,Xbox Series,Switch etc.
The PS2 controllers I have currently are all third party ones.
I personally wonder if one could use a Sunwaytek Syozen Z2 with the PS2 Wingman though.
Wow, when you were describing it's concept I wasn't expecting it to have such robust features. What a useful little piece of hardware.
The actual programming of this thing to do the translations would've taken a lot of work too.
I just randombly found this video, but you brought me back decades ago with that sound it make as the desktop shows up. I started with windows 95 as my dad was teaching Microsoft Office at the first highschool with computers in my city somewhere in West Africa. All I did on his PC was play Prince of Persia and some F1 racing game I forgot the name of.
Seeing Clint Crack himself up is just icing on the cake. I love this project. Makes me want to build a machine
Unbelievable. Just a couple of weeks ago I decided to use arduino as DIN keyboard DB9 serial mouse emulator with an usb hat on it and then here you go, there are other people thinking similarly! Love the idea!
doing it with a $5 arduino is much more interesting to me than doing it with a $150 pi4, neat regardless
@UC8ZdiWWAssHwPkNTMTxL0iA totally agree, i do feel Pi is overpriced due to supply shortage. An Arduino or Teensy and more compact board design, even powered internally via DB15 5v gameport would be more interesting.
I definitely understood some of those words
Except February which has 28
Even Dos is a jerk with Direct Input controllers /s. This project is cool as hell, what a time to be alive. Its like retro-futurism but it actually works.
I love watching blerbs - especially when Clint is so happy with a new thing to play with. THESE VIDEOS ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT AS [SCRIPTED] LGR
Well said!
After a 3 decade it career i seem to have a side job as hoarder of converter cables so i applaud to this gem! Also the use of the word 'Nifty' to describe the device is quite appropriate.
Since it's all in software, this could also double up as a neato TAS box. Recording input to a file, and playing it back.
What this thing needs is drivers and support for vintage expansion card slots. Even allow software configuration from vintage machines. This thing is incredible.
would be fun to just slap a serial port on, and have a program on the vintage system and then have them talk via the serial.
I mean... could implement a JSON-RPC-ish system over serial. o.o
Clint’s childlike giddiness is one of the most uplifting things one can hear.
I'm so glad he left the "Tinder" blooper in right there at the end.
The Flirc project is also excellent which solves a similar problem.
Converting the signals from Infrared Remote Controls to USB keyboard signals which work on any device with USB keyboard support.
Great for Kodi HTPCs.
There are some clever people out there.
22:06 "How do I hold on?"
We're here for you, Clint.
I know you brushed over it, but that duckyPad is exactly what I've been looking for. Being a linux user, I can't bring myself to spend $150 on an elgato since I have to use the open source software to run it anyway, and that's surely over 80% of the cost. This looks much nicer, with better switches, and runs on linux! Honestly it looks like a steal at $70, hope you do a video on it Clint.
Those Kioxia Excera were selling for like £3 on Amazon not so long back, I bought a bunch of them for my consoles.
Fun fact: Kioxia used to be Toshiba Memory but they were spun off into thier own thing; they have thier own NAND fabs in Japan.
Weren't they the lads that had that massive fire that wiped out like 7 exabytes o' NAND las week?
@@bk109 Yeah, them and Western Digital.
Noted
Test them with h2testw. There are a lot of fake SD cards on amazon
@@amirpourghoureiyan1637 since they actually share the same fab in japan
I love that he used a label maker to categorize the stuff for the back of the box... my kind of dude!
Ah yes my favorite old-school inputs, the Dualsense, the Xbox Series Controller, and the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. Classics.
Um, the video is about using new controllers on old PCs, so why is it a surprise those are what he used?
You're making me cry of nostalgia of when I first started playing with Joycons on the Atari 2600
@@oqocraft2661 How about Wii Remotes on the Commodore 64?
@@Photo0021 There are no limits in theory.. All that matters is computing power, translating code and signals and having the right hardware.. Potential is limitless.. FPGA and after market peripherals for the Amiga are one of the examples.. : D
I was confused when the piece of paper you were holding started scrolling lol, it's rare to see screens on video that dont have any moire artifacts. We're living in the future!
This is a awesome project. If they could eventually get it working for Unix machines such as Sun I could see it being useful. If somehow they got it working for NeXT machines I could see that being especially useful as without a working keyboard those cannot even be turned on let alone used.
So much potential.
Could use a modern steering wheel for some dos driving games
This is super cool, I love it.
I have a serial (RS-232) to PS/2 mouse converter for my 486 which lacks PS/2 mouse support. But this is on an entirely different level.
I've dreamed of making a mechanical keyboard but the lack of Retro PC support was somewhat of a barrier. This opens some doors. Thank you for the blerb!
EDIT: Holy crap, this can emulate AT keyboards too? This thing could replace a drawer full of adapters. This thing is *_rad_*
I'd been working on something like this, but just for IBM PCs, using an MCP4451 to simulate the potentiometer for a flightstick. It looks like Deku had the exact same thought. Very cool! It's really well put together, really dig the modularity and design. Big props to dekuNukem
I like how "high" the trees look in the background ☺️
Oh hey, now you can use the USB Gravis Gamepad Pro in DOS like it's a regular one.
Oh my goodness I'm so used to you pulling out some random black 80s/90s box with white writing and sepia tone pictures I thought I was having a stroke when I looked away and looked back at the video and one of the pictures was moving.
You and your tablet fooled me in the most amazing way lol.
Yay!! I want it even though I don't even have a vintage computer
Love the concept! The ultimate compliment to this would be a video converter/scaler with connectors for older sources (CGA/ETA, RGB 15hz, old Mac 15 pin, etc..) and bundled into a single modular KVM so you can have numerous modern + retro devices share a common set of modern input peripherals and display.
Haptic feedback is created using just sound files so in theory that could be emulated as well using the in game sounds
dude I didn't even consider that O.O But you are right, ain't those just some voice coils?
Audio passthrough to filter out the deeps to send to the controller, perhaps?
That joystick menu reminded me of trying to setup my Logitech Wingman Rumblepad as a kid. We're definitely spoiled in the day and age with xinput. Even emulators do a great job with automatically mapping to Xbox 360 or xbone controllers.
I never thought I would see a Dualsense controller working flawlessly with Windows 98
Pretty cool, but I wish this would use Arduino or something similar that doesn't run a full OS on it. Lot of projects using RPi for relatively simple tasks these days. And RPi is pretty cheap for what it is, but it's not THAT cheap.
Indeed, I'd be interested to see if that's doable someday!
A cut-down solution would be nice for simplicity, cost, speed, and size.
Yeah, using a non-realtime OS on applications like this is not exactly the best choice. The trouble with using with using and Arduino (or similar) is that you'd need a microcontroller with USB host capabilities (the good old 328P doesn't) and you'd probably have to write a USB HID driver from scratch
@@gigigigiontis8 Some examples would be a seeed xiao or if cost isn't an issue a DUE. USB HID drivers have existed for Arduino for some time. I have similar project that uses a seeed or DUE (overkill, that remains as part of the project because a few people wanted it to stay.).
The point is, Arduino solutions for USB already exist. The RP2040 (Raspberry PI dual core micro-controller) is also a low cost solution.
@@dreamwatcher1313 Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. It's been a while since I played with Arduino code (I've been using PICs lately and finding pre-written libraries is a lot harder). I don't see any reason why I couldn't be done then; again, an hardware solution like that would be better even in terms of latency, let alone cost (especially if you spin your own boards instead of buying stuff like the Due)
Granted, a Raspberry Pi is total overkill for that kind of job, but the real benefit comes from the myriad of available Linux drivers for all kinds of input devices. You sure could get the job done with, say an ESP32 for like $4, but then you are limited either in the devices you can connect or you have to stick with standard functionality (like USB HID). Either way, time, effort and complexity level to make it simply work (only work, not even fancy) are way higher compared to just taking an off the shelf Raspi.
Ho Lee Schitt!! That is an AMAZING product right there, particularly considering it's just a prototype at the moment! So versatile, and working almost perfectly! I can foresee this being *VERY* popular when it goes on sale as a finished product. Really well-done!!
You thank us for watching your blurbs; we thank you for making them!
Curious about the ADB one now. At first I couldn't think of why it would have two ADB ports, because unlike PS/2 it's a bus, and most Macs only have one, but then realized it must be a pass-thru, like a Mac keyboard would have. That's very well thought out of the creator, as there were a handful of neat ADB devices. Also, ADB joypads weren't as common as their PC counterparts so this is most useful.
fascinating device. definitely would like to see a video of you building and testing the other device too!
Wow this is an amazing adapter for us retro enthusiasts. Thanks for the review!
It's really a great thing you can use an old Pi to complete this set. Actually, it may be its saving grace. At the moment, anything Pi-based has poor expectations to succeed if it requires the newest and greatest since new Pi prices are a complete deal breaker. And although supposedly that should change one day, who knows when the day will come. Yes, a considerable number of people already had modern Pis bought before the shortage, but the present situation has a huge impact on the prospects of projects like this. You don't typically want to swap a single Pi around lots of builds, unplugging and reconnecting lots of cables and stuff.
First thing i did at the start of this 'era' is ordering two Pi4 kits and a bunch of soldering components for my Arduino. Remembering the situation on HD's after floods in Thailand some years ago, i saw this coming and it is not even at the worst yet..
IMO the Pi is a dead platform for hobbyists. There's no point in using it when the garbage silicon costs over a hundred bucks, and now that scalpers know people will feel the need to buy at those prices, especially in the education sector, there's no going back.
@@joemarais7683 Overall, you might be right, since prices are not expected to go back to normal until next year at the very least. Admittedly, there are still places with some Pi 400 stock left at normal prices, but of course, the 400 isn't really versatile unless you do sketchy things like trying to get the board out of the case and stuff like that...
Real nice little project that surely helps many with getting old hardware up & running that happens too lack peripherals.
the sound of the floppy being pushed in so that a ps5 controller can be used to play the game. Priceless
I use that Aptiva case as my daily. Modern stuff fits in it perfectly
The guys that developed this are straight up GENIUSES! It's really amazing what they've done here...
@@ps5hasnogames55 I mean, writing the software to work as cleanly/intuitively as it does isn't that easy, nor is PCB layout and product design. If this was a really simple thing than the market would've already been flooded with cheap devices.
Bru that's so damn intuitive man.
Chef kiss to that man. Dude needs to keep going.
I appreciate these/this dude's time to develop this.
The controller I currently personally use for PC and Android gaming is the Sunwaytek Syozen Z2. Sure, it can be a major pain in the butt to update and (sometimes) connect via bluetooth but it's still a major treat to play games on. Almost all of its buttons use mechanical switches like a mechanical keyboard so it's a must buy imo.
Aaannnddd... pledged. Thanks for letting us know about this Clint. I love supporting awesome open source projects like this.
What an awesome device! I also have fallen into the mechanical keyboard rabbithole that has taken over contemporary tech UA-cam as of late. I would love to hear your take on today's modern mechanical keyboards and switches from a retro perspective.
As a laptop gamer that is highly sensitive to rabbitholes, but DOESNT have the time.. is it a solid choice to get a TKL g915 tactile?
I love this!
Not just this is a well thought out project by one of your fans to make modern input devices work on vintage machines, also is it one of those amazing Raspberry Pi projects that show just how versatile these are thanks to the GPIO.
Really, really cool stuff and I imagine, other than the luck of Bluetooth a Pi 1 would be plenty already to make this work.
Thank you lgr this is so cool since controller gaming has been viable on modern PC for last several years with different softwares it is so cool to see this on old PC with modern input device.... Really awesome video!
Thank you for sharing your insane blerblings Clint. I love these.
dekuNukem! I immediately recognized that name because I have been using his Nintendo Switch Reverse Engineering Github repository for a project. I am making a chip (ESP32) pretend to be a Switch Pro Controller and his repo was essential. Congrats to the dude for making such cool hardware, too!
A 3D printed case would be ideal.
Would be cool to have this built into a KVM sort of thing.
This is so great! I was just looking for a USB to PS/2 solution a couple weeks ago and was shocked that nothing really seems to exist. But this does that and so much more! I backed the Kickstarter.
This video made my night! So fun to see the functionality and how much you enjoyed it.
Holy cannoli, I love everything about this. And it has ADB!!
I'd love to see you test out the ADB module on some of your unique rigs. Imagine the possibilities!
@@LGRBlerbs PS5 controller to play ShufflePuck on a Mac SE... oh yes
Does it support ADB joysticks, though? (A small number of games were released for MacOS 9's GameSprocket library, and those connected to the joystick directly, kind of like DirectInput. I had a cheap ADB joystick from mac ally, and I wanted to use it with "Starfleet Academy". So I wrote a crude program to poll the ADB bus, and then I ripped off the Microsoft Sidewinder example code to instead read the MacAlly's input. And then I could play my game. Ahh victory.
This actually blows my mind. Such a cool little device!
Awesome prototype. side note, those speakers never get old to me.
Just got mine today after supporting the kickstarter back in Feb, thanks Clint! Never would have known about it!
I don't think I have ever seen Clint so happy. Now he got a use for this Model F77. 😁
That is very awesome. Seeing a PS5 controller playing games using Windows 98 is amazing.
this blew my mind! great video bruv!
I wonder if it'd be possible for some madlad to create DualSense haptic profiles for a bunch of DOS games. Imagine Duke 3D with resistant triggers and fine rumble. I want it now.
You could probably add it in a source port like eduke3D or chocolate doom. I don't know how one could make it work with DOS though.
@@chadmasta5 True! I'll have to look up how to write something like that. If it's doable for a non-programmer who knows some of the basics, I'll give it a shot myself.
Everyone today has the possibility to use the most advanced technology and create mind boggling stuff, and so much of the effort is used to create things like this that just makes people like us with 40 years old computers happy. The world is a wonderful place in some aspects.
Looks like Clint has a new favorite oddware! Amazing little device!!
This is great! I've been looking for something exactly like this recently.
Whelp there went some money. Backed and excited to get mine for both PC/XT/AT and Apple ADB. Such a cool project.
That thing is awesome! Well done dekuNukem.
Absolutely fascinated by this device!
Very neat plugin for people with retro computers. I don't have any of those, but at least I got to listen a little to the model f keyboard in this video. Looking forward to receiving mine. It has been somewhere over a year that I ordered it, but I think I ordered a industrial grey like the one LGR uses.
I've been looking for this for years... Preordered!
Seeing new and old technology merged like this is just amazing I think. A RaspberryPi, PS5 and old IBM computers working together. Just great! :D
I really like the Weird side of vintage tech, and you do that rather well! :P
It would be incredible if this project adds support in the future for big box Amiga, CDTV & CD32. The wireless CDTV controller is okay, but a nice modern controller would be wonderful, and keyboard/mouse support would be a bonus. (I know it's possible because I already have a PS/2 to CDTV keyboard adapter, so the mini-DIN plugs are out there somewhere...)
Such a cool project. This as a modular KVM with sound and game port would be truly next level.
Love how this channel is growing
I had forgotten how loud those BigFoot drives were.
I used to work in a PC shop when they were on the market, and they were the most RMA'd drives we shipped. It's a miracles yours still works!
How Blerby. Good stuff. NGL seeing it run on that IBM XT was pretty cool.
The weird button mapping might be caused by a recent SDL change. The Linux kernel maps all buttons by position, it doesn't care about the labels, so buttons should all be the same across all gamepads with the standard four face buttons, four triggers layout. But for some weird reason, SDL now ignores the kernel mapping and reads the raw inputs, assuming an Xbox over USB bit map, but that bit map doesn't properly match other gamepads or even the same Xbox gamepad over Bluetooth.
Thanks bro, with that info all my weird controller 'issues' of lately make sense.
There is an SDL game controller mapping database on GitHub which I’ve used in my pet projects. Just import the database into your sdl init code and you’ve got a plethora of controllers popular and obscure. Surprised this wasn’t used? SDL_GameControllerDB I believe is the page.
wow, what a cool project, thanks for showing it off!
Great video Clint.
I gotta say, I have a macro pad diy kit thing (the Adafruit macro pad rp2040 with a very similar design), and it's become a pretty essential part of my computer usage process. Did not expect how useful a 4x3 pad of keys, OLED, and rotary encoder to switch layers would be
I'd swipe right on this product and the free Kailh Navies were such a nice touch favorite out of the box switches.
Nice project specially for XT. Anyway, I used to have an USB keyboard with my Pentium-MMX back then as my motherboard had AT port + 2 USB ports, I think this will more useful for PCs older than Pentium where USB wasn't available out of box.
Definitely, this is tailor-made for machines from before 1996 or so. Like the IBM AT at 17:41
What a useful project.
I like it!
This thing is rad! You should showcase this on the main site. it's worthy.
This is just awesome!!!! Kickstarter here I come!
I'm amazed your tiny keyboard/pad still works. Mine lasted a week before ignoring the dongle and refusing to connect.
This is so cool. It's like a project I started for myself ages ago that started as a means to let me use a Dreamcast keyboard (and controllers) on any PC...then feature creep took hold and I went from there, eventually wanted to include the ability to use any controller I wanted on OG Xbox but I lost interest before then...I did add support to use othe controllers on Megadrive and PSX but that's trivial
Wow this is a really cool project. I hope it succeed, it would really helpful and fix so many issues.
The main concern is the raspberry pi, more now than the cost are high. Maybe it's a thing for a future version. The other thing is that amount of cable connection and power adapters.
So, you talking about clicky keys again has me wondering: have you considered doing a video talking about the various types of key switches you've used? And - to give you a fun idea - rating them on which ones come closest to replicating the feel of a classic IBM Model M?
Man, at the end, I had absolutely no idea what was going on.. thought Clint'd actually snapped until I rewatched it :P :P
I love the box blues too. My custom keyboard currently has box black/white I ordered at the same time as my test board and when the test board arrived I thought, dangit, should have got navy blue for the number keys etc. I'm using the whites on.