Bacteria's project: "Project Unity"

[bacteria]

Got my new power supply.

The old one I used didn't have enough juice to run the PS2 without it being connected directly to it rather than via the various regulators I had too. Looking at the old supply, it was rated at 4.16 amps at 12v, however, it says at the bottom of the supply it's factory set at 3.33 amps at 12v at 40 watts. Not surprising it struggled with the PS2, must have been at it's ceiling! The new one is rated at 6 amps at 12v and 60 watts, so should be fine.

Good thing i'd decided to ditch the Xbox due to my limited interest in it, and shortage of space in my system, as on doing a bit of research it runs at around 170 watts; which means i'd not be able to segregate the negative power line like i'm doing with all the other systems to make them do what I want. So, my Alpha Omega will be running 20 console systems, from Atari 2600 - Playstation 2 eras. Will be 21 if I can get the NeoGeo Jamma board I have working, now i've got a decent power rig.

Wired up the PS2 controller section for the master controller and it's ready to test. All being well, i'll test the controller and my new power supply tomorrow, if not, on Sunday.

[bacteria]

Been a while for updates, sorry!

Spent a while working out why the PS2 controller wasn't behaving properly:

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I think i've worked out the problem with getting the PS2 controller working, and it's an unusual one.

Normal button contacts have two contacts that when connected make the contact function; ground and the button press relative to ground. Ok, nothing revolutionary there.

The PS2 controller works differently.

You have ground connected to the PS2 controller as normal, however the grounding for the button presses, whilst it registers as ground by giving a continuity beep on my multimeter, is actually a different grounding. If the proper ground isn't connected the controller isn't seen, if you connect this "other" ground to normal ground then the controller isn't seen, and if you try to use the normal ground for button presses, the controller is seen but no button presses work.

On the other console systems, i've connected ground from the voltage source through the shielding in the long cable to the master controller (to reduce interference) and the grounding goes between alternative pins in the interface port to reduce their interference too; and then the ground is also connected to the buttons in the master controller. This works fine for the GameCube, CD32 and CD-i fine, as with whatever else you want normally to use; however the PS2 not.

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Fortunately, i'd remembered one tiny mistake i'd made with the master controller originally - i'd put ground between each data line to reduce interference; however had missed one connection so wired it to the grounding manually, so to the grounding for the buttons, i'd had that wire in place plus a wire that connected all the grounding from the main section; by removing that connection, all the buttons, keypad, d-pad and shoulder buttons' ground are now tied to this other wire. What it means now is this pin, pin 46 of 50, needs connecting to normal ground for all other systems apart from the PS2; which I can do now. This early error has paid dividends now as it meant I didn't have to lose a functionality from one of the keypad buttons.

Tested with the PS2 controller, and it works fine *finally*. Only issue I have though is the joystick caps are catching a bit inside the master controller, so will reduce them down a bit - if that doesn't work, i'll have to do the controller housing again, which isn't a big issue. At least the PS2 works now.

On the subject of the PS2, it seems to pick up interference if connected to other systems which is annoying, so i'll either have to work out how to rectify that or have a dual supply to the base unit, will need to investigate.

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One nice thing about the PS2 version of Quake, is you can use the d-pad for movement, just one of the joysticks to elevate or lower the sight if you need to and the main 4 buttons for the action buttons. Tested the 4 shoulder buttons, work nicely too.

Next job will be to play around with the power supplies to hopefully see why the PS2 picks up interference from the other systems when on, and others, including GameCube, don't - it will be nice to have everything working off one supply after all, however if the only way not to get lines all over the video display is to do so, i'll have to work out a compromise. Good news though is the PS2 controller section works nicely.

Oh yes, also need to make the overlay ("clear" on the keypad is Select on the PS2, and "enter" on the keypad is Start, BTW): and also make the buttons for the master controller with the Playstation tops (triangle, square, triangle, cross).

The PS2 controller section looks nice in the back of the master controller, like the others do. One of the analogue shoulder buttons is in the way in the pic, making the controller section look like a half section, which it isn't:



Just noticed, the pic was when I tried out GameCube joysticks, not the ones finished with in the end, from the original controller.

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Had the joysticks the wrong way around, fixed that.

Tested the master controller with the PS2 and it works great, testing with Quake. Feels nice too.

So, at the moment, as there are interference issues on the video when the PS2 console is connected into the voltage regulator strip I made before, my next job is to see if that's still the situation and what, if anything, I can do to resolve it. Worst case scenario is that I have to use a 2P2T switch to segregate the voltage to either the PS2 system from everything else. I wonder why it does that - one thing i'll try is using a capacitor on the video line from the PS2, in case the issue is interference on the video line itself, an electrolyte capacitor is one way after all so would stop any signals from other consoles from making any issues - thing is, there aren't many factors I can play with; I can feed the 12v straight to the PS2 however if not using a 2P2T switch to segregate both the voltage and ground lines, not many other things might work. Experimentation needed, literally trial and error.

[bacteria]

Discovered a couple of interesting things.

1. there was no problem with my old 4.16amp 12v supply as when I made an error on the wiring a short while ago, the PS2 worked fine using 3 amp wires.

2. the issue on the video regards interference on the video image, was down to where you wire from the ground to the video ground - what i've discovered is if you wire ground from the voltage supply to the video ground you get the video interference; if however you wire the video ground from the PS2's ground to the video ground, you get stable quality video image. Interesting!

The error I mentioned in [1] was because I wired from ground to video ground and from that to the PS2 console, in effect completing the circuit even when the switch was off. With [2] in mind, i've now got ground from the voltage supply to video ground (the SCART) and put two lengths from a switch to connect the PS2's ground to the video ground on the SCART; when the switch is on, the PS2 is powered on, and as the ground is from the PS2 to the video ground, that gives a quality image.

In other words, it works.

I need to modify the other controller sections made thus far to incorporate the extra pin (pin 46) and connect that to ground, to ground the buttons in the master controller in other words; test all's fine on all 4 consoles with this new set-up, then make an overlay, and video clips.

Pretty exciting stuff!

[brendanraymond]

i love ground loops

[CRTGAMER]

I think i've worked out the problem with getting the PS2 controller working, and it's an unusual one.

Normal button contacts have two contacts that when connected make the contact function; ground and the button press relative to ground. Ok, nothing revolutionary there.

The PS2 controller works differently.

You have ground connected to the PS2 controller as normal, however the grounding for the button presses, whilst it registers as ground by giving a continuity beep on my multimeter, is actually a different grounding. If the proper ground isn't connected the controller isn't seen, if you connect this "other" ground to normal ground then the controller isn't seen, and if you try to use the normal ground for button presses, the controller is seen but no button presses work.

On the other console systems, I've connected ground from the voltage source through the shielding in the long cable to the master controller (to reduce interference) and the grounding goes between alternative pins in the interface port to reduce their interference too; and then the ground is also connected to the buttons in the master controller. This works fine for the GameCube, CD32 and CD-i fine, as with whatever else you want normally to use; however the PS2 not.

When I modded a Blaze Twin Shock, I noticed some buttons were isolated from each other on BOTH contacts. Strange, I thought all the buttons would have a common return ground line. Perhaps the return line on some buttons were going to a different pin on the chip in the controller and not directly to the ground in the controller connector to the console.

[AppleQueso]

If I mailed you all the needed consoles and like a $300 check would you build me one too

[avrame]

If I mailed you all the needed consoles and like a $300 check would you build me one too

Me thinks you are missing a zero on that check amount. At roughly $20/hour (which is still low ball) a months amount of work on creating this system easily puts it at $3k worth of man hours and parts

[AppleQueso]

If I mailed you all the needed consoles and like a $300 check would you build me one too

Me thinks you are missing a zero on that check amount. At roughly $20/hour (which is still low ball) a months amount of work on creating this system easily puts it at $3k worth of man hours and parts

okay I'll mail you a $3,000 check but I'm not sending the consoles.

[bacteria]

lol.

This isn't for sale. The amount i'd sell it for, if I did, would need a rich person indeed to afford it; i'm talking 5 figure sum (and i'm talking about no decimal points either)!

Yes, i've come across some plug'n'plays that also don't use a common ground. Thing though with the PS2 controller was the continuity tester said they were ground, yet weren't as didn't work as ground.

[bacteria]

Doesn't look much but took 2 hours work to do. Got the 4 PlayStation buttons mounted onto nuts to screw into the button places on the master controller. It took a while as they had to be orientated the right way around. I won't get their lining up perfect but nearly perfect is fine.



I'll make the PlayStation 2 video in the next day or so and upload it. My plan then is to make another video, showing the main system to date and the systems working so far, then take a little break and move to the portable N64 and SNES projects for a bit.