Thanks for all the replies.
isiolia wrote:Are you already taking advantage of the other six ports your motherboard (should) support?
You're right, the motherboard has 6 USB ports in total, four at the rear and two at the front. The two at the front are reserved for a wireless keyboard and mouse dongle (which is always plugged in) and an empty port that I like to keep empty for when I need an external HDD or flash drive. I'm looking to have 12 ports at the back of the PC, four native to the motherboard, and another eight from two of the PCI slots.
isiolia wrote:I agree, you'd be better off sticking with PCIe wireless rather than a USB adapter.
A USB wifi dongle is also my last resort, as I've had bad experiences with drivers for such devices.
Looks good, is it essentially a wifi card that you plug into the motherboard's ethernet port rather than PCI slot? If so, that would solve everything.
Ziggy587 wrote:^ Just get a USB extension cable, then plug in your controller adapter only as you use them. You don't need them all plug in at the same time, being that you can only use one controller at a time. And you have to plug the controller into the adapter anyway, the extra few seconds to plug the adapter into an extension cable wouldn't really be so bad. If you do get the extra four USB ports, you could leave your four most used adapters plugged in, then have one extension cable to swap out the rest.
I appreciate it sounds ridiculous having 12 controllers plugged in simultaneously, but after tinkering with this 'all-in-one-console' on and off for the past three years, I've found it's the only solution for what I want to do. The issue with plugging in and out controllers on the fly is that it confuses JoyToKey, and keys will not necessarily be mapped back the way they were before unplugging.
The way I set map controls is as follows: Map all controls within each emulator to the keyboard, then assign the keyboard strokes to each individual controller through JoyToKey. That way, all controllers are playable with every system. So say I'm playing Super Mario Bros., I can jump around to Genesis games and MAME and Playstation 2 or whatever, all using the NES controller and without needing to leave my seat and pick up another controller.
So there is a NES, SNES, Saturn, Xbox 360, N64 controller and arcade stick that is assigned to Player 1 for all systems at all times and ideally, if I can sort out these extra USB ports, the same luxury for Player 2.
Ziggy587 wrote:So wait, you have ethernet cable near the PC? It's just being plugged into something else? If it's coming from a router, then just get a network switch.
Think I explained that poorly. The internet comes out of the phone line in the wall which goes into a router which has an antenna which let's us all enjoy wifi. All of that is behind the sofa on the opposite end of the room to the PC. What I meant was a device that you plug into the PC's ethernet port which then picks up the wifi, so essentially a wifi card that plugs into the PC's ethernet port.
