Support for XTREME X-94395 (PSX to USB adaptor)

[samo79]

Recently i purchased an PSX to USB adapter to play my favourite games/emulators under AmigaOS 4.1 FE, the product is marked XTreme and indeed i choose this because i had good experience with that company having at home a similar PSX-USB adaptor that proved to work well (an XTreme/GreenAsia Inc. adaptor)

However unfortunately the new adaptor i bought seems not recognized at all by AmigaOS, when i plug it a popup window correctly show its insertion, however if i open AmigaInput nothing will be show

This kind of adaptor theorically should work without any external driver, so i wonder why it doesn't work ...

Maybe do we need a Sirion update ?
And if so how can we advice the Sirion developers if somethings related to USB does not work ?

Here is the problematic adaptor, maybe someone have one and so can test it ...

http://www.playxtreme.it/dett_articolo.asp?id=91

[LyleHaze]

I'll explain as best I can.. hopefully it will all make sense. Today is not a good day for me to try and explain things.

The USB stack is the foundation for all things that connect by USB. But the stack alone is not everything. it still needs drivers.

The USB organization could see that needing a "special" driver for every single USB device would be hard to manage, so they
have documented official "Class Compatible" USB devices. Any USB device can choose to do it their own way, and require a
special driver, OR they can design their product to be "class compatible", and then they can advertise that no driver is needed.
In truth, they are just using the class compatible driver that comes with Windows/Mac/Linux.

AmigaOS comes with a couple "class compatible" drivers. These allow the use of USB keyboard and mouse, (devs:usb/fd/hid.usbfd)
There is also (I think) a USB camera driver (devs:usb/fd/ptp.usbfd), and I am very proud to say that starting with F.E., there is
a driver of my own creation to support MIDI over USB, with devs:usb/fd/camdmidi.usbfd.

But at this time that's all I know of that have been released.
[edit] Sorry, Andy has written a USB driver for some drawing tablets.. My apologies to Mr. Blues.

Now the HID that comes just MIGHT work with class compatible joysticks and such, MAYBE.. but on;y iof they are class compatible,
and only if the drivers "cover all the bases" so to speak. I know their primary purpose is to support a keyboard and mouse.

If you get a popup window then the USB device is connected.. try utilities/usbinspector to see if it has "joined up" with the hid
driver or not. Most likely not, based on your description. This does NOT mean there's something wrong with the USB stack, it's
simply not finding a driver that will "claim" that device.

I have two more .usbfd drivers in some unfinished state. One is waiting for a few adjustments to the USB stack, the other is
waiting for me to finish answering you so I can get back to work.

I hope that helps answer your question.

[whose]

Unfortunately, if hid.usbfd doesn´t recognize the adapter properly, a "simple" driver won´t do the trick with AmigaInput. I ran into the same problem as I tried to make XBox 360 gamepads usable...

[samo79]

If you get a popup window then the USB device is connected.. try utilities/usbinspector to see if it has "joined up" with the hid driver or not. Most likely not, based on your description. This does NOT mean there's something wrong with the USB stack, it's
simply not finding a driver that will "claim" that device.

Yes it is connected (i can see the popup when i plug it) and apparently USBInspector saw it as a plain Playstation3 controller ... however the driver area still marked as "none" ...

See grab: http://i.imgur.com/xsMSFiK.png

So if i understand you correctly in end it means that my PSX adaptor isn't supported by the current HID right ?

Just to compare my other PSX adaptor is instead showed as a simple USB Joystick and in the driver section it say: hid.usbfd

I hope that helps answer your question.

Yes thanks, still a question ... what can i do if, for example i would like to ask someone in the OS4 team to add support for my newest PSX adaptor ?

[whose]

Ask politely

[nbache]

Ask politely

He just did, didn't he?

Best regards,

Niels

[LyleHaze]

I'm glad I could explain a bit.

I have not studied the HID standards, but I will guess that "standard joystick" is probably less than a complete PSX controller.
I wonder if HID supports the vibration motor, or the extra buttons on a PSX.. that might explain why they did it differently.

You are welcome to ask anyone you like for help with this. Another option to consider might be to download the compiler
and have a look at it. I think (I'm really not sure) that there is code out there for keyboard and mouse.. if it includes
the basic HID stuff that supported your older adapter, you might be halfway there already!

Myself, I have far too much in front of me. Score has sat idle too long, it's nice to see it progressing again.
I REALLY need to get it out the door.

Good Luck, whichever way you go with it!

[whose]

@samo79:

Just ask for it! I would really like to see more usb hardware running with OS4, even such things like old joysticks etc.

I could explain a bit more:

hid.usbfd SHOULD support it, but that depends on

- VENDOR/PRODUCT ID
- if the device sends correct and recognizable USB report descriptors

Some devices don´t do the latter, so hid.usbfd is in trouble. The ID is right, the device class is right, but the report descriptor sent is garbage (in hid.usbfd´s view). Correctly, hid.usbfd releases the device and ignores it. Or it does astonishing things (but not useful things).

I had this with the XeroMouse. It was claimed by hid.usbfd, but didn´t work right. The report descriptor sent was garbage (well, it was "non standard" in fact). To make it work was no big deal, but you will find that it doesn´t appear within AmigaInput prefs. This is where hid.usbfd kicks in (using a private library interface to AmigaInput). If the device is not claimed by HID or sends "malformed" report descriptors, it doesn´t work (correctly) with AmigaInput.

If the report descriptor IS correct, the PSX pads should work, even the buttons should work. Those adapters shouldn´t report being a mere digital joystick, there is another report descriptor for... gamepads

As AmigaInput doesn´t support rumble and stuff, there is little hid.usbfd could do. To make rumble work as standalone is quite easy (I did with the XBox 360 gamepad), but AmigaInput needs expansion to support it in a senseful way.

[samo79]

I wonder if HID supports the vibration motor, or the extra buttons on a PSX

No, unfortunely the "vibration" doesn't seems to work, atleast it doesn't work if i connect an original Playstation 2 joypad !
As i said i'm using a Playstation 2 joypad with another PSX to USB adaptor and in general all worked fine except a few things ... infact all directions and buttons still correctly recognised, but the 2 Axis (L3 and R3), doesn't ...

Here a reference to your understand:
http://forum.unity3d.com/attachments/ps ... jpg.20586/

Just ask for it!

I did a quick reseach, is Sebastian Bauer the guy we need to contact ?
I'm sure that many people will be insterested to see this area improved, sometime ago i remember a similar request from HunoPPC, he is working exactly on that kind of games/emulator that need a pratical solution ...

And yep a proper support for the XBox controller would be awesome too

[whose]

Yes, Sebastian is the poor guy who is loaded with this pain I was in contact with him regarding the XBox 360 controllers.

The really big problem is, that a lot of USB devices doesn´t obey the USB report descriptor standards. If they would do, hid.usbfd would recognize (and use) them correctly. E.g. drawing tablets are such devices. Most of them need an extra driver, although they are HID class devices (and fairly often they don´t transmit more data than the USB HID standard provides space for). If they would give the reports needed, hid.usbfd could use them without further hassle (including pressure information). In the end they are just mice with absolute positioning

Another example is the XBox 360 gamepad. The report descriptor it gives is "vendor specific". But if you take a closer look, it´s exactly the standard gamepad report descriptor. It´s missing the header part "only", so that hid.usbfd doesn´t recognize it.

Regarding the gamepad mess it would really be cool to have information needed to write at least AmigaInput drivers (without rumble, that is). But to this day, that seems not to be an option