Adding N64 Controller Port to the New Dragonbox Adapters

[mistermorcus]

I have done quite a bit of digging and could not find an answer to this particular issue. I have added a controller port to my dragonbox N64 adapter using an N64 extension cable.  I found the appropriate pinouts online and made the connections, however I am having some issues.

When I connect the controller to the adapter, the Retrode resets and windows chimes as I would expect if loading a new cartridge and pressing reset. In Windows USB Game controllers I see the 4 Retrode joysticks, however none of them detect input from the N64 controller. I tried port 2 on the pcb and got the same behavior.

The reason I started this project was to compliment the wonderful new cartridge saving support with the memory pack saving through the use of the controller port, however my memory pack is also not being detected.  I am not sure if I perhaps missed a step when wiring the controller or something else.  I tried stepping the firmware back to beta 21 but I still had the same issue. I tried all of the HID profiles available and that did not seem to help. I plugged a genesis controller into the Retrode just to make sure it was not a controller issue in general, and it was working as expected. I also tested a different N64 controller, with and without the memory pack, with and without a game, always getting the same result.  Also verified my controllers are working on a real N64. I can't think of anything else to try at this point.

Sorry for the long post. I appreciate if anyone out there has any insight into this particular setup. This may also be of interest for anyone else that is wanting to do something like this.

[Matthias_H]

Please post photos to illustrate what exactly you did.

[mistermorcus]

I attached a photo that shows how all of the connections are made.  I also included a picture of the unit closed up in case anyone wanted to see a picture of that. I liked this solution since I did not have to modify the unit itself, and I could take it back to stock if I wanted to.

I did some more research and noticed in the older PCB with the ports included, that there is a resistor connected to the cartridge pins. On my board it is labeled 220R. I am assuming that is probably the reason it is not working but I could not say for sure.  If it is the problem, would I just connect that resistor up the same way as in the photo as it goes across from one set of pins to the other?

Thanks again for any help you can offer.

[skaman]

You would connect the 220R resistors vertically.  The picture with the diagonal resistors is on an earlier PCB version.

Here's a picture of my v0.4 plugin with the resistors installed:

[RazorX2014]

You would connect the 220R resistors vertically.  The picture with the diagonal resistors is on an earlier PCB version.

Here's a picture of my v0.4 plugin with the resistors installed:

that's what mine looks like inside but i bought mine, i don't know like 2 years ago maybe

[mistermorcus]

Thanks for the help guys.  I put the resistors in and it works great now, mempak files and controller both. I love the Retrode!!