Wiring original NES controller to GPIO?

[joostvanpoppel]

Hi,

So after some googling I can't really find out what I need to get my original NES controller hooked up to the RPi.
I opened up an old (non working) NES and the following wire comes from the female entry port:
.
There are 7 wires to be connected. But which wire do I connect to which pin on the GPIO?

I also found this drawing:


Does it somehow correspond? Is there any good site that explains all? I seem to find a lot of different sites, but they all explain in different ways...

THanks in advance,
Joost

[DigitalLumberjack]

Hi, if you plan to use the gamecon driver or SNESDev you can connect your pad like the scheme on https://projects.drogon.net/nes-control ... pberry-pi/ (you can see pins name from the nes controller male connector).
Just be sure that colors corresponds, because gordon is talking about the wires in the controller cable.
Just test the connections on the pcb.

So you will have to connect 3.3v, gnd, clock and latch, and i recommend you to use the 7th pin on gpio (referenced as PAD3) on this image) for data as it is the same on rev 1 and 2 of the RPi.



See ya.

[joostvanpoppel]

Thanks for the info. I'll try out soon and post my first results in this thread.

[mahjongg]

note that although originally the controller ran on 5V, you should NOT power it from 5V, as it then also outputs a 5V signal, which the PI isn't tolerant to. But the controller should also work just fine on 3V3.

[Jessie]

You will need to make a 5v to 3.3v voltage divider(a couple resistors) for the pi but NES controlers just contain a 8bit shift register. They are easy to read with a microcontroller so the pi should have no problem.

[joostvanpoppel]

Ok, i wired everything and used 3.3v instead of 5v. Also installed PiPlay, formerly known as PiMame. Question is : what do i do next?

[DigitalLumberjack]

You will need to make a 5v to 3.3v voltage divider(a couple resistors) for the pi but NES controlers just contain a 8bit shift register. They are easy to read with a microcontroller so the pi should have no problem.

Just connect the 3.3v to the power of the nes controller, it worked for the 4 controller i used.

Ok, i wired everything and used 3.3v instead of 5v. Also installed PiPlay, formerly known as PiMame. Question is : what do i do next?

Look at https://github.com/petrockblog/RetroPie-Setup and its wiki you will have a lot of tools to continue your adventure

Use the gamecon_gpio_rpi kernel driver to use your nes controllers as joysticks

If you wired the data pin to GPIO 4 (PAD3 on the gamcon gpio picture) you should load the kernel module like :
modprobe gamecon_gpio_rpi map=0,0,2
or something like that

Let us know if it works

[joostvanpoppel]

Thanks for all the information! I installed retropie, but dont have a clue how to install de driver, any tips are appreciated! Thanks in advance,
joost