Nintendo Midi Controller

[Matthew Nothing]

I'm trying to strip out a nintendo and replace the innards with a core and a din . I want the input to be taken from 1) a powerglove 2) a powerpad 3) joypad controllers. I want the output to be a simple midi out, on a predefined channel. I'm a complete newbie at all of this and i'd really appreciate it if someone could maybe help walk me through what I need to do inorder to get this working properly. thanks!

[timofonic]

http://bisqwit.iki.fi

http://nesdev.parodius.com

MIDINES, a black box type (no schematics and/or source code available of it) MIDI interface cart for NES/Famicom

MIDIbox NES? forum thread.

http://www.slack.net/~ant/nes-emu/apu_ref.txt

http://nesdev.parodius.com/2A03/

Do you want to do a MIDIBOX NES (2A03) or just a simple MIDI experiment?

[stryd_one]

Hi Matthew, welcome aboard :)

I've got a powerglove on the way so I might be able to help you with that more directly later on, but here's a few tips to get the ball rolling.

How you go about doing this, depends on specifics of the device. What we can assume, is that the powerpad, joypad and buttons on the glove, are all simple switches. I think we can make the assumption based on the way they behave (if I remember that far back) that they are momentary switches, which is what we need. Joysticks and other devices such as the sensor on the wrist of the glove, are based on pots. What we don't know, is the precise nature of those pots and switches, and the nature of the interface they have with the machine. For example, the switches could be a scanned matrix, they could be muxed, they could be wired directly, they could be run into a small micro inside the controller and sent to the console (or in our case, the core module) using some bizarre proprietry protocol.

You've basically got two options. One is to find a way to interface the controller and the core using the native pinouts and cabling. This could be very very simple (IE straight connections to the core/console) or very difficult (the last example I gave)

The other option is to re-wire the switches and pots, and replace the pots with more appropriate values where required, re-wire the cables where required.

Which is easiest/quickest/cheapest/works best with the core, will depend on the device. If you'd like to do some homework and find out more about how the controller works, is made, is put together, and what is in it (schematics/boards/protocols/pinouts/pot values/switch types/etc) and come back I'll be happy to tell you what's required to make it talk to the core.

Cheers!

Edit: I should add that the two methods can and should be combined depending on your requirements

[Matthew Nothing]

so heres the idea...i have no interest in using any of the orignal midi stuff from the nintendo. I just want to output staright midi note (on/off) from controller button, and cc data from xyz of the powerglove.

what i've found so far is that the controllers work on a 4021 IC, which is an 8-channel parallel to serial convertor.

i've also found an example of how to hook a joypad up to a PIC16F628A here-> http://devcast.dcemulation.com/mods/unicont/nes.php

heres what im curious about. If i want four inputs (from four seperate controllers ie-powerglove, powerpad, etc), can i hook each one to an input on the DIN model and then run it to the core to get midi...or am i completely out to sea on this one.

also, how different is the PIC18F452 from the 16F628A?

[stryd_one]

also, how different is the PIC18F452 from the 16F628A?

Code-wise it's not a really big difference. Easy port. I'll take a look at all that info and get back to you...

[stryd_one]

Unable to forward this request at this time.

No source... I was going to use that to nut it out... If it's a serial connection then a DIN isn't the right thing for the job, but I'll still need all that info I mentioned before and more to say much more