[TheGreatButcher]

I recently bought a second USB Gamepad. My first was the Gravis Gamepad Pro which I never had problems with. Now I also have the Macally iShock Gamepad. Now when I play games or use Connectix' VGS one of the gamepads will sometimes not respond at all or just plain drop out. They work fine seperately using my USB Hub, but if they're together they will not work consistently - even if I plug my mouse into the hub and the gamepads into the keyboard. The only way I ever get around this is by plugging one gamepad directly into the USB port on the back of my G4 and the other into the keyboard. If I have to do this it seems I just wasted money on buying a USB hub. The hub can run under the USB's power, but it also has it's own optional AC adapter. I have tried both with and without the adapter but it doesn't seem to matter. By the way I'm on the original Yikes PowerMac G4, which means the 12 mbps is shared between the two ports and not individual for each if that makes a difference. Can someone please give me some help on how to solve this and not have to go through the hassle of disconnecting and connecting USB devices?

[mcapehart]

The problem is not the hub here. It's CVGS. It can't handle simultanous input from two different gamepads, or two identical ones, through a hub. The signals get mixed up, cause they are so similar. You might wanna contact Connectix, and ask them. Also, make sure you are running Version 1.4 (The new version).

Lemme know what happens, Good Luck!

Mike

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The Man, the Myth, the something or other.

[TheGreatButcher]

It's not just VGS, but my Gamepad Pro dropped out while playing Madden 2000 also. This never happened when it was that controller alone.

[mcapehart]

Hrm...

It only dropped out with Madden 2000? DId it ever drop out with any other game? Were you having problems with Madden 2000 being run? (Skipped frames, jerky motion, etc) It may be caused by the emulation on that one game. Stranger things have happened.

Mike

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The Man, the Myth, the something or other.

I use 2 Macally iShocks with Virtual Game Station with no problems, on a PowerBook G3/400 (FireWire), running 9.0.4, they're both plugged right into the machine tho

[elzinat]

not exactly about compatibility type stuff, but a general issue with the controller.
when I set my MacAlly iShock to "work like a mouse," it correlates thumbstick position with cursor position, instead of cursor velocity. so there are exactly 17x17 different pixels on the screen that the cursor can point to, and it always snaps back to the center. so the gamepad is completely unuseable as a primary input device. which is stupid. a slightly better alternative I have found is to set it to the numeric keypad and turn on Mouse Keys (a great Universal Access feature), but the response is too darn slow to be practical.
does anyone know anything about this? have any suggestions?
tia.

From my experience, I don't think the iShock problem is with the games. I had problems with the MacAlly iShock drivers conflicting when 2 iShocks are connected. When I turned the iShock extensions off, I had no problem with the "above mentioned" conflicts. Just make sure you have the most recent Apple sprocket updates & you shouldn't have these problems.

*But, while we're on the subject of problems.... I'd like to mention a problem with Apple's USB all-in-one input extensions & usb controllers like iShock gamepad & Cyborg stick.
1. x-y, x-y-z, & throttle type sticks & levers don't calibrate very well. The Cyborg stick is rendered useless on most games especially flight simulators because something like going into a right roll makes the plane go up as well (USB reads the stick to go right an down at the same time which is disastrous in a plane). The same problems occur on the dual-shock controllers of the iShock gamepad.
2. Another annoyance of the Apple USB extensions are the fact that you don't have full access to the game functions to assign to the part of the controller you need the function on. Some functions are assigned to buttons only, some to direction pad or stick only, & others to the throttle. This is not always the case (some games like Unreal or UT allow you to press option key to add more functions in a menu). This becomes an even bigger problem for my iShock because Apple's USB ext. interprets the iShock as a flight stick with one Dual-Shock assigned as the stick & the other assigned the throttle & 2 other buttons, sometimes giving unrelated functions in the menu that are needed.
3. Apple's overall USB generic input extension needs to be more robust for Apple to become a serious contender in the gaming world. More & more companies are relying on Apple's USB interpretation & the definitions set-up in their USB ext. has been confined once more. Each time they update their USB connectivity scheme, Apple brings it a generation late.

Apple helped design USB to be "universally cross-platformable" to enable more products to the mac market. Because of this, they have to become more responsible for the best connectivity for standard universal usb devices. I wouldn't mind the generic usb ext. to interpret my iShock as a flight stick if I could at least calibrate the dual-shock sticks correctly.

later,

Try plugging one into the hub and the other into your keyboard. This may clear it up.

[TheGreatButcher]

Ok I've tried this with and without the iShock drivers, and am still having problems.It's the Gravis pad that keeps dropping out, not the iShock. I've tried many many different USB configurations and none work consistently. This isn't program specific either as it happens in VGS, Madden 2000, and every other game console emulator. I never had one problem before this with anything USB. The only thing that remotely seems to work is by making sure that the Gravis pad is the first one plugged into the hub and that the iShock comes somewhere down the line. I'm not sure if this setup will work forever though as I thought having the Gravis pad hooked directly into the USB 2 port on the tower and the iShock into the keyboard would continue to work fine but all of the sudden today the Gravis pad dropped out again.