[y2kerr]

So I went out and bought a gamepad to use with my PowerBook. I figure, "These modern OSs are all plug-n-play, so it my Mac outta just recognize the gamepad no problem." Alas, this doesn`t appear to be the case.

Now, if I had a Windows machine, I`d plug the gamepad in and set it up under the Control Panel. Unfortunately, System Preferences in OS X doesn`t seem to have a corresponding program for configuring gamepads (or even acknowledging that I`ve plugged one in). I`d tell you what gamepad I bought, but at the moment I can`t remember what it`s called. Plus I`m in Japan, so it might not be one sold in the English-speaking world most of you here reside in.

But it seems to be just a regular USB gamepad. It didn`t come with any software, so it should work out-of-the-box on a PC, and so I guess it should work out-of-the-box on a Mac as well.

Can anyone give me a quick run down on what to do to get it working? I`ve got old game console emulators begging to be played with!

Thanks,
Mike

[tr]

http://www.usboverdrive.com/

this should work for any game pad, you just map keystrokes to buttons.

and you can try this too:
http://www.carvware.com/gamepadcompanion.html

i used it in 10.2, but i haven't tried it in panther, so i don't know if it works.

tr

[Sakino]

Originally posted by tr:
http://www.usboverdrive.com/

this should work for any game pad, you just map keystrokes to buttons.



tr

This should work if I were to take my playstation two controller and hook it up to my powerbook?

Is tha tthe purpose of this?
Will it also work on a pc?

[lenox]

You usually set up your gamepad in the respective emulator/game. You don't necessarily need to do this in the system preferences or with a third-party program.

Considering each emulator/game has different controls, anyhow...this makes sense.

[bimmerphile]

For the record, USB overdrive ****ed up my iShock II in 10.3

[Jim Paradise]

Maybe the setups were incredibly well written in OS 9, but InputSprockets had a very elegant input setup in ALL games regardless of who developed them compared to what I've seen in OS X... I'll never understand why they got rid of InputSprockets and replaced it with HUD or HID or whatever it's called now.

[jfinete]

With MacOS 8/9, games didn't automatically support InputSprockets. The games had to be written to do so. And with OSX, games have to be written to use HID Manager.

The difference is that InputSprockets is an older API that programmers are already familiar with, while the HID Manager is newer and it took some time for game programmers to learn it. (It also took some time for Apple to provide some decent documentation and code samples).

[tr]

Originally posted by bimmerphile:
For the record, USB overdrive ****ed up my iShock II in 10.3

shouldn't you have just used the 10.3/iShockII specific drivers found on this page?

i didn't bother using USB overdrive for my iShock, i just used the panther driver on their site.

Originally posted by Sakino:
This should work if I were to take my playstation two controller and hook it up to my powerbook?

yeah, you can use a PS2 controller with USB overdrive, but you'll also need a PS controller-to-USB adapter. coincidentally, i just got one the other day, and used USB overdrive to map the keys of a PS2 dance mat (for stepmania), and it worked fine.

tr