Neo Geo to Xbox Controller Adapter Help

I recently picked up Capcom Classics Collection 2 for the old xbox, and remembered real quickly how the xbox controller really stinks for fighting games. I am familiar with some of the basics of controller hacking as I have done a few in the past. The problem I run into is that with a neo controller (or in this case.. hacked saturn pad) it has a common ground for all of the buttons. Whereas an xbox controller has a common ground for the d-pad and start and back buttons, but has a different ground for A,B,X,Y, White, and Black. So how can I use a neo compatible controller with an xbox controller given the ground issue ? Any help would be appreciated !

I've been down this road before... to me, it was SO not worth the trouble. That seperate ground loop is for the pressure sensitivity, EVEN if the pad you're using isn't pressure sensitive. It's probably in some kind of lame Microsoft specification.

The Duke controller will work somewhat with a common ground, because it uses a different design to create the pressure-sensitivity in the buttons. But it's huge and hard as hell to solder to.

But like a Playstation pad, you should NOT remove the analogs, OR the analog L/R triggers. If you remove the potential they are kept at, without replacing it with a similar circuit (which I'm too stupid to know how to build), they will completely screw up the controller, because the button matrix is tied into the analogs through the chip that condenses the inputs.

Any other XBOX controller I've seen will not work with common ground, and that includes Controller S, 3rd party crap, and the Capcom SF Anniversary pad AND joystick. I have wasted a lot of money trying to make a viable converter from my Neo sticks. At the end, I was thinking of wiring up some kind of circuit, with relays, for those "special" buttons, but it was beyond my level of expertise. And all the wasted time had pushed me into a new level of frustration.

So if you want it to work properly on xbox, you either have to make some kind of fancy circuit to work around the pressure sensitivity (beyond me), or wire those six buttons directly with their own ground wires. That, or someone has to program a chip as an XBOX interface with a common ground and no pressure sensitive inputs. If I had free time now, I'd learn, but I don't, so some awesome electrical engineer has to do it for us.

Sadly, it'll probably never happen.

Thanks for the input man. I custom wired a genesis pad a while ago and it worked fine. But I cut the ground between the d-pad and the six buttons on the genesis controller board to make it work with the xbox. Bummer. Thanks again though.

wire to a PS pad and use a ps->xbox adapter.

Since the Neo controller you want to use is a hacked Saturn pad, I would recommend getting a magic box converter and just use an unhacked Saturn pad. The boxes work great and are fully compatable with Saturn, Dreamcast, and Playstation controllers.

All the converters lag, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Some of them only lag a very small amount, but they still lag. For 2D fighters, I just can't accept lag I can notice.

And I did a lot of testing, even with the Dual Shocks and other pads that were recommended to be used with all the converters. The unofficial, HK-riffic XBOX interface in each of the converters takes too long, probably in emulating that pressure-sensitive button matrix.

Microsoft is paranoid and controlling, and that mentality trickled down all the way into their friggin' gamepad input design. Really stupid.

Then again, I could turn around tomorrow and find that someone finally broke open this problem, rather than just hacking pads unsuccessfully. Would be nice.

this is what I did

this way I can use my neo stick on it. I used the main ground for all the d-pad directionals and buttons.