Love this. Not sure why nobody responded...
this is awesome to use. Wireless M/K with a retro rig? No problemo.

I got one. It's nice, especially if you have a spare Pi 3 that you are looking to repurpose, but I'd prefer something a little less bulky and that fits inside a case.

USB4VC shows up mentioned in other threads. Main problem is ridiculous price forced by using full rpi. Its way over $100 after adding Protocol Card/cables/power supply/SDcard for something doable with $5 pico 🙁 Those:
mice/keyboard
Simple Arduino based PS/2 to Serial Mouse Adapter https://github.com/necroware/ps2-serial-mouse-adapter https://github.com/necroware/gameport-adapter
HIDman - USB to PS/2 converter (Open Source) https://github.com/rasteri/HIDman
PS2TOSERIAL : Connecting a PS/2 mouse to the serial port https://www.serdashop.com/PS2TOSERIAL
https://github.com/LimeProgramming/USB-serial-mouse-adapter
Re: HIDman - USB to PS/2 converter (Open Source) https://github.com/No0ne/ps2x2pico https://github.com/No0ne/ps2pico
joystick (with optional Gravis Ultrasound on the side)
PicoGUS: ISA sound card emulator with Raspberry Pi Pico (Gravis Ultrasound, AdLib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS) https://www.tindie.com/products/polpo/picogus … -isa-retro-pcs/
ADB
https://www.bigmessowires.com/usb-wombat/

provide same functionality at 1/3-1/6 the cost without added complexity of a whole Linux computer running in the background (>30 seconds boot time before your keyboard starts working).
USB4VC is great at what it does. Rpi made it super flexible and easy to develop, but rpi pricetag and up to recently rpi supply shortages made it not that attractive.

USB4VC is great in my opinion. Easy to assemble, doesn't look like a hack job at the end. It's only missing a proper enclosure! It's the only thing missing for it.
HIDman above looks like a good solution and the end product is very good looking. Same with the PicoGUS. But these lack the "everything" USB4VC offers as a one device to rule them all.

I appreciate the costs are high, but I'm very willing to pay to not have the hassle of having to assemble it all myself (for sure if I did I would end up with a non working device at the end!)

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-12-27, 20:47:

provide same functionality at 1/3-1/6 the cost without added complexity of a whole Linux computer running in the background (>30 seconds boot time before your keyboard starts working).
USB4VC is great at what it does. Rpi made it super flexible and easy to develop, but rpi pricetag and up to recently rpi supply shortages made it not that attractive.

yeah. not everybody enjoys all the "fun" of buying all the parts and assembling the crap by himself... you only trade your money with your time.
having said that, I have a USB4VC, I'm glad that somebody else did it for me and it does exactly what it's supposed to do

I picked one up as part of the Kickstarter along with the extra cables etc. It's already paid for itself just going through my stack of old machines.

Thread resurrection~~~

Yeah, there's no arguing that using a full Raspberry Pi for this is a little much. That said, as others have mentioned it does exactly what it says on the tin. Its big advantage over other solutions is Bluetooth support, not just for mouse/KB but also modern PS/XBox controllers, etc. It also has a companion app to create controller or game-specific profiles, so you can assign custom keyboard or mouse actions to your controllers. Its little OLED display allows for switching out these profiles, changing mouse/KB protocols, etc.

Really, it's very flexible but probably overkill for a lot of applications. I'm def going to check out HIDman so I have something when all I really need is simple mouse/kb.

Just for reference, I'm not running off of a full pi. I just slapped one of my Pi zero Ws on there and it works just fine.

Great product, @dekuNukem 😀
Thanks for your work!
It's always a pleasure to see people developing things that make our Retro gaming hobby much easier and mix it with modern devices so we can keep things alive.

In my case I just want to use an USB XBOX360 or DS4 controller as gamepad on gameport of my SB compatible soundcard.
For only this scenario USB4VC is much too expensive (would need a Pi on top) and I don't need the flexibility of that all-in-one system.
Also I'm missing an enclosure for this.

PicoGUS has exactly my desired functionality and is cheaper than USB4VC.
But I already own a GUS PnP (besides a SB) and don't want to replace it with a PicoGUS.

Is there any other device that converts USB-to-gameport and costs less than an USB4VC?

crusher wrote on 2024-07-11, 08:56:

Great product, @dekuNukem :) Thanks for your work! It's always a pleasure to see people developing things that make our Retro ga […]
Show full quote

Great product, @dekuNukem 😀
Thanks for your work!
It's always a pleasure to see people developing things that make our Retro gaming hobby much easier and mix it with modern devices so we can keep things alive.

In my case I just want to use an USB XBOX360 or DS4 controller as gamepad on gameport of my SB compatible soundcard.
For only this scenario USB4VC is much too expensive (would need a Pi on top) and I don't need the flexibility of that all-in-one system.
Also I'm missing an enclosure for this.

PicoGUS has exactly my desired functionality and is cheaper than USB4VC.
But I already own a GUS PnP (besides a SB) and don't want to replace it with a PicoGUS.

Is there any other device that converts USB-to-gameport and costs less than an USB4VC?

I have both and the PicoGUS doesn't compare to the USB4VC. The limitation is that the PC gameport standard is limited to 4 axis, 4 buttons. There are special encodings for things like hats on more advanced flight sticks. But the really high end stuff did keyboard inputs mapping. The USB4VC allows a gamepad to map controls to both gameport and keyboard inputs, while the PicoGUS is limited to just gameport.

Thanks for the comparison @SScorpio.

PicoGUS is no option for me because I'm using SB compatible card too in my system and that needs DMA1.
Therefore GUS has to use DMA6+7.
That's not possible with the PicoGUS.

I found HID2Joy project as an alternative to USB4VC.
But that supports only Xbox One controller so far and has to be build DIY.
Unfortunalety I have no skills for that.

crusher wrote on 2024-07-11, 12:19:

Thanks for the comparison @SScorpio. […]
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Thanks for the comparison @SScorpio.

PicoGUS is no option for me because I'm using SB compatible card too in my system and that needs DMA1.
Therefore GUS has to use DMA6+7.
That's not possible with the PicoGUS.

I found HID2Joy project as an alternative to USB4VC.
But that supports only Xbox One controller so far and has to be build DIY.
Unfortunalety I have no skills for that.

You can use a PicoGUS and official GUS in the same system if you have a spare ISA slot. You'd use just the PicoGUS's gameport firmware rather than the firmware that handles the GUS.

That HID2Joy project appears to support Thrustmaster and CH encoding for additional inputs. But you really need a solution that outputs both gameport and a keyboard DIN connector. That will allow you to create custom mappings per game so any game that has keyboard control will work. The enhanced Thrustmaster and CH encoding are limited in what games support them. The Thrustmaster I have makes you connect your keyboard to it, and it then connects to both the gameport and keyboard DIN. There's software to configure what keyboard inputs are sent via the different joystick inputs.

Many retro games do not have a way to customize controls. You need something external that can remap the keyboard per game to really support any USB controller.

Thanks but that would be way too much having 3 sound cards in one system.
I will live with that or buy USB4VC if I have too much money left 😀

there is no such thing as too many sound cards. in all my retro pcs I put sound blaster, gus and pas. just because xd

In this video Joel is having problems using a gamepad on the PicoGUS because of the SB card.
Game reports "no joystick found" because it tries to access gameport of the SB card and not the PicoGUS.
To get it working with the PicoGUS he had to remove the SB card from the system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okSBZJwqVb8

crusher wrote on 2024-07-12, 05:57:

In this video Joel is having problems using a gamepad on the PicoGUS because of the SB card. Game reports "no joystick found" be […]
Show full quote

In this video Joel is having problems using a gamepad on the PicoGUS because of the SB card.
Game reports "no joystick found" because it tries to access gameport of the SB card and not the PicoGUS.
To get it working with the PicoGUS he had to remove the SB card from the system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okSBZJwqVb8

It depends on the card being used. Some might have a jumper to enable the gameport. The PnP cards, you can skip initializing it by using Unisound.

It is possible to have more than one active gameport in a system, CH and I believe Thrustmaster had dual port cards. But the vast majority of games only ever looked a the default first port.