Lu

USB Gamepads on Retro PC’s

Posted on by Lu

My experience with DOS gamepads left a lot to be desired. While there are great options for racing wheels and flight sticks, I never found a native DOS gamepad with a good d-pad.

That’s where the HIDman comes in. Created by TheRasteri on YouTube, its intended use is the ability to let you connect USB mice and keyboards to retro PC’s with PS/2 ports. My interest lies in its bonus feature, and that is allowing you to connect USB game controllers to a retro PC. It accomplishes this by translating controller inputs into keyboard keys. So it can even work with games that do not support game controllers.

When I initially got the HIDman, latency was really bad and most games were unplayable with a USB game controller. A recent firmware update fixed the latency issue and now gaming is a great experience with the HIDman.

HIDman works best with games that allow you to remap keyboard keys. If a game does not allow that, then you are at the mercy of the game’s hard coded controls. Unfortunately, at the moment, you cannot remap the gamepad keyboard functions in HIDman, so some games will still be unplayable if their mappings do not match what HIDman is expecting. TheRasteri does mention the possibility of remappable keys in the future. It also offers mouse emulation using a USB controller’s analogue sticks, but I was never able to get that feature to work. On the Rasteri’s video, you can see it working with a modern Playstation pad, and I do not have one of those to test with.

I’ve tested several gamepads with varying results. Here are my results:

  • 8BitDo Ultimate 2.4GHz
    • Direct USB worked
    • 2.4GHz  wireless did NOT work
  • Retro Fighters Defender Wireless gamepad:
    • 2.4GHz dongle worked
    • Direct USB did NOT work
  • 2 player SNES to USB adapter
    • Worked. (Only player 1 port worked)
  • 8BitDo Ultimate 2C controller
    • 2.4GHz did NOT work
    • DIrect USB did NOT work
  • Reflex Adapt:
    • SNES: Worked
    • NES: Worked
    • Playstation: Worked (analogue sticks untested)

Overall, I do see HIDman as a great peripheral for Retro PC’s if you want to use a quality gamepad for DOS platformers and shooters. It really does make it a lot easier to find quality gamepads to use with DOS. If it can support for key remapping, then there will be no game you will not be able to pla with HIDman.

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