Modders Friend

Description

Modders Friend

I have seen a lot of PC casemods on youtube where the joystick ports are not used because the author of the mod does not have one USB to gamepad controller. Other casemods use such USB adapter but there is a lot of wires and adapters involved, sometimes a USB cable is routed from the PCs rear panel back inside the cabinet. It's a mess...

On the other hand most of the motherboards spares an internal 10 pin header with two USB ports... Then I thought.. why not build an internal adapater to be attached to such header designed specifically to be small and code (or port) some gamepads and joystick adapters? And since the header has two usb ports being only one used for the controller adapter, why not put an USB-A female connector so a wireless mouse/keyboard dongle adapter can be attached thus releasing one spare connector in the motherboard rear panel?

The answer to these questions is the Modders Friend.

Details

The USB-Gamepad controller translation can easily be performed by one AVR micro controller and V-USB firmware stack.

The Nintendo gamepads can be read witn one ATTiny85 microcontroller. This is the case of NES, SNES, Nintendo64 and Gamecube controlers.

Other brands like ATARI, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System and Playstation requires more pins and then a bigger chip like the ATMega8.

Firmare for the controllers can be ported from #AVeRCADE or from the Raphnet collection (there are other repositories though).

Files

Modders_T85PTH.zip

Modder's Friend [S]Nes board with ATTiny85 microcontroller, Single Sided, Through-Hole (conventional) components mounting (Eagle 6)

x-zip-compressed - 34.60 kB - 08/22/2016 at 01:34

Download

Modders_T85.zip

Modder's Friend [S]Nes board with ATTiny85 microcontroller, SMT mounting (Eagle 6)

x-zip-compressed - 34.97 kB - 08/22/2016 at 01:33

Download

Modders_M8.zip

Modder's Friend full board with ATMega*8 microcontroller, SMT mounting (Eagle 6)

x-zip-compressed - 47.39 kB - 08/22/2016 at 01:32

Download

Project Logs

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Tiny85 THT assembled
danjovic • 05/16/2021 at 16:28 • 0 comments

I have assembled the THT version of the board.
The real tricky part is to solder the header connectors on the copper side. They have to be soldered in fist place.
Professional PCB ready!
danjovic • 10/10/2019 at 03:34 • 0 comments

After a long time, this project is one step closer to completion
First boards
danjovic • 11/27/2016 at 15:13 • 0 comments

I have made two boards at home for this project. One is for the PTH version with attiny85.
The other board is two sided and it required a lot of patience to make the layers match as well as the drilling on the vias. The drill bit has only 0.6mm!
Two circuit versions, three PCB variants
danjovic • 08/22/2016 at 01:43 • 0 comments

I've designed two versions of the board. One is specific for NES/SNES controllers and uses an ATTiny85. This version has two PCB variants, one using SMD components and another (single sided) using PTH components.
The other version uses an ATMega*8 (8/88/168/328) and it is designed to allow several types of controllers to be connected.
Schematics
The schematics for both versions are shown below. All files are available for download.