Wireless PC Engine controller

Post 00003 | July 13th, 2022

Look what I made! Recently, I have been trying to get wireless controllers for my old consoles. Mostly, I have been using 8Bitdo and Retrobit options, but there are a few consoles, that doesn't seem to have anything readily available - not from anywhere reputable anyway. One of these consoles is my PC Engine, which ironically is one of the consoles that needs it the most because of the short cable the controllers come with.

That's why I because ecstatic when I saw tamanegitaro's Megadrive2PCEnginePAD adapter on Github. It's a small adapter, based on an Arduino Pro Micro microcontroller, that takes the input from a Mega Drive controller (It is designed for the 2.4g 8Bitdo controller - I haven't tried it with original controllers) and converts it to PC Engine controller input. Moreover, it has six or three button modes. When in three button mode, X, Y, and Z works as turbo buttons.

I already had a spare Pro Micro as well as the 8Bitdo controller, so all I needed was controller connectors. While tamanegitaro recommends you buy a Mega Drive extension cable, I bought loose connectors like these. The main benefit of using a loose connector is the fact you can solder many of the connections directly to the Arduino. You do however need to raise other connectors to avoid shorts. Still, I'd argue it makes the soldering a bit easier.

Pictures of the adapter itself. I will refer you to tamanegitaro Github for pinout.

On the PC Engine side I used the recommended connector. However, if I was to make another one, I would look a for an extension lead to cut in half instead of loose connector, as an 8-pin mini-DIN can be a fiddly connector to solder to. Besides, when the outer sleeve was on the connector, I had problems getting a good connection when I plugged it into my PC Engine.

In order to make it look a bit neater, I designed a small case for it. Here's an stl file if you want to print your own.

As for performance, the adapter works really well. The wireless controller would lose connection to the receiver on multiple occasions however, but this was also the case when connected to a Mega Drive. I fixed this by soldering extensions to the antennas in the controller and receiver. For antennas I used the kind of cable twist ties that comes with practically any cable nowadays.

Antenna mod on the receiver PCB. I scraped away enough solder mask to expose copper before soldering a cable twist tie to it. I did the same thing to the controller PCB

After the antenna mod I played my way through YS Book I & II. I didn't feel any input delay.