The process of adapting a Playstation joystick to a PC is similar to the process of adapting a Genesis joystick. But since the Playstation joystick plug is different, the manufacture of the adapting cable is a little different, too.

You will need to buy the following parts: 5x 1N4148 diodes, 1x DB-25 connector (male, with box, also known as 25-pin D-Sub), and 6’ 11” (2 meters) of 8-wire cable. Besides, you will need a soldering iron and know how to solder! The best would be to get a male plug to fit in the Playstation joystick, however such plug is not easy to find.

With this material we will build a cable that, at one side (25-pin connector) will be installed in the parallel port of the PC and, at the other side, will be where the Playstation joystick will be installed.

On Figure 1 we show the electric scheme of how the assembly of this cable should be made. The diodes must be soldered directly into the DB25 connector.

Figure 1: Playstation to PC cable schematics.

The most important thing to take care with while soldering the cables and the DB-25 plug diodes is watching the pinning of the connector. If you watch it closely, at the very connector there is the number of each pin (a very small number, next to each pin, numbered 1, 2, 3, etc). Looking from behind, that is, at the side that is soldered, the pinning of the connectors is shown in the figure below.

Figure 2: Male DB-25 (25-pin D-Sub) pin-out.

In the case of the PSX connector (joystick connector), we show the pinout below. Pay attention to the numbering not to make mistakes. We count the pins with the connector that comes from joystick as seen from its front.

Figure 3: Pinout of the Playstation joystick plug.

After assembling the cable, you will have to install a driver in your PC. If you use Windows 9x or ME, you should download the DirectPad from
http://www.emulatronia.com/parcial/dpadpr50.zip. If you use Windows 2000 or XP, download the NTpad from http://www.emulatronia.com/reportajes/directpad/ntpad.zip.

To install the driver in Windows 9x or ME, install the joystick in the PC, uncompress the DirectPad in a directory in your PC (for ex.: c:joystick)  go to the Control Panel, double click in the Game Controllers icon, click in the Add… box in the window that will be shown and then select Add Another, clicking in the box With Disk and indicating the directory into which you uncompressed the DirectPad. Windows will recognize the control, click in Accept and then Finish. After installing the driver, you will need to select it, click in Properties and then, in Configuration, you have to select the type of joystick installed, which will be “Playstation” in our case.

In Windows 2000 or XP, all you have to do is uncompress the file and run the install.exe file. Select Playstation as the joystick.

One important reminder: for this to work, the parallel port should be configured as “ECP” in the computer setup.