- Can I put a 20' extension cable on a Playstation2 controller without problems?
- Where can I buy such a thing? I can't find anyone who sells cables longer than 7'.
I could just chain a few sevens together, but I'd like some verification that it works before spending the money.
Update: I hate every last one of you. Have you done this thing? If not, kindly stop flapping your lips! I don't care what devices you'd build if you were me. If you were me, you'd hate you too.
Update 2: For the record: controller plus 7' extension cable: works. Controller plus 10' extension cable: works. Controller plus 7' plus 10': completely fails to function. Likewise for 10' plus 10'. Perhaps a single >10' cable would work, if such a thing existed, but chaining multiple extensions together doesn't work at all.
Well, I've successfully chained two 7's together (I'm afraid that's all I own), but I've found that there is a bit of lag. I don't use it for anything but RPGs.
How's that possible? Light travels about 3 meters in 1 nanosecond in a vaccuum; speed of light in copper is about .6 the vaccuum speed. I seriously doubt 0.0000000017 seconds is perceptible. (Even if you multiply that by ten to account for handshaking.)
If it failed, I'd expect it to be missing clicks entirely, not lagging.
If it failed, I'd expect it to be missing clicks entirely, not lagging.
I used to try playing Capcom vs. SNK 2 with it and usually had to input combos twice to get them to work. My mistake.
You're right, the signal gets there at the speed of light. There would be no lag on a video game controller.
Although, there is an interesting factoid here. A wire carrying an electric current is like one of those little executive swinging ball toys. And an individual electron can take a loooong time to show up at the other end of the wire.
As a site I found explains:
"Electric current flows as slowly as a river of warm putty. Energy can flow fast in an electric circuit because metals are already filled with this "putty." If you push on one end of a column of putty, the far end moves almost instantly. Energy flows fast, yet an electric current is a very slow flow."
...
Let's say we have an electric current in normal lamp cord connected to bright light bulb. The electric current works out to be a flow of approximately 3 inches per hour. Very slow!
this, believe it or not, is one reason why older controllers used current-loop signalling. if you break the current path by pushing a button, the voltage changes almost instantly, whereas when you switch a transistor you have to wait for the charge to drain off the wire.
Perhaps there was a visit from the Capacitance Fairy.
Have you tried Dia? Seems like they would know if such at thing existed.
As they have no matches for "playstation", it would seem not.
I meant actually picking up the hellophone and talking to a real live person - at least one of their staff must have a PS2 and would know
But couldn't you just buy a length of cable and make your own out of that and an old one?
Oh because you don't know if it would work? Poo. Just try it. I know cable can be expensive, but where's your sense of inventiveness? :-P
I don't give money to people whose web sites are useless.
And yeah, I could do all kinds of things first. But you know what? I'd be way more likely to spend thirty bucks on prefab cables than I would be to build one myself, because I hate that shit.
Let us review:
Why did I post this?
To find out whether it would work before spending time and/or money finding out on my own.
This means that "gosh, why don't you try it and see" is not exactly the answer I'm looking for here.
What I meant was, there might be someone with the skill set you needed (PS2s and cable) who could tell you where to get one (or if you made it yourself, if it would work) NOT that you would buy it from them.
Not sure if it helps, but you could probably buy a wireless controller for cheaper than you could buy three 7' extension cords.
Then I have to change batteries all the time. Fuck that.
So splice in an AC adapter?
Wow! Thank you for pointing out that lovely rathole I had completely overlooked!
It is a lovely rathole, because instead of getting off the couch and coiling up the cord that's lying across your living room, you can leave the controller in/on the end table.
And, yes, I've done it. Not with a wireless PS2 controller per se, but with various other wireless devices of evil. Most recently in embedding the wireless lightswitch from hell in to a wall.
where are my fuel cell AA's?
WHERE IS THE FUTURE? damn the man.
You might be surprised at how long batteries last in a wireless controller, particularly if you turn off the rumble, or play games that make little use of it.
I play mine quite a bit, and routinely average at least 4 weeks between battery changes. . . and I've gone as long as 3 months, too.
OT, but I got a WaveBird for my GameCube nearly a year ago, and haven't had to change the batteries yet, despite finishing Wind Waker 1.5 times with the WaveBird.
If battery life on the PS2 wireless controllers is similar, you won't have to change batteries very much.
As always, I am awestruck by your hatred.
funny shit huh?
it cheers me up in the morning
"They talk by flapping their meat at each other."
Now that's a great story. :D
The PS2 analog sticks only work on a specific impeadance in the cable. If you hook up two or more cables, the impeadance will be different and the analog sticks are fucked. If you hatchet an extension cable and splice in 20 feet of raw wire, same thing. The 7' extension cord must have some weird mojo in them to prevent this from happening.
Are you high, the PSX and PS2 use a packetized digital comunications protocal. It does all the ADC work inside the controller and sends out the positions as a group of unsigned bytes. Much unlike the old "game port" interface used on our IBM PC clones.
I have successfully used 30' PS/2 runs. I didn't do the setup, so I don't know if the cable was special in some way (shielded or whatever), but I was typing on a keyboard fully 30' away from the machine it was plugged into. And it definitely was not an active cable.
That site was really pissed about the length limits of USB cables when they looked at upgrading to new gear that didn't support PS/2.
You might find success with a PS/2 - RJ45 end and a straight-through ethernet cable.
Or you could just buy a 25 foot PS/2 extension cable from Connect Technologies.
Oh, you said PS2 not PS/2. Nevermind then.
The very fact that comments like that one can logically exist in this universe makes me seriously question my career choices.
-j
I have a 15' extension on my PS2 without any problems whatsoever (the brand is, IIRC, either Mad Catz or Pelican, although now I can't find one longer than 7'; mine is a spool, with the controller input on the spool itself and the PS2 hookup at the end of the 15' cable), and I've successfully chained it with a Sony 7' cable with no trouble at all; I don't see any reason why a single 20' cable - or three 7' cables daisy-chained - would have problems.
http://www.cablesnmor.com/ps2-extension-cables.html
second link from the top
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=ps2+cable
Sooo Hot Topic. Couldn't you have thrown in a reference to penguin-fucking somewhere?
Do mall goths fuck penguins now? I am insufficiently "hip" for your reference.
If you have to go the cord concatenation route there are 10 foot cables available on Amazon.
GEMINI ACCESS 10 Foot Control Pad Extension Cable For PS2
Combining three of the Sony cable extenders (which are probably 6' long or so) works fine. I used it regularly for quite a while.
Combining 10 x 6' gamecube controller extensions does not work. Don't get drunk and try it, becuase I've already performed this research in my 'lab'.
So, are you going to divulge the reason you need a 20' PS2 cord or are you going to make us keep guessing?
Since I don't know what exactly you are attempting, I'll just make another suggestion that is sure to infuriate you...
Why not move the PS2 closer and use an extension on the AV and power cables?
I'd like to put it in the rack with the rest of the stereo equipment, not only to keep it out of the way, but also to keep the A/V cables shorter. I got a new amp that has optical audio and component video, and I'd like to use those (the PS2 is also my DVD player.) So another reason to put the PS2 in the rack is that 20' optical cables are like $75 each.
Not to mention that optical cables are prone to jitter, and the standard was set in the 70s has no built in error correction (!). Someone really needs to update S/PDIF.
From what I've read the best bet for low error rate digital audio cables at the moment is a high quality coax cable. YMMV.
it's generally been reccomended to run digital audio over digital coax instead of optical, assuming your amp supports that, which would be odd if it didn't.
Have you tried switching to an obscure linux distribution? My friend's sister's boyfriend's uncle's cat found that that solved all his problems.
I heard that your friends sisters boyfriends uncle's cat found debian worked, but it wasn't linux, it was the freebsd port of debian.
This is exactly what I would do if I were wanting to do what you want to do:
(I googled as well, just to see, and could only find 6-7' PS2 controller extensions.)
I'd buy two (2) 6' extension cables. If you already have two Dualshock2 controllers (which I do because I occasionally play games with friends), you cannot lose. If you can, I recommend getting Sony brand PS2 cables. Don't fuck around with 3rd party cables.
My logic here is this: The Dualshock2 controller cable is already 8 feet. Go end to end with the two 6 footers and you got 20 feet. See if it works. If it does, great. If it doesn't, well then you have one extension for each of your controllers making 2 controllers with 14' cables. (Maybe the PS2 cable package will even state the product's limitations?)
I know 14' is not 20'; but maybe you can be flexible in your furniture setup?
Just a thought also: you can probably get the cables at Fry's or GameStop. Maybe even ask the people at GameStop, if you go into the store. Fry's help will be useless, but the kids at a GameStop will probably know what they are talking about.
By the way, you can also get a Playstation2/DVD remote, if all you are interested in is watching movies. I have one and it works great.
I hate every last one of you. Have you done this thing?
You're giving them too much feedback. Next time, you'll get a real thorough, plausible, and completely fictitious description of how they did whatever you're asking for, complete with a shopping list to waste your time and money.
Let me ask some of the hardware boys around here to find out...
Egan >:>
Damn. I'm late to jump in to piss off Jamie. Maybe next time.
I have done some fucking with this kind of stuff (strange mods to game controllers), although I haven't tried this one in particular.
You can do it. Possibly three normal extensions work fine. But if you want to make sure, build the entension out of CAT-5.
And as with networks, make sure the pairs are run on the same twist. PWR and GND should absolutely be on the same pair.Here are the PS1 pinouts. The PS2 pinouts will probably use an additional pin or two (one for vibrate PWR and possibly for vibrate GND, so put them on the same pair too).
I've done this for SNES controllers so I could use them on my PC (MAME, console emulators, etc). It's not hard.
Incorrect, and verified as incorrect with an electrical engineer. (I used to have the same misconception.)
Playstation pinout here http://narmi.net/psx/controller.html
If you are dealing with something that is not a balanced signal (+voltage and -voltage sent at the same time down each wire) (Ethernet is a balanced signal, RS422 is balanced, RS232 is not), cat5's twists provide no benefit.
Ah, I stand corrected.
Regardless, I have run SNES controllers at least 15 feet in this manner. It's conceivable that PS2 controllers are more prone to signal loss or interference, but I do not know.
Just do it Jamie, and tell us if it works.
have you tried liksang.com?
They've only got short (1.5m) ones.
I used to like playing around with hardware and software, now I just want things to work. Won't it be wonderful if and when we get to the day when technology has advanced to the point where shit like this isn't an issue anymore?
Your problem is that last year's technology just isn't cool enough anymore. You're impatient because the next new thing isn't going to be mature, stable, and easy-to-use quite yet. Hint: The next new thing is never going to be mature, stable, and easy-to-use. If it was, it'd be called the old new thing.
If you didn't insist on living on the cutting edge of the future all the time, you wouldn't be stuck with the false impression that the future is always broken.
broken just means something else to fix.
what fun is it when everything already works?
If you were me, you'd hate you too.
"if you were me, you'd be good looking"
I can't believe you felt it was worth inflicting the internet peanut gallery on yourself over a $8-$12 experiment. You fucking masocist, you totally got what you deserved.
It's not like the cables cost $30 each, they're 4 fucking dollars each. That was you on the bike in "Better Off Dead", wasn't it?
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=307539&pfp=cat3
It really seemed like a simple question.
Here are some for $3 :
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000083OIT/
How come wireless controllers for the PS2 still suck a big fat bundle of cock? We know that you can make a truly great wireless controller - witness das uber Wavebird. How come Sony or someone else can't get their worthless shit together and make some wireless controllers that work beyond ten feet, so we don't have to run cords, cords and more cords everywhere? I tried some IR based wireless controllers in 1998 and they completely sucked. I went into the a store the other day and found that the state of the art doesn't seem to have changed one bit in more than half a decade.
-Ben
100% off topic BUT
you happen to know anyplace I could find some diagrams on the ps2 hdd? All I can find through google and the likes is that the hdd sony sells is ide based, but you can't use a normal ide hdd. But then I've read some old usenet postings and people have done it. But no where do I see documentation as to how.
totally off topic I know, but it bugs me when google cant find something, i end up feeling like im the first person to think of it/it doesnt exist.
on a side note, i just realized after reading a bunch of this how frustrating this must be for you. When I ask a question in my lj and nobody knows the answer, i just don't get any replies. You get 50+ of the wrong answers.
the network adapter for the ps2 has an ide media connector and power connector in the correct position for attaching a hard drive. Thats what gets bundled in the FFXI box for the ps2, except i think they encased the drive in a sled which is attached to the network adapter. Also take a look at the linux kit for the ps2, it might have more details on the ide controller it uses, or it too just relys on the network adapter module.
well Dollar Tree has extensions for $1, so you could get a few there cheaply to test it.