I just got my package from Lik-Sang with said item included. The thing is very high quality, with smoke-colored iMac-style cable and connectors and two ferrite beads, one at either end.
I connected it to a blue MadCats Lumicon which I'd bought about thee weeks ago - the round weird plug at the end of the Madcatz controller cord fit snugly to the adaptor's round receptacle with no risk of becoming loose - then plugged the adapter into the USB hub in my monitor. The thing immediately lit up like a christmas tree!
Very nice PC bling-bling type stuff for those of us who like things like that.
Then there was the matter of finding a driver, because of course, while the xb controller is a standard game controller USB device, and the memory slots are standard mass storage class devices hooked up to a USB hub inside the controller's casing, these devices are all missing bits of info (and have other bits with changed numbers) so windows can't recognize them automatically. Typical microsoft stuff to do on purpose!
The driver recommended by lik-sang isn't recommended at all as it's very old, buggy and lacks lots of features. Instead, I went to lik-sang's Smartjoy forum and snooped around where I found this place: http://www.redcl0ud.com/xbcd.html with what seems to be a very nice and feature-complete driver. All it seems to lack is analog support for the buttons, but no PC games support that anyway. MAME perhaps, but I'm not sure even THAT has support for it (though the directinput API supposedly handles it)...
Anyway, I downloaded the driver, ran the exe, let it install, then re-plugged the controller by pulling out the round connector between the joypad and the adaptor and attaching them again. Windows detected the driver AND the device and configured everything correctly all by itself! VERY VERY slick!
The driver configuration applet under game controllers was quite easy to understand too, and easy to work with. There's even an option to test the rumble motors, and there was no power supply difficulty with both motors running at full tilt along with all the LED lights (around 10 of them). The response from all the analog controls was smooooooth as silk and all buttons worked really well, even the analog stick clicks!
This thing receives a high recommendation from me even though there isn't a driver included with the adapter. There's even minidrivers to enable the memcard slots, or even the XB Live headset adapter at the driver site. If any of you guys need a PC gamepad, look no further than the Lumicon, and the Smartjoy adapter will serve admirably as the medium connecting it to your PC. XB pads definitely make the best gamepads for PCs, with the abundance of buttons and sticks. PS2 controller doesn't have the analog throttles, and gamecube has fewer buttons.
Final grade: A+! I won't bitch about cord length, because adaptor + gamepad gives a feckin long cord... That's too minor a complaint to waste any energy on. One can always hide excess cord behind the computer desk (most of us with well-equipped PCs have veritable rats-nests there already! )
I connected it to a blue MadCats Lumicon which I'd bought about thee weeks ago - the round weird plug at the end of the Madcatz controller cord fit snugly to the adaptor's round receptacle with no risk of becoming loose - then plugged the adapter into the USB hub in my monitor. The thing immediately lit up like a christmas tree!
Very nice PC bling-bling type stuff for those of us who like things like that.Then there was the matter of finding a driver, because of course, while the xb controller is a standard game controller USB device, and the memory slots are standard mass storage class devices hooked up to a USB hub inside the controller's casing, these devices are all missing bits of info (and have other bits with changed numbers) so windows can't recognize them automatically. Typical microsoft stuff to do on purpose!
The driver recommended by lik-sang isn't recommended at all as it's very old, buggy and lacks lots of features. Instead, I went to lik-sang's Smartjoy forum and snooped around where I found this place: http://www.redcl0ud.com/xbcd.html with what seems to be a very nice and feature-complete driver. All it seems to lack is analog support for the buttons, but no PC games support that anyway. MAME perhaps, but I'm not sure even THAT has support for it (though the directinput API supposedly handles it)...
Anyway, I downloaded the driver, ran the exe, let it install, then re-plugged the controller by pulling out the round connector between the joypad and the adaptor and attaching them again. Windows detected the driver AND the device and configured everything correctly all by itself! VERY VERY slick!
The driver configuration applet under game controllers was quite easy to understand too, and easy to work with. There's even an option to test the rumble motors, and there was no power supply difficulty with both motors running at full tilt along with all the LED lights (around 10 of them). The response from all the analog controls was smooooooth as silk and all buttons worked really well, even the analog stick clicks!
This thing receives a high recommendation from me even though there isn't a driver included with the adapter. There's even minidrivers to enable the memcard slots, or even the XB Live headset adapter at the driver site. If any of you guys need a PC gamepad, look no further than the Lumicon, and the Smartjoy adapter will serve admirably as the medium connecting it to your PC. XB pads definitely make the best gamepads for PCs, with the abundance of buttons and sticks. PS2 controller doesn't have the analog throttles, and gamecube has fewer buttons.
Final grade: A+!
I won't bitch about cord length, because adaptor + gamepad gives a feckin long cord... That's too minor a complaint to waste any energy on. One can always hide excess cord behind the computer desk (most of us with well-equipped PCs have veritable rats-nests there already! )
