Lakka and custom Parallel SNES controllers

Libretro Lakka
#1

Hello!

I’m using my current retro box with custom SNES pads connected through the serial port of a PC, made by following the technique outlined here: http://www.tolaris.com/snes-to-parallel/

The system runs on a full Ubuntu OS, because it was previously acting as a fileserver and other menial network tasks, which have been moved to other, more able machines. I found Lakka and I am really eager to try it out!

My main hurdle is that, from what I see, the default Lakka install comes without the “parport_pc” and “gamecon” kernel modules on which my controller setup relies.

My question is: How would I go about to adding those modules to the latest Lakka build? Do I need to compile a custom build or can it be made post-install?

Thanks in advance and Happy Holidays!

#2

Hi, yes you need to compile a custom build.

I can also do it for you, if you fill a feature request on our issue tracker.

#3

Thanks for the reply, Kivutar!

I’ll try to compile it myself, and post back if I hit any problem.

#4

Any updates about this?

#5

Hello again, and sorry for the radio silence.

I have in fact been unable to compile it properly with the added modules on my Ubuntu machine. I manage to compile vanilla Lakka correctly but I must be enabling the newer modules incorrectly because then the compile fails, asking for a missing lib that I haven’t found how to provide yet.

If there is any chance you could have a look at it, that would be great. I’ve noticed that an issue has already been opened (https://github.com/libretro/Lakka/issues/275) so I’ll just subscribe to that one for updates.

And if there’s any other way I can be of assistance (for example by testing on my hardware) do let me know!

#6

Hello again!

Progress report: I’ve managed to build my own Lakka, including the required modules for my setup: parport_pc and gamecon. I’ve also added the jstest tool to be able to test my setup.

After loading the modules and mapping the controllers, running jstest on /dev/input/js0 shows data from my joysticks! yay!

Now my next hurdle is trying to set up those controllers in lakka itself. I’ve tried setting the input driver to “udev” and the gamepad driver to “parport”, but when trying to map controls, Lakka doesn’t react to my inputs.

Which combination of input and gamepad drivers should I try to get this working? I can try different combinations but I’d love to find out the logic behind this…

#7

Nevermind, got it working!!

#8

I did changed the kernel config https://github.com/libretro/Lakka/issues/275

#9

Awesome!

Thanks for bearing with me along the process :slight_smile: