Since I lost my Xbox I wondered what to do with the controllers. I discovered that the Xbox controller was just a plain old USB 1.1 device. So I cut open the controller cable and a usb cable, taped them together, and after installing the XBCD driver under windows, I had a nice PC gamepad.

But I still had a memory card and one of those xbox live communicator cards lying around. Being a curious bastard, I plugged them into the controller while it was plugged into the PC, and Windows recognized them as USB devices! Haha! I just needed drivers. Again, they were available from the same guy who made the XBCD driver.

The Xbox gamepad has an integrated hub in it, with three ports. The first is hardwired to the input/output mechanism of the controller and feedback motors, the other two are wired to the memory card slot. This got me thinking... Why not attach a small USB B Male connector from the cable I cut for the controller in the first place? This way I could connect my hard drive enclosure, so I would have something to brag about to my friends.

I took the original US Xbox controller apart, and after stripping part of the usb cable off, I put the stripped end through the screw hole on the left:

Also, a somewhat blurry image of it sitting down, and the wires through the screw hole.

Next step was to strip the end of the individual USB wires themselves, and solder them on to the terminals of the first memory card slot:

From that picture's point of view, going left to right, here is what each terminal does:
(leftmost) 5: USB GND, Black
4: Xbox Video (not used), Yellow
3: USB Data+, Green
2: USB Data-, White
(rightmost) 1: USB +5V, Red

After tucking the wires down, I put the buttons and D-Pad back into the top shell, and tried to fit them back together. They wouldn't quite fit, because I forgot the wires were in the way of one of the screw holes. (D'oh!) So I took some pliers and squeezed the hell out of the cylinder that accepts the top left screw on the top shell. After that it fit a lot better, except the screw on the top right side didn't want to go back in.

Here is a picture of the cable coming out of the controller:

And here it is beautifully finished (cue angels singing):

After connecting the controller to a PC booted into Knoppix, it recognized the controller. No problems there. Then I connected my hard drive enclosure to the usb cable hanging limp from the controller, and Knoppix recognizes it. I can reliably read and write files to it. So at least I did an acceptable soldering job.
The only problem is that I cannot put anything into the first slot of the controller and have a USB device connected at the same time without any hardware going poof. Oh well, as they say, you get what you solder.

04/10/2005