@mitu

right, cracked it, everything is working as far as RetroPi is concerned.

Looking really closely, as I held down a HID button the word "keyboard" very very briefly appears.

Clearly, I was working too late the other night, I can scroll up and down a menu with my HID keyboard, I was sure I had tested that, but the output is erratic sometimes the keypress happens as I am releasing the key, sometimes a press registers as many discrete keypresses. so I think the code I am running on the pico is not cleanly emulating how a real keyboard handles button presses.

the log output from Debug didn't contain any mention of controller config, so I guess there were no errors there? all I saw was a long list telling me there were no ROM's for any emulators, and then a "cleanly shut down" message.

I'm now happy the issue is in my HID. going to find an actual keyboard project using python, and reprogramme my Pico.

Thanks so much for your help @mitu

@mitu Thanks for the suggestions! First I need to stress that this subject (overall) is still relevant as many people have this manufacturer's hardware. I found several solutions, including a driver and script that modifies the device controller to enable rumble, but all these solutions aren't for my particular hardware ID (2563:0526). I actually did manage to enable rumble on Linux once, I played around with xboxdrv, loaded the custom driver and used the script, and eventually rumble did work - until I did a reboot. So far, I can't get rumble to work again, despite modifying a bit the driver source code. Whatever I did worked, somehow. I had properly working rumble which I tested with fftest and in-game using an emulator. My gamepad is generally supported by the usbhid driver, all axes, buttons and HAT work properly, but not rumble (fftest says functions not implemented). But my successful attempt proved that that the gamepad can be fully supported under Linux, it's just a matter of slight driver modification. It's a good gamepad, better than much more expensive alternatives which claim to have superior design. That being said, I did send an email to the manufacturer (link) and my local seller. There are many posts on the web about this hardware type, I'm searching everywhere. Those who have the product ID matching the script or driver have full hardware support on Linux. So this hardware can be fully working under Linux. Maybe future updates to usbhid will provide rumble.

@Dgeler said in PS1 USB adaptator not working ( Usbhid error -32):

@Dochartaigh Did you have this kind of error using a not working one ?

This was months ago, but I don't remember seeing any new error(s)...just the inability to map the buttons correctly making the controller useless - that's why I mentioned these controllers (along NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis) being flaky unless you find the right one. Heck, even that above adapter I linked to isn't perfect - it works on my like 12 different PS1/PS2 dualshock controllers but won't work on the non-dualshock/non-analogue-stick versions for some reason...