Pandora Box used as Game Pad []

sliderem

Hello,

I have a Pandora Box 3d that I use as a controllers for my RetroPie installation, in "game pad mode" through the USBcable.

Initially I used this on my Raspberry Pi 4 on the Recall Box, and it was detected very fast, out of the box, as two controllers "MBX n200" configured (I do not know what this means)

When I moved to Retro Pi, as I want this to be my main installation, it detected only one MBX n200 for the two Pandora box joysticks and buttons.

After searching on the net, I found this trick to add in /boot/cmdline.txt the Pandora Box ID
usbhid.quirks=0x16c0:0x05e0:0x040

Step 7 below
https://www.instructables.com/Raspberry-Pi-Inside-Pandoras-Box-Arcade-System/

It did the trick, worked to have this recognized as two controllers, I configured them, but they work only in the menu, not in the games :(!

Could you give me some directions, what should I try ?
I am very surprised that Recall Box is recognizing this flawlessly out of the box and RetroPie, NOT :(

[Pandora Box]

mitu

NOTE: Topic moved to Help & Support, the Controlblock form is specially for that kind of devices.

Please add more info about your system, as detailed in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.

Thorr69

@sliderem I use a Pandora's Box 5 for my arcade setup. I had similar trouble at first. I took out the internal usb drive to make sure it didn't fire up its own game system. Then the thing that kept messing me up was that I had to make sure I connect BOTH usb controller connections. Once I did that, it worked without an issue. (I don't recall if I actually added the usbhid line to my system. I know I looked into it pretty heavily, but my system is packed in storage right now and I can't check.)

If you've done the controller setup (just for stick 1) then it should cover everything. If mame2003plus is giving you a hard time then you might have to check to see if the setup has the controllers in Analog mode. That was the last thing i had to do for mine to make it work. Yours is a different model, so I can't really say anything specific that will help further, but I do know that the setup should work for you.

sliderem

@thorr69 Thank you very much!
I need the two sticks working fact in snes for example.

Is there a different controller driver database for Recall Box transform Retro Pie ?

Do y9u think I can identify the driver and copy it ?

Thorr69

@sliderem Hard to say, I have no experience with RecalBox. Does your Pandora's Box have switches for Xbox mode/PlayStation mode? If so, you should go with Xbox. You may need to uninstall and reinstall xboxdrv, too.

sliderem

Hello,

After some debugging I discovered that the trick with usbhid.quirks=0x16c0:0x05e0:0x040 works quite well, and the emulationstation gets correctly the 2 joysticks, but retroarch does not get the right order of joysticks (I have 4 in total) and puts the second joystick of Pandora box, almost always on last position , even if I try to force and keep this on the second position.

Any idea with this one ?on How to force retroarch to use the order provided in emulationstation or to predefine one in retroarch.

Somehow this is not persisted!

mitu

Re-order the joypads by editing \\retropie\emulationstation\all\retroarch.cfg and adding

input_player1_joypad_index=0
input_player2_joypad_index=3
input_player3_joypad_index=2
input_player4_joypad_index=1

this will switch the 4th detected joypad to P2 (index=3) and vice-verse (joystick with index 1 will be set as P4).

Thorr69

I would also add that you can usually get the order you want by the order of the ports you plug them into (so long as you don't use a USB hub). With the 4 ports on my Pi3b, I plug them in this order:
0 2
1 3

So, my pandora's box takes up 0 and 1, keyboard in 2, mouse in 3. if I add another controller, I replace the mouse or keyboard. My pandora's box always stays player 1 and 2 that way.

sliderem

I did that in RP setup, the reordering for global and specifically for snes, my test rom.

Somehow the retroArch is overriding that at start-up, even if my config is OK, the one that I want

sliderem

@thorr69 said in Pandora Box used as Game Pad []:

I would also add that you can usually get the order you want by the order of the ports you plug them into (so long as you don't use a USB hub). With the 4 ports on my Pi3b, I plug them in this order:
0 2
1 3

So, my pandora's box takes up 0 and 1, keyboard in 2, mouse in 3. if I add another controller, I replace the mouse or keyboard. My pandora's box always stays player 1 and 2 that way.

I use a usb hub for mouse/keyboard/sony and xbox controller.
Pandora is direct to Pi4.

could that be the issue ?

Bernie

@sliderem
Thanks for putting me on the right track for configuring my pandora controller on retropie.

Since search engines continue to find this thread on the subject, I just would like to add that the trick with the usbhid.quirks is dependant on the model of the Pandora box.

The general procedure of adding usbhid.quirks to /boot/cmdline.txt is the same as described in
https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Xin-Mo-Controller/

BUT make sure you use
usbhid.quirks=0xVendorID:0xProductID:0x040

with VendorID, ProducID being the output from the command 'lsusb' for the corresponding controller!

Arifeen

@Bernie @sliderem Hello, My Pandora 3d controllers does not detect by raspberry pi4. I have installed Sanwa joysticks in my Pandora 3d. Also added usbhid.quirks=0x16c0:0x05e0:0x040 inside cmdline.txt. Do you have any idea? Is this because of my Sanwa sticks on pandora or should the Pandora ID remains same after joystick replacement? Really appreciate any suggestions.