Two buttons on controller dead - jstest doesn't show them - how to support?

pnoeric

Hi, I have a new generic knock-off desktop controller with a joystick and a bunch of buttons. (See photo) For the most part it's working well with RetroPie, but when I run jstest, the buttons on the side of the controller appear to be "dead." Nothing happens in jstest when I push them. How can I get jstest to recognize them (and then, I assume, RetroPie will as well?)

controller

Here's the output of my jstest. Interesting that it says this is a joystick with 12 buttons, even though there are clearly 8 on top and 2 more on the side.

Driver version is 2.1.0.
Joystick (DragonRise Inc.   Generic   USB  Joystick  ) has 6 axes (X, Y, Z, Rz, Hat0X, Hat0Y)
and 12 buttons (Trigger, ThumbBtn, ThumbBtn2, TopBtn, TopBtn2, PinkieBtn, BaseBtn, BaseBtn2, BaseBtn3, BaseBtn4, BaseBtn5, BaseBtn6).
Testing ... (interrupt to exit)
Axes:  0:     0  1:     0  2:     0  3:-32767  4:     0  5:     0 Buttons:  0:off  1:off  2:off  3:off  4:off  5:off  6:off  7:off  8:off  9:off 10:off 11:off

AlexMurphy

@pnoeric Is it a USB joystick? It could be that those buttons output keystrokes. Hook it up to a PC and use a keystroke display software like osdHotkey or AutoHotkey to test what is being output by those buttons. A lot of arcade style joysticks output keystrokes rather than controller outputs. Maybe this one outputs a mixture.

edmaul69

@AlexMurphy you could use coolcv and press i believe "f7" and it will give keystroke codes.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

I've never considered using CoolCV as a universal diagnostic tool. Very keen idea!

edmaul69

@mediamogul i was programming a keyboard controller and used it to learn what each key was. Unfortunately some of the keys werent ones useable by retroarch.

pnoeric

Thank you everyone. Don't have a PC and I can't figure out how to get coolcv (the Colecovision emulator, right?) to fire up. I'm stuck and not sure how to proceed. I did plug it into my Mac and didn't get any keypresses when I pressed all the buttons.

edmaul69

@pnoeric you need to install coolcv from retropie setup. Then you need to install coleco.rom in the BIOS folder. I believe you can do that with a thumbdrive. Then you need a coleco game installed in the colecovision rom folder. Again that can be done with a usb drive.

pnoeric

@edmaul69 Thank you!! I was able to get it installed and running. Do you know when I'd press F7 to get the keymappings? I tried it during launch and in the game, no luck. Should I be monitoring a log file or something?

It looks like the other F-keys work- I can see AVI files that are recorded when I press F6, etc. But F7 does nothing, I tried pressing it, holding it, tapping things, pressing keys on the keyboard, all that jazz... :-\

edmaul69

@pnoeric you press it once then start pressing other keyboard keys. You will see a key number appear in the upper corner everytime you press a key.