Kevin Koster's PIC24F-Powered USBify Gets Your Vintage Vectrex Talking to Modern USB Controllers
Designed to be generalizable to other consoles in the future, the USBify supports joysticks, gamepads, mice, and even motion control.
Self-described "computer nerd" Kevin Koster has designed an accessory for anyone lucky enough to have a working Vectrex console in their possession: a Microchip PIC24F-powered adapter for modern USB gamepads, joysticks, and mice.
"USBify uses a [Microchip] PIC24FJ128GB202 (or a PIC24FJ64GB002, with the firmware on a diet) and a PWM [Pulse-Width Modulation] DAC [Digital to Analog Converter] circuit for analogue output or a 5V buffer chip for consoles requiring more than four 5V button outputs, mounted on a separate sub-board," Koster explains of his design. "One of the sub-board headers (CON3) includes ICSP [In-Circuit Serial Programming] pins for programming the microcontroller and UART signals for debugging."
While designed to be generalizable to a range of vintage machines, the current version of the USBify is compatible with just one: the Vectrex, designed by Smith Engineering and launched to market by General Consumer Electronics in 1982. Based around a nine-inch cathode-ray tube (CRT) display, the all-in-one console stood out from the crowd through the use of vector rather than bitmapped graphics — though this wasn't enough to save it from the 1983 market crash, and the device was discontinued in 1984.
Working Vectrex consoles are relatively rare, thanks in no small part to their ageing CRTs, but for those who have one in their collection the USBify aims to offer a more comfortable control system than the sharp-edged pad included with the stock console. The device connects to the Vectrex at one end and your modern USB controller of choice at the other — delivering features including any-button auto-fire and configurable button mapping that can be saved to five independent memory banks. There's even mouse support, and motion control for Sony PlayStation 3 and 4 controllers — with "experimental" Bluetooth support using a compatible USB Bluetooth dongle.
Koster has released schematics for the project on his website under an unspecified license, with the firmware — "built from a Frankenstein-esque combination of existing USB libraries," he admits — available under an unspecified version of the GNU General Public License.
Assembled and flashed USBify units are available on Koster's Tindie store at $31.50 — including a USB Y-splitter for controllers that need more power than the Vectrex can supply.