Nintendo 64 Controller FAQ V0.1

Written By $up3rDud3



All Copyrights and Trademarks belong to their perspective owners.



This work was done via reverse engineering the controller itself.

No information was obtained via outside channels. All work was done on

a N64 controller with no prior knowledge of its working. The hope was to

interface the controller with a common pc game interface.



It was deduced that it is a serial type interface, and the other two wires 

were Power

and ground. So once you take the thing apart, you see the main controller

wire going to a plug on the main board. These three wires are color coded as

follows



        Red - 3.3V

        Black - Ground

        White - Data : 3.3V Logic Level



Looking at the connector end that goes into the N64 we see



          _____

         /     \    <- Round Part is Top

        /       \

        |       |

        | O O O |

        |_______|



          1 2 3



        1 - GND

        2 - DATA - 3.3V Logic Level

        3 - VCC - 3.3V







1.0     Reading the controllers position and button information



For reading position information from controller, the data stream requires a 

41 bit

command sequence. To understand the sequence we must define the bit stream 

characteristics.



        Each bit is 4us in length (except 2)

        A zero is represented as 3us low (0V) and 1us high (3.3V).

        A one is represented as 1us low (0V) and 3us high (3.3V).

        A two is the stop bit 1us low (0V) and 2us high (3.3V).



For the read status command, the following must be sent to the controller.



        0000 0001 2





               :       0       :       0       :       0       :       0     

   :       0       :       0       :       0       :       1       :      2  

     :

        _______           _____           _____           _____           

_____           _____           _____           _____       _________       

_______

               |         |     |         |     |         |     |         |   

   |         |     |         |     |         |     |     |         |     |   

     |

               |_________|     |_________|     |_________|     |_________|   

   |_________|     |_________|     |_________|     |_____|         |_____|   

     |

               

:------4us------:------4us------:------4us------:------4us------:------4us------:------4us------:------4us------:------4us------:-----3us-----:

               

:---3us---;-1us-:---3us---;-1us-:---3us---;-1us-:---3us---;-1us-:---3us---;-1us-:---3us---;-1us-:---3us---;-1us-:-1us-;---3us---:-1us-;--2us--:



Once this command is sent the controller responds with the representation

stated above for a zero and an one.





1.1     Bit assignments



The 32 bits following the read command are translated as follows



bits 0 - 15 : button values -

                             |

                              -> Zero = Not Pressed

                             |

                              -> One = Pressed



bits 16 - 31 : analog stick position



bit        0 - A

           1 - B

           2 - Z

           3 - START

           4 - DIGITAL PAD UP

           5 - DIGITAL PAD DOWN

           6 - DIGITAL PAD LEFT

           7 - DIGITAL PAD RIGHT

           8 - START+L+R : All pressed at the same time

           9 - ? No combination seems to use this bit

          10 - L

          11 - R

          12 - C UP

          13 - C DOWN

          14 - C LEFT

          15 - C RIGHT



bit       16 -> 23 - X axis reading, 2's compliment

                     -128 = full left

                        0 = center

                     +128 = full right



bit       24 -> 31 - Y axis reading, 2's compliment

                     +128 = full top

                        0 = center

                     -128 = full bottom



1.2     Timing Information



The total position command takes 166us to execute, and the program I ran on 

the N64 polled the

controller every 16.667ms or a frequency of 60Hz.



1.3     Rumble Pack Commands



It appears as if the rumble pack commands are more difficult to decode when 

your trying to play

while hitting stop on the oscilloscope. So as far as I can tell until I get 

the controller

hooked up to a PC this is the format for the rumble pack commands. Use the 

same data format for

sending a 0 and a 1 bit.



        0000-0011-1100-0000-0001-1011-(Send string of zeros the length of 

intensity required)-(6us pulse)-0000-0000



This is probably wrong, but oh well.



1.4     Memory Pack Commands



??????