Hello Slackers,

I recently acquired an old (2003) ThinkPad T40 and decided to turn it into a SNES emulator. The installation part went smooth and I got it up and running in a couple of hours.

However, yesterday I got my SNES controllers (Dragonrise USB Gamepad) from Amazon and I foolishly expected them to work out of the box. After a lot of Googling, I gave up and came to you guys. Here's what I did so far:

I made sure I have the joydev and usbhid modules installed. I gave myself full permissions(777) on /dev/input/js* and /dev/input/event*.

The lsusb detects it ok.

The problem arises when I try to configure zsnes, snes9x, or any utility that transforms gamepad keys in keyboard presses. The buttons either have no effect when I press them, or I can start the configuration and after pressing a couple of buttons, the gamepad stops working. I tried
and it does print stuff out on the screen, but after a couple of presses, it spits out the following error and returns to the console:
Have you guys ran into a similar problem, and if so, how did you solve it?

Thank you!

I had issues with some controllers with zsnes. From what I remember, I had to figure out which buttons were which and manually edit the config file. Either that, or start zsnes, go to the controller setup. Don't make any changes, then exit zsnes. Restart and reconfigure.

Have a look which messages you get with dmesg when you plugin the device and when it disappears.
log files are always a good starting point for troubleshooting.