Wai Wai Jansou Controller

BIOS, Controllers, Memory Cards, Serial I/O, Parallel I/O, etc.
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RandomInsano
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Wai Wai Jansou Controller

Post by RandomInsano » May 13th, 2019, 10:53 am

I’ve made a hobby of reverse engineering and dumping diagnostic data from whatever can be plugged into the PS1 or PS2’s controller ports. What I have so far in a messy/inaccurate state is here (I mixed up JogCon and NeGcon notes :cry:):
https://github.com/RandomInsano/pscontr ... /research/

I’ve got a package of Wai Wai Jansou controllers in the mail like this guy:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/PlayStation-WAI ... 3859766451

Has anyone taken a deep look at these? The Internet has nothing so far.

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Post by danhans42 » May 14th, 2019, 7:59 am

Interesting. Need to do this or something with my iMode cable.

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Post by RandomInsano » May 22nd, 2019, 2:54 pm

Welp, that was somewhat easier than I'd expected. So far it walks, talks and quacks like an original DualShock controller, except that the byte for the large vibration motor seems to get sent to the LCD and the right stick's X any Y axis bytes output status.

I'm waiting on the game itself to come in the mail, but it looks like the LCD is working in character mode and the tile set is uploaded on power on. I'll sniff the LCD bus to see what's uploaded when the unit powers up.

Here's an unlisted (because it's crumby quality) YouTube video of the thing in action:
https://youtu.be/bIzd0-zTX9o

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Post by Orion_ » September 5th, 2019, 4:10 am

I'm interested in this too, I like strange hardware for the PS1 :)
I just bought a controller like this and hoping to mess around with it so I can display some custom message :D
(I'm not an electronic engineer though, so any help on the protocol is appreciated :D )
Retro game development on Playstation and other consoles http://orionsoft.free.fr/

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Post by RandomInsano » September 9th, 2019, 3:12 pm

From my quick poking months ago this is likely going to be really tricky but I can help you get bootstrapped.

What’s your dev experience and workflow? I think any research we do can compliment the other.

I had borrowed a logic analyzer to see what signals might come to the LCD on start up or special control codes were send from the game but i didn’t actually go through it. I can if it’ll help you make progress.

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Post by Orion_ » September 10th, 2019, 5:26 am

well, I made several games on the PS1, so I know the C language pretty well but I did not really got in depth low level stuff on the PS1, just relied on the PSYQ SDK for now.
I know the no$psx documentation is pretty well documented for low level stuff of the controllers.
I might have access to a little logic analyser too that I could borrow from my work.
I will try to set up something for testing when I receive the controller
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Post by Orion_ » April 6th, 2020, 5:46 am

ok, I finally set up my logic analyser and here is what I got:
CMD 01 42 01 00 00 00 00 00 00
DAT FF 73 5A FF FF 00 00 0F 00

CMD 01 42 01 00 0A 00 00 00 00
DAT FF 73 5A FF FF 00 00 0F C0

CMD 01 42 01 00 12 00 00 00 00
DAT FF 73 5A FF FF 00 00 0F 0A

CMD 01 42 01 00 07 00 00 00 00
DAT FF 73 5A FF FF 00 00 0F 12

CMD 01 42 01 00 15 00 00 00 00
DAT FF 73 5A FF FF 00 00 0F 07

CMD 01 42 01 00 03 00 00 00 00
DAT FF 73 5A FF FF 00 00 0F 15

CMD 01 42 01 00 1D 00 00 00 00
DAT FF 73 5A FF FF 00 00 0F 03

Seems like the ID is the same as a Dual Shock with the Analog button ON. 0x5A73
It seems like the 5th CMD bytes send some data on the LCD, and the last DAT byte is the previous 5th CMD bytes.

I also had this when moving the cursor:
CMD 01 42 10 00 C2 00 00 00 01
DAT FF 73 5A FF FF 00 00 04 00
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Post by nocash » August 4th, 2023, 10:55 pm

There's also another similar controller for Card games. Below is some info on the game titles and hardware versions... and lots of unknowns.

Code: Select all

Controllers - Mahjong and Card Game Controllers
-----------------------------------------------

The Mahjong & Card Game controllers contain small LCD displays for showing the
player's cards/tiles (without the players seeing them when playing in 2-4
player mode). Obviously, it's a waste of everything, and it would be easier and
cheaper to use a real card game.

Hori Wai Wai Jansou Controller (for Mahjong games)
This controller is supported by two games (Wai Wai Jansou, Wai Wai 3-nin Uchi
Mahjong). There are at least for contoller versions: The Set includes clear/red
& clear/green. Additionally, clear/gray & clear/blue are sold separately. The
different colors do apply to the bottom-side of the case, which is barely
visible when looking at the transparent top-side.
  HPS-90  Wai Wai Jansou CDROM
  HPS-91  Wai Wai Jansou Set (CDROM with two Jansou controllers)
  HPS-92  Wai Wai Jansou Controller (clear/gray)
  HPS-93  Wai Wai Jansou Controller (clear/blue)
  HPS-94  Wai Wai Jansou Controller (..unknown color..)
  HPS-95  Wai Wai Jansou Controller (..unknown color..)
  HPS-116 Wai Wai 3-nin Uchi Mahjong Set (CDROM with two Jansou Controllers)
   ______________________________________
  |                                      |
  |   .-----------------------------.    |
  |   |   #######################   |    |  LCD display
  |   |__________.---------.________|    |  with DPAD and nine buttons
  |     _                                |
  |   _| |_       SEL START          O   |
  |  |_   _| _                 _   O   O |
  |    |_|  (_)               (_)    O   |
  |__________B_________________A___O_____|
Unknown if somebody can translate the markings on the five yellow buttons
Unknown if the controller supports config commands
Unknown how to detect the controller
Unknown how to read the DPAD and buttons
Unknown how to access the LCD screen
Unknown if the Mahjong symbols are built-in or if one can draw custom bitmaps
Component List and LCD Screen resolution is also unknown.
Some info: http://www.psxdev.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3432

Hori Wai Wai Trump Controller (for Card games)
This controller is supported by only one game (Wai Wai Trump Taisen), and there
seems to be only one controller version.
  HPS-104 Wai Wai Trump Taisen CDROM
  HPS-105 Wai Wai Trump Taisen Set (CDROM with two Trump Controllers)
  HPS-106 Wai Wai Trump Taisen Controller
   ______________________________________
  |                                      |
  |   .-----------------------------.    |
  |   |   #######################   |    |  LCD display
  |   |__________.---------.________|    |  with six buttons
  |                                      |
  |     _         SEL START         _    |
  |  < (_)   _                 _   (_) A |
  |         (_) >             (_) B      |
  |______________________________________|
Unknown if/how the protocol differs from Wai Wai Jansou
One known difference, in no$psx, with analog pad emulation: The game keeps
cycling through Config Cammands, and the controller input is unresponsive
(often missing or double-triggering keystrokes) (unknown if this does also
happen with analog pads on real hardware).

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