Xbox Controller PC Conversion Mod

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Introduction

Around a year ago I picked up two generic Xbox compatible controllers for about $2. They were new in box, and although I didn't own an Xbox (and still don't), I knew I had to grab a couple. :)

After collecting dust since last summer, I finally dug one out today decided it would be fun to have on my PC. The only gamepad I have for my computer is some Gravis pad from probably 6 years ago. The Xbox pads are made by PowerPad Colors, but they feel reasonably sturdy, and have rumble and two swivel caps, which is more than most reasonably priced PC gamepads have.

Fortunately for us, the Xbox controller has a USB interface, so it's only a matter of splicing a male USB adapter on in place of the funky Xbox one. So, this should be a simple hack. The following materials will get the job done.

The Mod

You can see that I'm using a Male-Female USB extension cable for my male USB adapter. We're just going to chop the adapter off and discard of the cable.

Make sure you use the right end (circled in the above picture). We're going to do the same thing to the Xbox cable, too.

Cut the Xbox adapter off right at the base, leaving yourself some room to splice on the new one. Cut the USB adapter off at least 4 or 5 inches away from the adapter. Now strip off about an inch of casing from the end of each exposed cable that we'll be connecting. There will be a lot of thin silver wires and foil wrapped around a few smaller, colored wires. The silver casing is the shielding, but unless you want to try and preserve it just cut it away to expose the colored wires.

Using your wire strippers, pull away the casing on each of the colored wires to expose the bare wire. Now you can proceed to actually splice the wires togteher.

Each wire of the USB adapter should match up to a colored wire on the gamepad. The Xbox controller has one additional yellow wire, which you can just ignore. You can use either heatshrink casing or electrical tape to cover up the bare leads. Heatshrink is more permanent and professional, but for simplicity I just used some electrical tape on each of the smaller wires, then wrapped up the entire thing tightly, making sure the bare leads did not cross.

You can see the ghetto-fabulous mod I've done above. The cable shown here detaches from the Xbox controller, which is why you don't see it actually leading to anything. :) Feel free to be as fancy as you want - some heatshrink will look nice and hold up better, so now that I know it works I'll probably redo the mod when I get to the second controller.

If everything went well, we should be able to set up the device and start using it. The first thing to do is snag the XBCD drivers (download here), and run the installer file.

Once the drivers are installed, plug in the controller and it should detect and install the drivers for "XBCD XBox Gamepad". Now go to Programs -> XBCD -> Setup Utility and set up your new gamepad!

And that's it! Not bad for a ten minute mod. Enjoy.

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