It's been a while since I've written a gloriously nerdy post. This hack would certainly fix that. The only problem is that it doesn't work. But it almost does.

I really like Quake 3 Arena. It's my favorite game in my favorite genre. Unfortunately, I don't really have a machine that's ergonomically suited to playing it. The laptop's awkward and the easy chair in front of the desktop swallows you whole.

Enter the Xbox. A clever Brit named Carcharius took the freely available Quake 3 source code, used the not-so-freely-available XDK, and released a port of Q3A that could be played on hacked Xboxes, provided that the user had the game's original data files (and a valid CD key, if he wanted to play online). That's a fairly impressive feat when you consider that the Xbox has a mere 64 megs of RAM — it's an extremely impressive feat when you see how smoothly the game plays. Sure, some of the graphical bling has been disabled, but it's still very fun.

The only problem is the controller. Internet opponents will generally be using the vastly superior mouse/keyboard combo. Stuck with the unwieldy Xbox controller, getting pwned was inevitable. But, like most of life's problems, this was nothing that a little soldering couldn't fix.

The Xbox's controllers are actually USB devices, despite their distinctly non-USB plug ends. Tear open a spare female USB cable (left over from an unused motherboard riser) and a spare Xbox cable-end (surplus thanks to an extension cable I had previously purchased) and you'll find that the wires match. Okay, the Xbox controller has an extra wire (yellow, I believe), but that can be safely ignored. Match 'em up, solder 'em together, apply tape, and bang! You'll end up with something like this:

That's the Xbox to USB cable, then a USB A/B cable, then a USB hub, then a USB to PS/2 adapter, then a PS/2 mouse and keyboard. I had come close to the geek holy grail: having all of the components for a nerdy project lying around in one of my tupperware tubs of electronic crap. I was just missing one thing.

I didn't have a USB keyboard. The setup worked great with a USB mouse, but I still had to use the Xbox controller for movement (I only had PS/2 keyboards handy). I made a trip to Microcenter to remedy this, but foolishly allowed myself to be seduced by the (not that much cheaper) idea of buying a USB to PS/2 adapter instead of a new, bulky keyboard. Sadly, the Xbox is too stupid to work with the adapter. The setup you see above is useless. I'll have to buy a USB keyboard after all.

But I was close, goddammit.