Since the beginning as I first made my discover of what emulators and roms were, I have been plagued with using a keyboard to play them.  I did know there were USB controllers you could get at various electronics stores I just never brought myself to be able to put out the money for them.  The other day I was wondering if you could simply hook a PS3 controller up to a computer and get it working.  After a little research I found that people had already figured it out by replacing the original USB HID drivers with an open source version called libusb.  There were some issues with this (peoples mouses and keyboards stopped working, and Vista users could not use this method) but after awhile I came by an article with all the information I needed.  Apparently, a Chinese programmer created a PS3 controller driver that works with peoples standard USB HID.  He called it Six Axis Driver (click here to get the download).  Unfortunatley this only works in the 32bit version of Windows.

Read on for a step by step to make sure you get things right.

Once you have the file all you have to do is:

• Plug in your controller via USB port.
• Run the installation.
• Load the driver through the program.
• Reboot your computer.
• Open your favorite emulator and set your input keys using the controller.

Also, for XP (32 bit) users, this will work for you too.  It is also a better method than replacing your Windows drivers.  Although, the old way works fine so this isn’t big news.

After that its smooth sailing as I play some of my favorite Super Nintendo games on my laptop with my trusty PS3 controller.  Never will playing emulators with the keyboard be a pain to me again.  By the way, if you didnt know, there are emulators for almost any system, and roms to go with them.  So check out Google and have fun with it.