Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Pelican TSZ Xbox 360 controller on a PC solved

A while ago I bought a Pelican Xbox 360 controller from Walmart for $29.99. I don't have a 360 but wanted to use the controller on my pc. I got it, downloaded MS's xbox 360 drivers and plugged it in. It would not work with the Micrsoft drivers. The cable infact doesn't even have the USB stamp on it.


I quickly logged onto pelican's website and tried to find a driver. I could not find one and put a ticket in with support. They told me that this controller was not pc compatible. I thought this was bullshit since it works with a 360 and a MS controller will work with the pc.


Since I got this controller to use only on my pc(with intentions of using as a second xbox controller when I finally got one), this was not acceptable. I searched the internet and found a 3rd party written xbox 360 controller driver called the XBCD. I tried just installing this driver and it still wouldn't work. Windows XP would not allow me to install this driver with this device.


After tinkering around using a utility from Microsoft called USBview I found the problem. The Pelican controller does not have a VID or PID linked to it. Every usb device has a VID(vendorID) and PID(productID) that .inf files use to associate a driver to a product. Using the USBview tool, I noticed that the VID and PID for the Pelican PL-3601 came up as 0000. I then opened up the .inf file c:\windows\inf\xbcd.inf that the 3rd party XBCD driver uses to associate itself with usb devices. Inside the file I found a line to associate the driver for the 360 controller to the XBCD driver.


%XBCD_360.DeviceDesc% =Install, USB\VID_045E&PID_028E  ; Microsoft Xbox 360 Controller

I then copied that line and changed the VID from 045E to 0000 and PID to 0000 also.


I now unplugged the device and plugged it back in. It quickly popped up as "XBCD Xbox 360 Controller" and let me install the device automatically. The device worked great. I use it all the time for games on my PC now.


Here are the steps you should do to replicate my success.


Enjoy!!!!