Hey,
First post here. I joined because I noticed this thread and I had just tried fixing up the gamepads in either snes9x itself or in snes9express.
Short: I couldn't fix it.
Long: I searched and read.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=338457
That thread apparently was used successfully by someone who gave a link to it from another forum. That poster had been using OpenSusE 10.2 like me, so I tried installing that jscalibrator. I searched for js in YaST Software Management and it was part of one of the packages that came up. I don't remember whether it was an oss, non-oss, Packman, or Suser-Guru source but I installed it.
We using KDE are in luck because we don't need that jscalibrator thing at all. The KDE Control Center provides the same capabilities, as I discovered when running either the jscalibrator and testing or running the Joystick section of KControl gave nearly the same results. Actually the KControl does it better as it doesn't depend upon me (the user) to hit the wrong axis or buttons as long as the automatic settings are detected correctly. I guess if I hit the calibrate button then I would have the chance to mess things up!
The snes9express program has not been updated to work with the changes included in snes9x version 5. I actually couldn't get any games to start up with it, always getting that Error Level 1 message.
Snes9x itself can't seem to find my joysticks so only runs without the joystick. Not too good!
I uninstalled the jscal package as that hadn't done anything to fix the problem, and all my games work fine with my gamepads except for snes9x.
Now for your fix for just getting your USB gamepads recognized. You could manually do
su -
modprobe joydev
but you'd either have to manually edit the file that modprobes stuff to get it to run at every bootup or just do that everytime.
So let's just use SuSE's tools to have the Kernel modprobe joydev at every bootup!
Open YaST. Go to the System tab and the /etc/sysconfig editor.
Go to System, Kernel, MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT and type in there
joydev
Click finish and restart the computer.
Then go into the KDE Configure Desktop (Personal Settings) and choose Peripherals,Joystick.
Your USB gamepads should be in there and you can test them. There's also a Calibrate button but I haven't needed to bother with that.
One problem I still have is that I have 2 gamepads connected. I want the /dev/input/js0 to be my Thrustmaster Dual-Trigger 2-in-1 Rumble Force and the /dev/input/js1 to be my Wishtec Adaptoid. But depending upon how they are detected at bootup this is sometimes reversed!
So I need to always check in there what order they are in and if it is reversed I have to unplug the second one (the Thrustmaster) and the first one (the Adaptiod) and then plug the Thrustmaster back in (making it the first again) and then the Adaptiod (making it js1 again).
Sometimes this order is the way I want it at bootup and sometimes it's not. But since I tell my games to use the one I want, I always need to check that when KDE loads to see that it's the way I want it so the games will work properly.
I have fceUltraNES, with the GFCE Ultra NES gui program running fine with the gamepads, as well as the Mupen64 N64 emulator. And all native Linux games that use a gamepad detect things fine as well.
Snes9x is a problem and nothing I've found on the net has been of any help. That jscalibrator is great for those using Gnome as Gnome doesn't have that joystick section like KControl does. But it didn't help with snes9x or snes9express.
Yes, I used the calibration tools to point snes9express to the correct /dev/input/ directory, but snes9x or snes9express just cannot use them properly regardless. They calibrate fine within snes9express so it is detecting them properly, but no game can start whether with the GUI or not if I tell it to use a joystick. Games start with the normal snes9x, but do not use the joystick.
So, no need to install jscalibrator for KDE users. KControl does the same thing. The snes9x program is the problem.
As far as zsnes goes, I've had YaST install that and it can never start, period. So I don't even have that installed. Folks over at emutalk.net think zsnes is the greatest but I have no idea how to run it. It just errors out and won't open. And the help or man files for it are not included in the package that I think comes from Suser-Guru. So there isn't even anything to read to try and fix it.
So, I don't play my snes games on Linux. Hopefully someone will explain how these thing s can work at some point.
But hopefully I've helped you at least to get your gamepads running on OpenSuSE. That is supposed to be automatic, but without adding that to the modprobe section at startup, I found that once in a while my gamepad would suddenly show up, then would disappear again! But they are always there if I just add that joydev line to where I told you in YaST.