Playstation problem - DDR mats

General Questions
#1

Praetor and I finally decided to check out the whole DDR thing. We bought a couple dancepads and, for the last four days, we’ve been having lots of fun playing. And then the pads stopped working. Both of them, at the same time. The PS2 just doesn’t respond to any input from them. We know it’s a problem with the PS2 because we exchanged the mats and the new ones don’t work either. The weird thing is that the normal controllers still work just fine.

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this or where I could look for help?

#2

I would assume that there is something in the Options for this game that causes this. Quick way to find out is booting up the game without the memory card inserted.

#3

Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried it out, but the dancepads still don’t work. I guess I’ll have to take the PS2 apart tonight.

#4

If normal controllers work, I very much doubt you’ll see anything fixable in there.

Do you have access to another PS2 to try the mats on?

#5

I do, I’m just afraid of messing that one up too. If I don’t see anything tonight, I’ll try it though.

I’m hoping it’s that the console isn’t providing enough power for the mat but just enough for the regular controller. Since it worked before, I’m wondering if maybe some component went bad and dropped the power level.

#6

Seren, did you ever figure this one out?

As a BIG fan of DDR (I have two of the metal pads hooked up almost all the time), I noticed your post before, but they’ve always worked fine for me.

Now, all of a sudden, I’m having a similar problem as what you described. (Actually, they still sometimes work, but usually only right after a reboot. After a few songs the PS2 just stops recognizing input.)

I’ve swapped pads, control boxes, cables, etc until I’m blue in the face, and it doesn’t seem localized to any of them. It seems like the PS2 has just stopped recognizing them. Other types of PS2 controllers work fine.

So, if you ever got an answer I’d be interested in hearing it.

#7

Sorry. We couldn’t figure out what was wrong. We ended up just switching PS2s. Now we just wait until the system is powered on before we plug in the pads and we unplug them before we turn it off. I’m not sure if that’ll help this one last any longer, but we’ll see.