Xbox Controller to PC USB adapter

This worked out pretty cool, just get a USB A Male end and hack the wires to a Xbox Controller port.

What You'll need:

Xbox Controller Port (available here)
USB A Male end (available here)
Soldering Iron
Solder
Electrical tape

Start by clipping off the excess plastic around the Xbox Controller port. 

But when we are done they should look something like this.

Now strip back about an inch and a half of the USB cable's insulation, you'll find silver shielding wire surrounds the four wires inside, pull the outer wire mesh into a bundle and twist it together.

Now strip a quarter inch of each of the four colored wires (The yellow is extra)

Soldier together (notice the bundle of silver wires and the spare yellow wire, resist the temptation to solder them together, they dont go together)

Insulate your soldiers, in this case I just used the electrical tape sandwich method, fold it over and squeeze it so you can feel between your fingers each of the wires are separated. Make sure the silver bundle is outside the tape we need to soldier that next.

The extra yellow wire can be wrapped into the tape with the others as long as it does not contact anything.

Next scratch up the surface of the silver box, so you can get the solder to stick, attach the silver bundle there (this completes the grounding of the wire, helps with RF interference)

Go ape with the electrical tape and try to make some sort of solid mass out of the thing.

Now to use it, go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/xboxhid/ you can download this driver and get up and running.  I connected a controller through this adapter to my Win XP PC, it auto detected the device, then I pointed the installer toward the downloaded files and it was installed.  After about 30 minutes fiddling around with my joystick settings in my favorite PC game I was up and running.

I'm not sure if this will support the memory card or not, both mine are borrowed out to relatives.  I think that is dependant on the drivers but it sure would be cool to have another way to get the raincoat on a card or maybe share some game saves with friends, or even backup your game saves that will not entirely fit on your memory card etc...  

Updated 7/29/03 information from Dustin

Another option, look at this Dual USB Keyboard Adapter but instead of adding a USB A female connector, adding a USB A Male adapter would have the same effect as the mod described above and the cable would still work for both Xbox game play and connection to a PC.

Updated 8/15/03 information from Chris

I read your tutorial, downloaded the driver(xhid-0.91alpha.zip) and everything went ok; until I tried to detect the device. I pointed the installer to the downloaded driver, and while it was attempting to install the driver I got this error "A service installation section in this INF is invalid."
I did a google search for "XBox Controller HID Minidriver for PC" and came across this link http://www.play-asia.com/paos-13-10ad6000.html which had a link to the "xid" driver("Driver Download" under Useful links) which I used and installed with the same directions as your tutorial. My controller works fine.

10/27/03 Find a recommended driver and step by step driver installation tutorial here 

If you would like to simply buy a professionally made version check here