Using Arduino as a USB host is a pain - I hardly ever see anyone talking happily about how they got a USB host shield and everything works great. The fact that they’re both called serial just means that one bit is transmitted at a time (as opposed to a parallel interface, where they might have 8 data wires plus clock (for example), sending a whole byte at a time. PS2 has a clock line and a data line (and I think it’s unidirectional) - RS232 has two lines (TX and RX), and instead of a clock line, it relies on both ends having accurate clocks to time bits with. There is no standard adapter that does that, nor any standard protocol for such an adapter to use - an adapter like that is called “A microcontroller with USB host capability programmed to do that” Will this work What do you call the adapter? With this adapter,I could easily parse the serial stream to get the joystick and button movements. keyboard with a USB connector to rs232 that I can connect to the serial port on my Arduino thereby eliminating the issue of trying desperately to make my joystick interface.

What would you call an adapter that converts a device, i.e. When I Google USB to serial converters I find that most plug ionto a USB host port and then gives a RS-232 output.

I recall a small adapter that used to be included with USB keyboards so that the USB keyboard could be plugged into a PS2 port on a desktop computer. I have been struggling with tryingto connect a joystick to my Arduino using the USB shield then this thought came to me.

Usb to ps2 converter protocol