My brother gave me his PS3 as a hand me down console along with a handful of games, which is genuinely ace as I haven't had a console for ages. The last one I played was PS2. I wanted to set up the Dualshock 3 for use with emulator console games and some desktop use as well.

I succeeded after a two hour fight, getting it work both wireful and wireless. The supposed easiest route was to install abandonware that lets Windows pretend that the controller is infact a Xbox 360 controller, but abandoned the abandonware itself for an older version of the same software which worked well. I only was pointed into the right direction when I finally watched a YouTube video instead of reading guides from supposedly reputable sources. (Maybe YouTube is less gameable than Google search, who knew?)

I wanted to use the pad for some repetitive button pushing tasks that I need to do for revising flash cards. This was possible through Steam, of all things, as it lets you use game pads as mice and keyboards which is something that Windows doesn't let you do natively. I got the hint from a random Reddit thread giving advice on using the Xbox One controller as mouse.

All in all, I think it's so weird that using game pads as input devices is so difficult in 2019, but it works as a desktop pointer, Steam and emulator games so I'm glad I got it sorted out. Definitely use something else than Dualshock 3, if you have any choice, though.