Hey! I had a similar issue with Dragonrise joysticks on Recalbox. They worked great in the menu and other emulators, but in PSP (via the PPSSPP emulator), the analog sticks didn’t work.
This happens because PPSSPP sometimes doesn’t recognize joystick axes by default, especially with certain generic controllers like Dragonrise. Try this - connected to Recalbox via SSH (or mounted the SD card on a PC).
I found the PPSSPP config file at:
/recalbox/share/system/.config/ppsspp/PSP/SYSTEM/controls.ini
(if it doesn’t exist, you can create it or look for a similar one.) Manually assigned the analog stick axes in that file. Recalbox doesn’t always pass the axis inputs correctly to PPSSPP, so you need to configure them manually. Alternatively, I launched a PSP game, pressed Select → Control Settings, and checked if the stick calibration worked there.
You can also try to remap controls through the PPSSPP GUI itself — launch any PSP game, enter the in-game PPSSPP menu, go to control settings, and rebind the analog directions manually.
Hope that helps — good luck