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DOS joysticks

oblivion

oblivion

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this i suppose is a simple question but i've really never used joysticks in DOS. don't know why but i recently have aquired a few flight games and i really would like to. question is: i have a saitek st50 and a logitech wingman interceptor (found at goodwill cheap) both non USB and i wanted to know if they would function in a 486 class machine. does dos require any drivers for joysticks? would either of these even work in DOS as they seem to be win 95/98 era sticks. i would just hook them up and see but i recently moved and everything is not setup yet so i figured i would ask prior.
 
So long as you have the 15 pin joystick port present, you should be able to use them no problem. 99% of software assumes the same port address for joysticks, and 99% of hardware made for them don't let you change the port address anyways. Since it's always at the same I/O port, there was no need for any sort of fancy driver nonsense. The MOST you usually have to do is adjust the trim pots to make sure center is actually center given the different speeds of machines and resistance tolerances of the game adapters.
 
Everything deathshadow said...

I'm also a big fan of the gamepad-style controllers for late 80's and 90's platform/action games (Commander Keen, Wolf3D, Raptor, etc). My favorite was always the Gravis Gamepad / Gamepad Pro, though the NEC GRiP (manufactured by Gravis) was a nice system too, most especially for multi-player. Though finding a Gamepad Pro that uses the 15-pin joystick port might be a little difficult; ISTR that they were only made for about a year before USB kind've took things over in the joystick/pad market. Finding the GRiP is nearly impossible, as you not only need the GRiP pad, but the 4-player interface that actually connects to the joystick port.

Either way... I actually preferred the Gravis Gamepad over my flight stick at the time... I was heavily into Wing Commander II... used to crack me up when the Kilrathi would taunt you: "I will feast on your entrails!" (says the cat-like face that appears on your comm screen) - LOVE IT!
 
I tried most of the different designs over time, but honestly I couldn't just use one for all. Flight sticks I think are great for flight sims but I do like the gamepad design for emulators or platform games. Racing wheels were ok except they and the petals seemed to just slide across the carpet and the feel of the petal in mine at least wasn't that realistic. It added to the feeling though when appropriate. I definitely enjoy the space type games and to an extent even the old F-15 Strike Eagle with it's combination of joystick and keyboard. That has a more advanced feeling although with some games it can get a little too overwhelming and feels like you need two players just to fly and fight. Certainly too much when I was a kid.

My uncle a few years ago was revisiting some retro gaming fun on his spare system and old gear. He was playing x-wing (actually he was a pilot in the airforce so flight sim games he enjoys) and his joystick did something weird and stopped responding. I think instead of pausing (can't remember if it had a real pause feature or not) he raced against the game to fix his joystick to get back in the action. Sounded like a pretty intense in-game experience :)

BTW, if you're wondering if your system is seeing your joystick you can use msd.exe (Microsoft Diagnostics) to view the joystick port or other IRQ/DMA assignments.
 
barythrin said:
I definitely enjoy the space type games and to an extent even the old F-15 Strike Eagle with it's combination of joystick and keyboard. That has a more advanced feeling although with some games it can get a little too overwhelming and feels like you need two players just to fly and fight.
Click to expand...

That was actually how I played WCII - the Gravis Gamepad doesn't have enough buttons to do everything, and my flight stick had almost too many buttons, too close together; I kept hitting multiple buttons by accident! (I tend to have this problem with flight sticks, though I've several). I settled to the Gamepad+keyboard combo, as I found that I usually had a finger or two free on my left hand that controlled the D-pad, and would use it to engage whatever I needed with the keyboard, sometimes even letting go for a split-second to hit the two-key combinations. I found this to be MUCH more enjoyable than the keyboard alone, and much less frustrating than using my flight stick.
 
This travels into what I'd consider non-vintage domain but the other huge experience changer was force feedback joysticks. That made the game actually difficult on an entirely separate level (if the game includes force feedback signals). While the game play is still great in a lot of them, it's pretty crazy when you're having trouble flying straight or smoothly because you're being shot and you feel each blast. Sometimes it was a bit too much though and had to be toned down a tad, I did have one game and although I enjoyed it my wrist hurt after playing because of trying to fight the ship. Ended up getting hit (Hardwar) with a weapon called a clamp grabs your ship and the ground and wenches it to the ground causing physical damage. THAT was a pain with force feedback enabled. It actually had me disable it for a while to regain my better aiming/shooting skill but eventually I got used to it turned on again.

There are some interesting designs out there too. The one I really never saw though was a light gun for the PC. I found one and bought it years back but never tried it out. I'm kinda guessing it's not really for a PC but not sure, it does have the 2 row 15-pin connector. Meant to research it more or ask here about it.
 
I haven't tried my Gravis Gamepad with WCII, but with WC, it is so difficult to make subtle movements of the crosshairs. A digital stick will never reach the response of a good analog stick in games supporting an analog joystick.
 
Even after most controllers went USB, a lot of the more serious PCI soundcards had the 15-pin D-SUB port because it is also the port for MIDI instruments. There are bins full of those cards at recycle joints.

X and Y axis plus 2 buttons are all in the 8-pin row. buttons 3 and 4 are in the 7-pin row. So the standard port handles up to 4 buttons.

A lot of games have a setup that includes calibration routine for the joystick. They needed that because the analog X and Y potentiometers on the joysticks were unreliably calibrated. All adds to the hazard level of the games, like driving on ice..

Rick
 
The pots on the sticks were usually ok...the problem was the cheap and crappy game port interface used to read them.
 
barythrin said:
The one I really never saw though was a light gun for the PC. I found one and bought it years back but never tried it out. I'm kinda guessing it's not really for a PC but not sure, it does have the 2 row 15-pin connector. Meant to research it more or ask here about it.
Click to expand...

I remember magazine ads about it, but have never actually seen one. You should try it out and let us know how it works! Perhaps it's even supported in the PC version of Operation Wolf (joystick emulation, perhaps?) - THAT would be cool... playing that game with a pad is exceedingly difficult.
 
Maverick1978 said:
Perhaps it's even supported in the PC version of Operation Wolf (joystick emulation, perhaps?) - THAT would be cool... playing that game with a pad is exceedingly difficult.
Click to expand...

Playing Operation Wolf for DOS is exceedingly difficult with any device, although your best chance is to play it on a slow machine with a mouse. The crosshairs are interrupt-driven (for joystick and keyboard too) while the rest of the game runs in the foreground; targeting takes priority. So on a slow machine, the game advances slower but the ability to target is unaffected.
 
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