What to do with old Sidewinder joysticks I dug up?

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0...S.LZZZZZZZ.gif
http://195.224.149.148/SB/Micrsoft_Sidewinder.jpg

I'm really tempted to bust these out - particularly the Precision one - and try them with MAME, Genesis, SMS, and NES emulation (SNES wouldn't be too hot unless I did some clever bindings), but I have NOTHING to hook them up to. Is there converters available online to use them with USB or could I manually convert them to USB if I knew which wire went to which? Or would I have to buy a special card for my comp?

Get some older PCI sound card (which will be much better than any onboard is, no matter what you get) and you're going to have a port to attach things to. Usually Yellow port with 15 holes

hate to break this to you but the one you have is not convertable to usb(easily) there is no converter you can buy i have a sound card with the joystick port on my computer but not on my laptop so i use usb gamepads have about 6 different ones and i hate them all

i have a microsoft force feedback wheel and it is just about useless anymore since only a few games supported it when it was new should have gone usb

the late joysticks in the 15 pin gameport used serial commands sent through the button imputs to the computer and had special drivers to decode them

because the gameport was really quite limited it only allowed 4 axis and 4 buttons which often meant 2 2 button analog joysticks or a gamepad that had 6 buttons it used the 2 player axees as buttons

there were other clever techniques like thrustmaster which had a throttle which was really just joystick 2s x axis and the "hat" which used the joy2's y axis via special resistances to make a little 4 way stick

i enjoy the old pc joysticks on my atari 5200 with a convertor i made

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Originally Posted by bohokii

i enjoy the old pc joysticks on my atari 5200 with a convertor i made

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I would love to see this, I'll convert one I have here (several here) to use on a 5200.:!:

Yeah, for a desktop running XP or older, get a sound card with a game/midi port. (not sure about AGP soud cards though)

For anything but simple controllers (not usning any data streaming or drivers, just the standard analog joystick port connections) USB adaptors SUCK!
Then there's the passthough adaptors used for a handfull of late model gameport controllers with USB compatibility built-in and passed though normally unused pins on the port. (I accidentally bought 2 of these a while back) Still other controllers included both USB and gamport connectors.

So pretty much, for desktops, XP and earlier is fine, not sure about Vista-32, but everything newer has dropped all support for the gameport unless soem 3rd party/homebrew effort comes up with soem kind of patch. (and this goes for USB adaptors as well I think)

Sad that such a standard is dying off like that (more like dead already) along with the old IBM standard serial and parallel ports becoming increasingly scarse.

This is one of the driving forces for my wanting a dedicated retro gaming PC, should be win9x for good native DOS compatibility.

That and Gravis no longer making controllers, they were the first (pretty much) with gamepads on the PC, and made one of the best gamepads ever IMO, or at least most versitile. (Xterminator)



And TmEE, is that really true about PCI sound cards in general? For midi stuff or everyting? (native soundblaster support would be nice too, especially with some good clarity) Do the general midi instruments used usually sound as good as the standard Sound Canvas ones on most onboard sound systems? (I know of several cards I rather dislike for general midi, especially the Ultrasound if Doom is any indication)

in XP you're stuck with that shitty sounding MIDI set even if the card has something nicer itself, unless there is a better manufacturer driver available... but you will get MPU-401 port and a game port, XP still supports those... that is how I have my old gamepads connected to my gaming machine :) ... 1% of all sound cards has actual MIDI synth on them as opposed to software emulated one.
SB compatibiltiy will always be disabled in XP and @K and newer, as those OS do not allow programs direct HW access and DOS programs all depend on it... and the emulation drivers XP has suck ass.

If you do end up buying a PCI card you might want to look for Creative cards (SB Live, X-Fi, Audigy) supported by kX drivers:

http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/faq.php?language=en#Q15

They're quite versatile and work well under XP. Then you'll be able to not only use your joysticks but load soundfonts to make MIDIs sound a lot better. RegressionFM for instance is a nice WIP General MIDI soundfont:

if you want to make your own 5200 convertor

copy this

http://www.atarihq.com/5200/5200faq/06_04.html

its much more simple than it looks the only real problem is finding the "plugs"

cause the standard metal shielded female ones dont fit in the 5200 so you have to cut off the metal then glue the 2 pieces together or i seal them with my soldering iron melting them together

then you realize that the 5200 stick(for use with the buttons) doesnt fit in the metal shielded male 15 pin so you can either use really tiny tin snips to try to make grooves for the 5200 controllers locking lugs or just cut off and seal it together leaving the male prongs just waving in the air

another problem is sometimes a pc joystick just will suck like i got a couple that just plain suck one is the suncom analog edge it is jittery than hell(but it sucked on the pc too)

another problem is some joysticks with autofire i found ones that use the 555 chip for autofire cause constant jitter because the 555 chip is always being powered by the pot common power and confuses the 5200 so what i do is just open them up cut the trace to line one on the 555 and disable it then no more jitter(well jitter caused by it noisy pots are another story)

good thing though i find most of my joysticks work decent
and even the gamepads i have

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...i/DCP_7868.jpg

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...i/DCP_7685.jpg


you have to be aware of the newer 15 pin joysticks and gamepads that wont work you can often spot them as having about 10 buttons and on the cord will be one of those ferrite lumps (my pirrana pad is an exception cause while technically it has 10 buttons the 2 in the middle only control autofire and the 4 shoulder buttons are actually joystick 2s axis with joysticks the good indicator is a lack of trimmers for the directions (and lots of buttons) also maybe a ferrite cord blob

its kind of like a you might be a redneck joke
if you have a ferrite lump you will not work
if you got no trimmers for your axis you will not work
if you come with an adapter for usb you will not work
if you have more buttons than a human has fingers you will not work

these are the ones i have that wont work
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...i/DCP_7690.jpg

how does a person end up with so many joysticks well you start out in the 90s with a 386 and every upgrade by a new joystick 386 20mhz get a stick 386 40 mhz get a new stick 486 33mhz get a new stick 486 66 get a new stick pentium 90 get a new stick k6 200 get a new stick from here on out i'm getting the usb ones and never throw crap away just stick stuff in boxes and store them (the fusions were a special buy one get one free)

here are some more http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...i/DCP_7888.jpg
i even modded an old apple stick to first be a pc stick then a 5200 stick i really like the crown controller even if it is a right hand on stick config
here is some of my usb life http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...i/DCP_7889.jpg
and here is the got dam worthless wheel
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...i/DCP_7890.jpg

how is that clear yellow and purple 6-button controller? is it any good? remember what it was called/where you got it? If my Saturn pads turn out to be junk and break/whatever, I'd like to know there is an alternative with the proper layout.

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Originally Posted by 17daysolderthannes

how is that clear yellow and purple 6-button controller? is it any good? remember what it was called/where you got it? If my Saturn pads turn out to be junk and break/whatever, I'd like to know there is an alternative with the proper layout.

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the clear yellow one is actually my favorite it is called a (joymouse) not to be confused with the program that turns your joystick into a mouse

its default setting it acts like a mouse and moves the pointer around very slowly

on mode 2 it acts like a game pad and it has another setting that makes it act like an analog joystick (kinda lame cause what it really does is slowly move the direction you want like when you press right the little pointer in the calibration screen moves slowly to the right
sure i guess it prevents skidding in some driving games but ive not really found it useful

so it is 6 buttons plus 2 shoulder buttons i really like how they are labled abc(concave) and xyz(convex)

i too would like more info on it cause i have a feeling its more than meets the eye

there was a guy on ebay selling them a while ago i think he ran out
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=290351928094

i dont like the dual thumbstick gamepad there is just too much goin on

I just realized you can buy USB adapters for the Sidewinder Precision, but I don't know about 3D Pro. Precision is probably best for emulation because of how its face buttons are set up: to the side of the stick as opposed to being in front of the stick.

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Originally Posted by TmEE

in XP you're stuck with that shitty sounding MIDI set even if the card has something nicer itself, unless there is a better manufacturer driver available... but you will get MPU-401 port and a game port, XP still supports those... that is how I have my old gamepads connected to my gaming machine :) ... 1% of all sound cards has actual MIDI synth on them as opposed to software emulated one.

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What about software which specifically supports certain sound cards (in addition to general midi)?
And the "default" onboard midi is based on the Sound Canvas instrument set, isn't it? (when I was comparing Doom music, that was in DOS, and like I said, I hated the GUS compared to "generic" MS general midi -again should be sound canvas from what I understand)

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SB compatibiltiy will always be disabled in XP and @K and newer, as those OS do not allow programs direct HW access and DOS programs all depend on it... and the emulation drivers XP has suck ass.

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OK, but VDMSound's emulation is pretty good, same as DOSBox (unless it's been improved since being ported to dosbox), very crisp compared to most SB compatibles (especially the original SB cards) as you showed in a direct comparison. (albeit there are still soem discrepancies, so that's a trade off, but the clarity is so much higher than a real SB)

XP has default SB emulation drivers as well? From what I recall, without VDMSound any SB dependent game had no sound if it ran at all natively. (though VDM sound didn't like my Athlon XP machine for some reason, Doom was glitchy and a lot of XMS driver problems -games like X-Wing and Wing Commander wouldn't launch)

I'm not sure if my last desktop would have worked with a gampad, it was all AGP. (no pci slots)

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Originally Posted by bohokii

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...i/DCP_7685.jpg

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Hey, I have that very stick in the top right, that used to be my standard joystick since the mid 90s up to upgrading to my last PC w/out gameport ~6 or so years ago. The fine tuning wheels had kind of a mind of thir own though, at least later on, not so much loose as shifting arund after somewhat violent stick movement.
I've got it packed away somewhere I think. (I don't remember the brand)

its a quickshot

the grip is about the same as my genesis joystick

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...i/DCP_7892.jpg

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

What about software which specifically supports certain sound cards (in addition to general midi)?
And the "default" onboard midi is based on the Sound Canvas instrument set, isn't it? (when I was comparing Doom music, that was in DOS, and like I said, I hated the GUS compared to "generic" MS general midi -again should be sound canvas from what I understand)

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Things done specifically for the card are another matter...
The MIDI you hear in most stuff is windows's MIDI emulation which uses a sound set licensed from Roland (look for GM.DLS file in your PC, every windows since 98 has it).

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

OK, but VDMSound's emulation is pretty good, same as DOSBox (unless it's been improved since being ported to dosbox), very crisp compared to most SB compatibles (especially the original SB cards) as you showed in a direct comparison. (albeit there are still soem discrepancies, so that's a trade off, but the clarity is so much higher than a real SB)

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VDMsound is another emulation layer, but it actually works in most cases.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

XP has default SB emulation drivers as well? From what I recall, without VDMSound any SB dependent game had no sound if it ran at all natively. (though VDM sound didn't like my Athlon XP machine for some reason, Doom was glitchy and a lot of XMS driver problems -games like X-Wing and Wing Commander wouldn't launch)

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I guess that is card dependant to some level then, but with my Yamaha or the Sound Blasters I have around, there is emulator going on (what a joke, the cards are all having SB in them :P) and that emulator fails shortly, sound goes all cracky and "slow motion" and eventually things crash.

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Originally Posted by TmEE

Things done specifically for the card are another matter...
The MIDI you hear in most stuff is windows's MIDI emulation which uses a sound set licensed from Roland (look for GM.DLS file in your PC, every windows since 98 has it).

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How does it compare to a real Roldand GM card or Sound Canvas module?

I persoanlly like the instrument set, kind of bland at times, but with good compositions it sounds great. (and again, I like it more than a lot of other stuff in Doom's case, more than Adlib/SB too -though Doom doesn't seem to take advantage of anyhting beyond 1x OPL2)
That's one reason I like doom on the Xbox (bonus in Doom 3) to the XBLA version, the GUS music is dreadfull IMO. (again, I don't have other games to compare with it) Yamaha SoftSynth sounds pretty good iirc, haven't heard a whole lot of AWE-32 stuff either. (outside of sound fonts)

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I guess that is card dependant to some level then, but with my Yamaha or the Sound Blasters I have around, there is emulator going on (what a joke, the cards are all having SB in them :P) and that emulator fails shortly, sound goes all cracky and "slow motion" and eventually things crash.

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The problems with VDMSound were never audio related, but another problem with certain games in general, usually errors involving extended memory drivers, but in Doom's case, it worked, but just had tons of weird slowdown. (when enemies were on screen or doors were opening/closing it got terribly choppy)
That may have been a hardware issue though (or soem weird patch in XP), I don't remember that problem when in XP on my older PIII machine. I know a lot of other people didn't have those problems, but we did on all 4 of our PCs at home. (all using Athlon XPs though, so that may have been the issue)
X-Wing wouldn't launch at all in XP outside of dosbox, and that I know was not true with other XP users as well, so again, I think it may have been an issue with the Athlon XP in combination with running WinXP. (some kind of driver conflict)

through all my years of upgrading i remember having a soundcard that wanted you to buy ram cards so it could load wavetable for the midi i think it was a media vision i still have my cd player that came with it

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...i/DCP_7893.jpg

i was the baddest mofo around with my external scsi doublespeed cd rom/rechargable diskman
i think this was around monkey island 2

funny how ya keep things you are never going to use again